The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
June 14, 2009

Proper 6 – B
Ezekiel 31:1-6, 10-14
2 Corinthians 5:1-10
Mark 4:26-34

“What is the kingdom of God like?” Jesus must have been asked this question a gazillion times. At least he responded to it a lot. “It’s like this,” said Jesus. “The kingdom of God is like life. A farmer plants some seed. The seeds sprout and grow all the time, night and day. The seeds grow even while the farmer is sleeping, and the farmer doesn’t know how they do it. The soil and seed just produce of their own accord and then, when the crop is ready, the farmer loses no time harvesting the crop.”

The main point of this story is the certainty of the harvest. The harvest will happen. And when it happens, the farmer will lose no time reaping what he has sown. Similarly, the kingdom of God will come, in God’s own good time. And when it does, God will waste no time reaping the harvest. That is a certainty, Jesus is saying. We can take it to the bank. So don’t fret about whether the kingdom will ever come. It will. Trust it. The growth of the kingdom of God is as certain – no, even more certain – than the fact that God’s earth produces a crop when the farmer plants the seed. For God’s Word is not planted only to return to God empty, anymore than his rain falls on the earth without producing growth.

Beyond this main point, though, today’s parables suggest at least two bits of counsel for those of us here who wait expectantly for the kingdom of God.

The first counsel is this: Relax.

This is advice I routinely offer to brides and grooms and their parents. Nothing, in my experience, gets people more tied in knots than the expectations surrounding a wedding. That, I think, is because we so often make the mistake of thinking of a wedding as some kind of performance. We get an idea of the “perfect wedding” in our minds. And the problem with that is that the “perfect wedding” doesn’t exist. For if, on the wedding day, the weather turns lousy after all; or if the bride’s mother finds a spot on her dress; or if, contrary to all hope, uncivil and grouchy Uncle Walter does decide to attend; or if the bride trips and falls coming down the aisle; then everything is spoiled. The performance, and therefore the day, is ruined.

But if one’s expectations are realistic; if we remember the “perfect wedding” is beyond our control; if we remember that the important thing about the day is not the wedding anyway, but the marriage; if we remember that we are getting together not to watch a performance but to pray with the bride and groom for God’s blessing upon their life together and to share our blessings with them as well, then nothing can spoil the day, not even unpredictable Uncle Walter, because genuine prayer and genuine blessing can never be spoiled.

The kingdom of God is like that. The kingdom of God is like marriage and like life. God, not us, is the source and measure of success. There is no way for us to take the kingdom by storm, anymore than there is a way for us to ensure the “perfect wedding” It is God, not we, who grows his kingdom. The kingdom comes with human help and human participation but is independent of human control, and it is often very different from human expectations.

Accepting the truth that it is God who gives the growth is basic to healthy life. It’s part of what Ezekiel is saying about Assyria this morning – that Assyria was like a large and beautiful cedar tree that had assumptions not grounded in reality. Like the great cedar, Assyria grew proud of its height and the loveliness of its great branches, but it forgot that the source of its life was deep down in the soil and great waters of God who nourished it. And so, because Assyria forgot the deep streams of water which were the source of its life at its roots, it became proud, imagining that the nation itself was the source of its own greatness. So, in time, it was toppled, and was left lying on the ground.

This is a truth we find over and over in the Scriptures, a truth about both individuals and nations, a truth nowhere more clearly expressed than in the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy: “Do not forget that it is the Lord, not you yourselves, who delivered you from slavery in Egypt and brought you safely through the wilderness for forty years “where your clothes did not wear out... and your feet did not swell. Do not forget that it was the Lord, not you yourselves, who brought you into the land of promise and prosperity. So when you are enjoying your fine houses and all your cattle and wealth, do not forget that it is the Lord who gives you these fine things. For if you begin to say, ‘Look at all this that I have made with my own hands’ and forget that it is the Lord who gives you all your fine things, on that day you will surely perish.”

The truth is that the source of the kingdom is in the seed and in God, not in us, and that the maturity of the kingdom cannot be forced. What is true of life and farming is true of the kingdom of God itself. The kingdom can be prepared for and waited for expectantly, but it can grow only with time.

Trying to force maturity is a common mistake: Lord, when will we reach the Promised Land? When will justice roll on like a mighty river? When will life be the way we always dreamed it would be? Somewhere along the line we form all kinds of personal expectations about something we call “success,” expectations of just the perfect family, expectations of the perfect son or daughter. And sometimes, as we often see in the news if not in our own homes, such expectations can become extreme and produce tragic results.

I often recall what the psychologist Jay Brenneman said many years ago when he was here in late November for a workshop on how to cope with our unrealistic expectations of the holidays and Christmas. He started the day by asking us to remember that we all come from dysfunctional families, so no one can use that as an excuse for anything. We’re so dysfunctional that sometimes we’re like the little boy who plants a seed in a box of soil, places the box on the window sill, and then digs up the seed every day for the next two weeks to see if it is growing.

To be forever digging up the seeds we plant and examining them – whether it’s the seed in the garden in the back yard or the seed in the garden of the kingdom or the seed in the garden of a parish or the seed in the garden of a family or the seed in a womb – is usually counterproductive. One can appreciate the harvest only by planting, and then by faithfully watering and cultivating and being patient, by waiting for God to bring his gift to maturity in God’s own time.

But sometimes, by the grace of God, we’re able to let go of our own expectations of perfection, either about weddings or Christmas, or about our families, and able to accept the gift that God gives us and to come to love and appreciate it.

One example of such thankful acceptance of the growth God gives is when a family is expecting a child. And then at some point they discover that the child is not “perfect.” In fact, it will never be “perfect,” because the child is physically or mentally impaired, such as a Down Syndrome child.

One way to respond to such a gift is to reject it, to tell God you we don’t want it, perhaps even to end the pregnancy.

But another way is to accept the gift as given, to accept the growth of the seed planted and nurtured. And when one does this, when one accepts the gift that is rather than the gift they imagined, when one accepts the gift that is given rather than reject it because it doesn’t meet expectations, when one accepts the gift that is and loves the child as the gift of God, a family is often discovers that they have been given a pearl of great price, an opportunity for knowing and sharing the love of God they would otherwise never have had.

And this has already brought us round to the second counsel implicit in Jesus’ parables this morning, which is that when maturity happens – whether it is the maturity of the kingdom of God or of family life, or the maturity of a parish church – it won’t look exactly as any of us, either you or I, imagine at this time. The maturity of a living organism, whether plant or person or family or church, always contains elements of surprise and wonder. Changes take place during the process of growth.

Oh, we know the kinds of things to look for. One can tell from the seed he plants whether to expect corn or wheat or apples or watermelons or joy or peace or discord and enmity. But we can never fully describe the harvest in advance.

We have a role in the coming of the kingdom, of course, and the question is whether we will participate in its coming or will somehow hinder or delay its arrival. We must plant the seed. We must tend the garden. We’ve must water and nourish and prune. But God, not we, will give the growth and the maturity and the blessing.

God’s promise is the kingdom, abundant life. God does not, however, promise life according to our expectations, but only that faithful planting and watering and pruning and waiting will yield abundant and blessed results.

When Mother Teresa visited Milwaukee a number of years ago, a reporter asked her if she really expected that she and her sisters would be successful among the poor in India. After all, the poverty there is so great and the poor are so many. And Mother Teresa said, “God does not call us to be successful. He calls us to be faithful. I am just a servant. God will provide the blessing.” That is Mother Teresa’s was of saying that we have a role in the coming of the kingdom, of course, and the question for us is whether we will participate in its coming or will somehow hinder or delay its arrival.

That is the truth of the parables Jesus shares with us this morning, the truth of the kingdom of God, the truth of abundant life, the truth of life together – that the kingdom of God is like what happens when one is faithful, not when one is successful.

The kingdom, you see – abundant life – can happen under the most unlikely circumstances, because it is of God, not of us. The kingdom, abundant life, can happen under unlikely circumstances because it is a promise and a gift, not a human accomplishment, a promise and a gift we are called to prepare for and participate in – called to plant and to nurture, and then to trust. Called to plant and to nurture and to trust the way Jesus planted and nurtured and trusted.
Having prepared the soil, Jesus then planted his seed at the Cross, at Calvary. And then he waited. “You’re will be done,” he prayed to his Father.

And Calvary – Jesus’ planting and Jesus’ waiting – is why the octogenarian was able to plant and nurture and trust the way he planted and nurtured and trusted. The eighty-five-year-old man had lived a long and fruitful life, a life full of many personal and professional accomplishments and successes. “What is the best thing that happened to you in your life?” he was asked. And the old man answered, “I don’t know. It hasn’t happened yet.”

Calvary is also why the old preacher on the slave plantation planted and watered and trusted the way he planted and watered and trusted. Calvary is why Howard Thurman’s grandmother planted and watered and trusted the way she planted and watered and trusted. And Calvary is why Leontine Kelly, the first female African-American bishop of the United Methodist Church, plants and waters and trusts the way she plants and waters and trusts: “If you want people to stay where they are put,” Bishop Kelly says, “don’t tell them about Jesus. Because Jesus won’t stay where he is put!”

Howard Thurman, who was Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University in the middle of the twentieth century, tells about his grandmother’s life in the dark days of American slavery, and about the plantation owner who apparently thought that it would do the slaves no harm if a preacher went down on Sunday afternoons to tell the slaves about Jesus.

On the minds on the plantation slaves was the question of the kingdom: “When, Lord, will we reach the Promised Land? When will justice roll down like a mighty stream?” And Thurman said that his grandmother always reminded him that the old preacher “hardly ever preached a sermon without “going by Calvary,” where Jesus had placed his faith by planting his Cross, because slaves could always relate to “a story of a man who was treated like dirt, abused, beaten down, and left for dead.”

And she said that whenever the preacher “went by Calvary,” he was always moved to shout, “But God raised him again! And he is seated at the right hand of God in heaven!” “Then the preacher would take off his glasses, and lean over the pulpit and look straight into our eyes,” she said. And [then he would] say to [us] in words undeniable, ‘But slaves, you are not any man’s property. You are children of God Almighty! Never forget it!’”

And “Thurman’s grandmother told him that whenever the preacher would come to that part of the story, her spine would stiffen, and she was ready for a new day.”

Life and the kingdom of God are like that. The old preacher planted the seed. And then he waited on Jesus, who didn’t stay in his tomb where he was put and whom God raised to be with him in his kingdom.

And Thurman’s grandmother never failed to plant and to water. She told her children and her grandchildren about Calvary, about Jesus and the old preacher, and then she waited. She waited on God. She waited to see that Jesus didn’t stay in the tomb where he was put. And She waited on God to see that her children didn’t stay on the plantation where they were put. And she waited to see that her grandchildren, like Howard, didn’t stay where they were put. And she waited on God to see that Martin Luther King, Jr., didn’t stay in Georgia where he was put.

Long before Leontine Kelly said it, the old preacher knew and Howard Thurman’s grandmother knew that “if you want want people to stay where they are put,” then for heaven’s sake “don’t tell them about Jesus,” because Jesus won’t stay where he is put. Because even down on the plantation, even in the cold, cold ground, God gives the growth.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.