The Hopeful Message of the Mighty Little Seed

Psalm 92:1-4, 12-15; Mark 4:26-34

          The rains came just in time last week.  My little vegetable garden in New Hope was getting very thirsty.  It soaked up the rain like a like a thirsty little league shortstop at the end of a double header.  I wish you could see it today.  I’ve got twenty tomato plants stretching for the sky.  Peppers.  Squash.  Two kinds of green beans.  Purple hull peas.  Corn.  Okra.  Cucumbers.  Eggplant.  Lots of onions and herbs.

You know my love of all things soil related, but I must make a confession.  As much as I love it, gardening is still a mystery to me.  Planting seeds, for example.  I planted all these tiny seeds, covered them with a little soil, and then (here’s the mystery) did nothing.  I went about my regular days.  I slept at night.  Worked during the day.  I did nothing to make those seeds germinate and start growing.  My tomato vines are covered with small, green tomatoes.  I did nothing to make those little tomatoes form.  Around the first week of July, they will turn a deep red, become oh so sweet, and we will relish the harvest.  I hope I can share some with you.  And yet, I did nothing to cause all that to happen.

Here’s something I do know about gardening.  Everything that tomato needed to germinate and grow was imbedded in the seed.  I’ve been hoeing the weeds and checking on the plants every day, but I’ve not done anything to cause the seeds to grow into plants.  They grow because of a force, a power, that I cannot see or control. While the little seeds are not impressive to look at, don’t be fooled.  Those little seeds are mighty indeed.

Of course, they knew this back in the days of the Bible too.  Probably better than most of us.  They were agrarian people.  They lived from the earth, every family growing their own vegetables and grapes.  They would have understood the two parables Jesus tells in Mark 4, one of which is a bit puzzling.

Have you ever paid attention to that first one?  It’s the one I find a little puzzling.  We call it The Parable of the Seed Growing Secretly.  Jesus says a farmer sows his seed and then goes to bed.  He rises day and night.  While he’s going about his everyday business, that mysterious miracle occurs.  The seeds germinate and begin to grow.  And listen to what Jesus says of the farmer: “he does not know how.”  Like me, the farmer doesn’t know how this happens either.  Then Jesus says that the earth produces “of itself,” apart from the farmer’s labor.  When the fruit is ripe, the farmer takes out his sickle to bring in the harvest.

The second parable is a little different and easier to understand.  It is what we call a contrast parable.  It contrasts the size of the tiny mustard seed with the size of the plant it produces.  From something very, very small comes something that is very, very large. Jesus says the mustard seed is the tiniest seed on earth, yet it produces a shrub large enough for birds of the air to make their nests in its shade.

Now, here’s what we really need to understand about these two parables.  This is not an agricultural lesson.  No, Jesus uses a subject the people understand to teach a lesson about the Kingdom of God.  And it is a hopeful message, which I need these days.  The downward trend in church participation in this country is very discouraging.  Someone sent me an article this past week about the membership losses within the Episcopal Church of Canada.  I suspect it’s similar in the U.S.  Over the past few decades their membership loss has been massive.  On a typical Sunday in 1961, they had more than 1.2 million people in the pews.  In 2017, on a typical Sunday they had only 280,000 people in the pews, a decline of nearly a million people.  Baptists are facing massive membership losses too.  Since 2006, the Southern Baptist Convention, the group that kicked us out, has lost over 2 million members.    They have thirteen years in a row of membership losses.  Their baptisms are at the lowest point since the great influenza pandemic of 1918.  And here’s my prediction.  I don’t like saying this, but it’s going to get worse.  Across all denominations. 

It’s easy for me to worry and fret about this.  That’s why I need these two hopeful parables about the Kingdom of God.  Here’s what I think they mean.

The Kingdom of God, Jesus says, God’s rule in the world, is like that tomato seed.  It doesn’t depend on your and my labor.  It has everything imbedded in it to germinate, grow, and produce a harvest.  It is not dependent upon farmers to make it grow.  In fact, the farmer in the parable is passive.  He sleeps at night and goes about his business during the day.  He does nothing to cause the seed to grow because everything the seed needs to grow is imbedded in it.  That’s the way it is with the Kingdom of God, Jesus says.  The success of God’s work in the world isn’t dependent upon us.  God will ensure its success.

So, I am not worried one iota about the health of the Kingdom of God.  But let’s be very clear here.  The Kingdom of God and the church are not the same thing.  The church as an institution, I fear, has some very challenging days on the horizon.  The church as we have known it—brick and mortar, tall steeples, clergy, publishing houses, mission agencies—all of that is going to change in dramatic ways.  People are moving away from churches, arguing that they have become too aligned with political parties and that they do not really practice what they preach.  Think sex scandals.  The SBC is facing one now.  Think demeaning attitudes towards women and people in the LGBTQ community.  Think evangelists and self-proclaimed “bishops” stacking their boards of directors with family members and taking exorbitant salaries.  I see more house churches on the horizon, four or five families coming together to be church.  I see more churches choosing not to have buildings.  They will meet infrequently in pubs or theaters.  Their emphasis will be on Monday through Saturday, not on Sunday.  While the traditional way of doing church in this country is going to change and shrink, that does not threaten the Kingdom of God at all.  God’s Kingdom is as healthy as it has ever been.  It has everything it needs for success imbedded in it.

Jesus also says the Kingdom of God is like that tiny mustard seed.  People have argued about whether the mustard seed is literally the smallest seed on earth, which is a waste of time.  That is not the point of the parable.  The point of the parable is the contrast, that something very small can produce something very large.  A tiny little seed can produce a shrub large enough for the birds of the air to nest in the shade of its branches.

I can imagine the disciples hearing comments like these from their critics. 

Hey, you people are wasting your lives. 

You know, this Jesus fellow and his teaching, they aren’t going to amount to anything. 

You’ve left perfectly good careers to follow him around.  What a waste!  If you have any sense, you’ll go back to your careers before it’s too late.

So, Jesus reminds the disciples of what they are looking at.  They are looking at the seed, not the full-grown plant.  Yes, the seed is tiny.  But consider the contrast.  It will grow into something large, larger than they can imagine when looking at the tiny seed. 

And of course, it did.  The Kingdom of God took root and grew into a global movement with adherents in every nook and cranny of the world.  All because of a mighty little seed.

So, let us hear the hopeful message of these two parables.  The church of Jesus Christ has been preaching the gospel and doing the work of the Kingdom for two thousand twenty-one years.  I could argue that the Kingdom of God has existed from the beginning of time.  The church is going to go through some changes, but it is not going away.  Here’s what’s critical for the church:  we must not be wed to things as they always have been.  We must be wed to the Kingdom of God.  As long as the Kingdom of God is alive in the church, the church will flourish.  As long as this tiny seed finds fertile soil in your life and mine, the church will not only survive.  It will thrive because of a force, a power, we cannot see or control.  That is the hopeful message of the mighty little seed.

Closing Prayer

          Lord of the church, keep that force alive in our lives and in our church.  And may we thrive as disciples of Jesus Christ.  Amen.