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Text: Mark Two Lessons from Nature In the name
of him who is the Savior and the Lord of the Church, dear friends in
Christ: Our Lord Jesus often taught the
crowds that came to hear him preach God’s Word by speaking to them in
parables. In fact, today’s Gospel lesson
concludes by saying that it was the exclusive means he used to teach
most people. Only his disciples got the
inside scoop when he would pull them aside for a private session after the
crowds had dispersed and the day’s work was done. Then, when they were alone, he would reveal
to them the spiritual meaning behind the illustrations he used present God’s
truth. That was great for the disciples …
but I wonder how frustrating that must have been for the others. Can you imagine being all excited because the
great miracle-working Rabbi you’ve been hearing so much about had finally come
to your town? And then going to see
Jesus – only to hear him teach the two very simple “garden” stories we heard
this morning: the parables of the
Growing Seed and the Mustard Seed. You’d
probably walk away wondering, “What was that all about?” Imagine then arriving at home and trying to
explain it to a family member or friend who wasn’t there: “So, did you get to hear Jesus?” “Yeah, I did.” “Well, were you impressed? What did he say?” “Um … he said the kingdom of God is like a
guy who plants seeds. After he plants
them, he kind of sits back while they grow all by themselves; and after they
mature, he harvests them.” “Oh. Well … that’s true, I guess, I mean about the
seeds and plants and all … but did you really need a famous Rabbi to tell you
that? And what does it have to do with
the kingdom of God? Did he say anything
else?” “Yeah, well, he said the kingdom
of God is like a little, itty-bitty seed that grows into a really big
plant. Oh yeah, and something about
birds living in it.” “That’s it?” “Yeah … pretty much all he said; but he said
it really well.” “You’re kidding
me. What is this guy, a religious
teacher or somebody who works for the Department of Agriculture? How come everybody says he’s such a great
Bible teacher? It doesn’t even sound
like he talks about the Scriptures.” So again, I imagine that a lot of
what Jesus said was pretty confusing to most people. Fortunately, we aren’t left guessing about
what he meant. Equipped as we are with
the other writings of the Apostles and Evangelists – the folks who got the
inside scoop and explanations – it’s not too difficult for us to understand
what Jesus meant by these parables. And
as it turns out, these two short stories that are very simple illustrations
from the garden reveal deep truths about the power and effectiveness of God’s
Word, and how he uses the Word to build up his kingdom in the world of people. First, in
the Parable of the Growing Seed, we see that the emphasis is on the Seed
itself. Yes, the sower casts it out
there, and the soil is the medium in which it grows; but the living agent is
the Seed. That’s what contains the power
and life force and genetic data that becomes the plant that ultimately produces
the desired fruit. It’s all up to the
seed. Once he throws it out there, it’s really
out of the sower’s hands. There’s
nothing he can do to make the seed germinate, or bring the plant to life, or
make it grow faster. The seed does all
the work while the sower goes about his business, and takes his breaks, and
goes to sleep and so on. Likewise, the
soil is passive. All it does is receive
the seed and hold it while it does its thing.
We might say later that the field is fruitful and productive, but
that’s not exactly true. The fact is
that it’s the seed in the field that grew and produced the crop. The
spiritual meaning of the parable is pretty straightforward. The Seed, we know, is the Word of God. The sower is someone who casts it out there
by speaking it, say a pastor such as myself, or a Sunday School teacher, or one
of you talking to someone you know, or sitting and reading the Bible to
yourself. The soil is whomever it is
that’s listening to and receiving the Word – the target, if you will. The point is that power of life – the power
to create and sustain a living faith and to produce the fruit God desires – is
contained within and adheres to the Word of God. That’s where the power is – as Jesus
elsewhere said to his disciples, “The words I speak to you are life”. To be more specific, I can stand
here and preach God’s Word hour on end (as I’m sure some of you think I do);
but I cannot make a single person into a believing Christian. But the word of God I speak can. Likewise, I can’t baptize anyone. I can pour water and speak the Words, but
it’s God’s Word with the water that does the baptizing. Nor can I unite the crucified body and blood
of our Savior with the sacramental elements resting there on the altar; but the
Words of Jesus I speak can and do. On
the flip side of it, a person cannot become a believing Christian without the
Word of God anymore than a field can grow corn without someone planting corn
seed in it. Even then, a person could
sit there in the pew where you are listening to God’s Word week after week, or
hear it on the radio, or read it in a book; but he or she still could not make
themselves into a believing Christian.
The Word of God itself does all the work of conversion. Nor can you by your own effort make yourself
into a better, more faithful, or more mature Christian. The Word of God alone has the power to
produce the life of faith and the fruit of the Spirit. That’s what the parable means. And it’s a really simple concept;
but boy is it difficult for us to remember and apply. That’s because it runs counter to our earthly
common sense, and to a certain extent, against our empirical observations. For example, as a pastor, I am acutely aware
that certain portions of God’s Word are less than popular in the world we live
in today. It offends people to hear that
unbelievers will be damned, or that the Bible teaches a six day Creation, or
that the Lord considers divorce and homosexuality to be sins, or that the
Scriptures prohibit women from being pastors, or that in accordance with the
Word, the loving thing to do is to close the communion table to those who do
not share our confession of faith. These
are just a few examples; there are many more.
It’s easy, then, for someone like me to justify omitting those portions
I know will offend people by thinking to myself, “Look, if I can only make the
message less disagreeable, I’d be doing the Lord’s kingdom a great service. More people would be willing to listen, and so
more people would come to faith and believe.”
That’s wrong on two counts:
first, it’s like thinking that seeds grow better if you take a clipper
and remove a portion before you plant them.
It doesn’t work that way:
mutilated seeds do not grow better.
Secondly, it assumes that a major obstacle to growth is the soil’s
unwillingness to be planted with a certain kind of seed. Friends, the soil does not have a choice in
it. It grows what you plant. And if you hope to grow whole
Christians who mature properly in the faith, you must plant the whole
Seed. But someone will say, “But I know
a big church where the pastor is making it easier for people. He doesn’t talk about that stuff that offends
people. He tells his folks to
concentrate on loving each other, and he gets them involved in community
projects. They’ve got a gymnasium for
sports, and they teach classes in stress management and how to invest for
retirement – things people are interested in.
In their worship they don’t spend so much time listening to moldy old
Bible passages; no, they sing these really upbeat praise songs. And that church is growing by leaps and
bounds. They’re really packing them
in.” And I would be the first to admit
that they are really building up a kingdom – the question I’d have is, “To the
extent that they’ve removed the Word of God, whose kingdom is it?” No, when we
understand that the Word of God alone is the Seed that has the power to create,
sustain, and strengthen a living faith in people (which is what it means to
grow the kingdom of God), it should shape how we approach the tasks of ministry
and evangelism. First, it tells us that
if we want to move forward in Christ, we have to be in the Word. We should expect our worship services to be
primarily a planting session in which God gives us his Word so that it can grow
in us. And the more we want to grow, the
more we should pursue to know the Word in other ways such as in our personal
reading and devotions and in Bible studies.
Those of you who plant fields know that the more you plant, the more you
grow – and yes, I know that there’s a point of diminishing returns because the
plants get too crowded; but I don’t think any of us is even remotely close to
the saturation point. Secondly, our understanding of the
Word as the Seed tells us that in order to reach out to those who do not know
Christ, the only effective means is to share the Word with them. We might use gimmicks or various advertising
methods; we might build a gymnasium, or bring in a rock band to attract young
people; there’s all kinds of things we might do – but only God’s Word can make
converts. That’s what we need to reach
people. Thirdly, we need to have patience
and remember that a lot of growth takes place where you can’t see it: beneath the surface of the soil. I can
remember that when I was a kid, my folks allowed me some space in a field to
plant a garden of my own. I must have
been nine or ten. I was kind of excited
about it, with dreams of the giant watermelons and pumpkins and strawberries I
was going to grow. I ran a strand of
electric fence around the space to keep out the livestock, and I cultivated the
whole enclosed area by hand with spade and a hoe; and then I planted the seeds
and put on a sprinkler to water the whole thing (this was in southern
California – it wouldn’t do to wait for rain).
Early the next morning, I hurried out to see how things were going; and
I have to admit I was a little disappointed that nothing had sprouted over
night. Yes, I had read on the seed
packages how many days it took for germination; still, I was hopeful – looking
for a Jack and the Beanstalk kind of miracle, I guess. In the days that followed I grew
impatient. When after several days
nothing had yet sprouted, I wondered if the seeds were doing anything at
all. Maybe I hadn’t run the sprinkler
long enough for moisture to seep down deep enough to reach the seeds. Maybe the seeds were old and no good. I wanted to see what was going on under the ground,
so I dug up a few of each kind of seed.
Every couple of days I’d check on the progress this way, and Lord only
knows how many fragile young plants I destroyed in the process. And I think that very often we do
the same thing in the Church. We want
immediate results. And we get frustrated
when the Word alone doesn’t seem to be doing its job to our satisfaction. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking
that maybe it needs some help to go to work.
I regularly receive unsolicited mail from organizations that claim to be
“church doctors”. For a rather large fee
they’ll send their team of experts down to analyze all aspects of your
congregation, and then give you their diagnosis for improving your church and making
it more attractive to consumers. But
they always measure everything by membership statistics and cost effectiveness
– never by the quality or quantity of God’s Word that’s being proclaimed. I’ve even seen statistics that say how many
dollars you have to spend on average to convert people from different ethnic
groups. For example, American Indians
make poor prospects for conversion; Asians are a little less difficult; whereas
with Hispanics you get the biggest bang for the buck. So churches are encouraged to stop wasting
precious mission dollars on the long shots and concentrate instead on the easy
targets. Somehow I don’t think that’s
the approach Jesus had in mind when he told his disciples to preach the Gospel
to all nations. Our job is to cast the
Seed. It’s God’s work to make it grow. That’s not to say that there
aren’t things we can do improve the potential for growth. Just like when you plant, you want the best
quality seed that’s available. That’s
why, for example, we insist that the clergy of our synod be some of the most thoroughly
educated in theology. You don’t get to
be a Lutheran pastor with a certificate from a diploma mill or after attending
a six month Bible college. We want our
seed to be pure and wholesome, and we don’t want it mixed with a bunch of weed
seeds. On the other end, there are
things you can do to improve germination rates and protect young plants, and I
think that in this regard our Lutheran Schools function as green houses of
sorts, shielding the tender young sprouts from some of the worst elements. It doesn’t guarantee success, but maybe it
improves the odds of a plant reaching full maturity. There are many other things I could mention;
but the point is that to be effective, they must somehow include delivering the
word of God to people – that’s the only way to grow his kingdom. That’s the
way it’s been since the beginning of the Church, which brings me to the other
lesson that we heard Jesus teach this morning:
the Parable of the Mustard Seed.
This parable emphasizes the amazing power for growth of God’s Word. What seems puny and insignificant like a tiny
seed grows to become a huge plant – far out of proportion to its initial
size. It’s interesting that our Lord Jesus
Christ referred to himself as a seed that had to be planted. He was talking about his death and subsequent
burial. When he died as the sacrifice
for the sins of the world, his body went into the ground like a seed. At the time it didn’t look like very
much: a flash in the pan preacher who
died like so many other Messianic wannabes.
His life was short, he lived in a tiny, backward, and out of the way
country, he never wrote a thing, and he was tried as a criminal and crucified
in shame. His closest disciples were
shattered and disillusioned. They gave
up on him. When they sealed the tomb, no
one ever expected to hear anything more about him. But three days later the Seed sprouted. His body came back to life and appeared in
resplendent glory. And his church, which
he now calls his body, experienced amazing growth. Fifty days after his resurrection, there were
more than 3000 believers. Within thirty
years, there were churches in big and small cities all over the Roman world –
even though it was an outlawed religion.
Three hundred years later, it was the only legal religion in the Roman
world. And today some two billion people
confess Christ as Lord and Savior. And his church continues to grow today, with
the Word of his Gospel going out into the world in traditional ways, and now with
newer means such as radio and the internet – extending the range the Seed can
be cast, and reaching new, distant fields.
All this, from one, little, seemingly insignificant Seed. Such is the potential power of the Word
for growth – and in closing, I’d like to say that the same tremendous growth we
see in the church externally is also possible in each of us internally. God’s Word in your life starts small, but as
it grows and as you feed it with more of the Word, it sinks its roots deeper to
sustain you in the dry spells, and it extends its branches to provide a shady
place for your soul to rest when you’re weary and beaten down by the heat. It provides you a shelter from the storms of
life. And it produces in your life the
fruit that God desires: works of love
and forgiveness that reflect the work of the original Seed himself. May we then, make it our goal
always to read, mark, hear, inwardly digest, and keep the powerful Word of God,
that we may grow in the riches of his grace and be fruitful for him. In Jesus name. Amen. Soli Deo
Gloria! |
