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Pentecost 2, Proper 6 Lesson: 1 Samuel 17:1a, 4-11, 19-23, 32-40
June 21, 2009 Psalm 9:9-20
The Rev. Kirk Lee Epistle: 2 Corinthians 6:1-13
St. James’ Church, Marietta Holy Gospel: Mark 4:35-41
In the Name of God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Do you remember many, many, many years ago when the Bible used to have Jesus’ words in red letters? I think you can still get those bibles today. I wanted to tell you about some work that started in 1985, with a group of biblical and theological scholars. They formed a group and named themselves “The Jesus Seminar.” The essence of their work was to rank the Gospel sayings of Jesus according to the probability of the sayings being direct quotations, exact quotations from Jesus. They rank the probabilities in their book, Parables of Jesus, according to the color of the print. That is how they were graded. Dark red letter parables are most probably direct, exact quotations from Jesus. Pink letter parables are most probably paraphrases, restatements of Jesus’ words. The gray and black letter parables, they are saying, is that Jesus probably did not say these parables, but are, rather, attributed to him by the writer of that particular Gospel.
Our parables today are pink parables. And, by the way, this group still meets and are working on the Acts of the Apostles now, I understand. Today’s parables are most probably paraphrases of Jesus’ actual words, and probably are parables that were not all brought together initially. Mark has brought them together.
The writer of Mark was trying to answer for his community the question, Why was Jesus not known as the Messiah during his lifetime? Mark is offering this as an answer. In Mark we read, “With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.”
Many of you know this wreaks of Gnosticism, and it is not. I view that phrase, that idea, just does not fit with me in terms of all the Gospels. Maybe in Mark’s it does, but not in all of them. These agricultural parables probably were better understood by that generation than they are by our generation.
I do not believe that Jesus intended the parables to be the source of some secret understanding for only a few. Elsewhere in Mark we read, “Jesus said, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Later in Mark he says, “Hear me, all of you, and understand.”
So even within Mark’s Gospel there is a contradiction there with this phrase we read. Jesus intended us to hear the parables, to reflect on them in the context in our experience, and to be challenged through appropriate action. Thank goodness for our tradition, we are encouraged to think about what we read and try to understand it from our experience.
I thought I would share with you an experience I had in the context of today’s Gospel.
At the back of my house, I have a brick patio. Along one side there are trellises. Just a few weeks ago, I planted an assortment of brightly colored petunias and geraniums in red terracotta pots. Then I put them strategically around the perimeter of the patio. In one pot, in the corner of the patio where the sun, I think, shines the longest and the brightest, I planted some morning glories. (The people at the 7:45 service said that morning glory is really a weed.) The reason I am telling you about my attempt at inner city gardening is that my experience with that morning glory has been a living experience of today’s gospel parables, and a lesson to me on the extension of the Kingdom of God because they are referring to the Kingdom of God.
I planted the morning glory and watered it as frequently as needed. I did not need to water it as much as last year because we have been having some great rain. Day after day, I watched for the first shoot to break the soil. Day after day I waited. I started to wonder if the seed was, indeed, still alive. But I kept watering and one day the first shoot came up, and then another came up. At last, I thought progress. When the shoots were a few feet long (actually by that time they were vines) I noticed that they were not climbing the trellis symmetrically, not in the best position for the sunlight. At least that was my opinion. So I tried to relocate the vines to make them more appealing to my taste of symmetry, and for my need for them to be in the sunlight. As I was untangling the vine, it occurred to me that the plant must prefer where it is because it was surely giving me a hard time to get it off the trellis. However, I continued to move the vines.
Now there are many more vines and they are many feet long, but now I am waiting for the buds on some and I am waiting for the buds on others to blossom. I am not sure just how that is going to happen, or when. It just seems like that morning glory will not be the beautiful plant I want it to be soon enough, for my needs.
Jesus said, “the Kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”
As the parable states, “The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.”
So we are to learn something about the Kingdom of God from these parables. I believe that the potential, the karma, for the Kingdom of God was planted at the very beginning of creation. I think that the stalk, or the vine, of the Kingdom of God can be traced through the history of the Israelites and of Christians in our time. Despite times of spiritual drought, and despite times of continuous neglect by the caretakers, the Kingdom of God has continued to grow and to shape the values and direction of the history of humanity throughout the ages, and continues to do so today.
It seems so easy to trace the divine lead of God and the unfolding of the Kingdom when it is in the past, when we can look back on it. But to find the presence of the Kingdom today is often a challenge. We still have the homeless, the lonely, the hungry, the sick, the dying, the abused, victims of violence, wars and the threat of wars. In the face of all this, though, the parables continue to encourage us to continue to have faith, that the Kingdom of God is still present, and is still growing.
We need to continue to provide whatever nurture to the Kingdom we can – individually and collectively – as a parish. But this is the point – we need to remember that it is not us that directs where the Kingdom will grow, like the vines of the morning glory, nor is it us that makes it grow (as much as we would like to think we are responsible), we simply nurture it. Nor are we the ones who set the timetable for the results. We cannot make it bud or blossom in the Kingdom of God any sooner. It is through the grace of God that the Kingdom takes its direction and continues to grow in spite of all that goes on. It will, in time eventually blossom in all its glory.
Sometimes our ministry to others may seem to be about the size of that mustard seed that we read about this morning. Yet often our ministry, our nurture of others, individually and as part of this parish, contributes to make much more impact than we realize when given the perspective of time, over years. We do not always see it day by day or week by week.
I pray that our lives and the ministry of this parish will, in small ways, contribute to the greater good and the continued extension of God’s Kingdom. I also pray that we do not tend to our ministries the way I did with my morning glory – by forcing the direction according to our needs and perceptions, or expecting it to grow faster or to blossom sooner than God’s will. Amen.
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