(Message given at Wayside Friends on July 17, 2022)
Imagine we are sitting by the shore of a lake.
I push out from the shore in a little fishing boat, and turn and face you, using the acoustics of the water to share a story with you…you might even say, a parable.
Now there was a boy who started baseball practices as a high school freshman. His five foot, six inch, 120 pound frame was dwarfed by the huge varsity men who also lined up at shortstop. His scrawny arm could not come close to matching the velocity of their throws, so it took more time to get the ball to first base, and therefore made it more difficult to get the runner out. (I mean, seriously, look at how tiny number 4 is compared to the rest!)
His coach pulled him aside and said, “You’ll need to do everything you can to find another advantage. Practice and practice transferring the ball from your glove to your throwing hand, practice getting your feet ready to throw as you’re fielding the ball. If you speed up that process with practice, you’ll make up for your weaker arm.”
So each night in bed, he tossed and transferred the ball, over and over. Each day, he practiced his footwork. All that work brought such improvement that he ended up being the last freshman still working out with the varsity team.
Now, I’ll be honest. That’s the kind of parable I’d like to see in the bible.
You could put it alongside one like this: Now there was a girl who started cross country practices as a high school freshman. Day after day, week after week, she did every workout assigned by her coach to the best of her ability. And by the end of the season, she qualified for the state tournament.
These kinds of parables and experiences are the kind of things that make me feel good about myself.
If I do the right things, if I put in the right work, right results will come.
These types of parables would go along so well with the real parables in the bible that I really like—the ones that teach that even when we mess up in a “right things bring right results” kind of world, the graciousness of God wins the day over our failures and even our terrible choices.
For example, I love those lost parables in Luke! The party when the lost coin is found, the rejoicing in finding a lost sheep, the parent running out to welcome home the wandering child who squandered all the wealth.
If I’m honest, a big part of me wants a parable world where the work I put into life is rewarded; and then, even if I mess up and don’t do the work, or rebel against the work, or just can’t measure up, God still loves me and rescues me.
Becky Ankeny reminded us last week that parables awaken different things in us, so tonight as I share my journey with this parable, you might find similarities and you might not. I hope at least the questions I ask and the process of my wrestling will help you engage, even if you have different specifics and different takeaways.
I realized this week that I like the idea of a world where I have some sense of control, and also have complete safety.
Since I’m already trying to add parables, let’s try another one.
Like maybe: Now there was a middle aged man, who decided to try and live a childhood dream. He went to the weight room five times a week to rebuild strength, trained for weeks with a professional performer, and learned to go high up in the circus tent, swing and leap, with outstretched arms, across a magnificent distance on the trapeze, and be caught as everyone cheered and clapped.
And! Even if I did all that training and somehow fell short, that wonderful net would catch me and keep me safe. In fact, that might be the best win/win! People could be impressed with my amazing courage to try a fantastic trapeze leap, and even though I failed, I wouldn’t die thanks to the net.
Oh to live in that world, where most of the time my efforts pay off—and even when they don’t, God’s safety net rescues me!
Alas, that is not the world of the parable we have today. Because, honestly, despite what happens in sermons across America, sports are often poor lessons for spiritual truth—that’s why I cast them in the “anti-parable” category, sneaky of me.
Tonight we’re looking at a short parable that is only found in the book of Mark, a short but complicated story Jesus told, one that has undone me a bit this week as it called out some of my unseen unhealth. But as Becky told us last week, that’s the mark of a good parable, one that throws us off-kilter a bit and helps us see a new truth.
Jesus also said, “The reign of God is like a farmer who scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, while they are asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows, but they do not understand how it happens. The earth produces the crops on its own. First a leaf blade pushes through, then the heads of wheat are formed, and finally the grain ripens. And as soon as the grain is ready, the farmer comes and harvests it with a sickle, for the harvest time has come.”
Mark 4:26-29, New Living Translation (adapted)
There’s an obvious point to start with: This parable is directly contradictory to the parable of the sower discussed last week.
In this story, it doesn’t matter whether the soil is rocky, or trodden down like a hard path, or tilled and good. It doesn’t matter what the farmer does, or what any enemy does. No matter what, the seed will be scattered; and though we do not know how, it will grow until it can be harvested and used for sustaining food.
When my head is clearest, and with my best theology, I really like and agree with this way of looking at the world. I talk all the time about God’s grace, God’s activity, how we can’t save the world on our own, how we really are completely dependent on God’s loving, powerful activity.
But in actuality, there’s a whole lot of me that is used to putting in the work, expecting results from my work, and expecting God to rescue “my plans” when I can’t seem to make it come together.
I know this about myself, because I’ve been arguing with this parable all week in my head.
“Wait, Jesus, are you saying don’t do anything and just trust God? Just a ‘Jesus take the wheel’ thing? Because that doesn’t seem very responsible, or very honoring of the injustice and hard things we face.”
“What do you mean, our work doesn’t matter? I mean, this kinda seems like a lazy farmer, just going about their business day after day and not really working on growing that seed. Yeah, yeah, sure, you and our earth make this all happen, but the farmer’s work means something, doesn’t it?”
My therapist keeps trying to get me to not be trapped by my thoughts, to get outside of them and notice them, notice what they are telling me. And this week, I was like “Whoa Gregg! I’m noticing a whole lot of fighting with God on the dependence thing!”
Let’s take a little closer look at this story.
Where we put ourselves in the story, who we assign the various parts of the parable to, is key. Are we the farmer, or is God? Are we the seed, or the crop, or the soil?
Jesus does orient us a little bit. Mary Ann Beavis helpfully changes “Kingdom of God” to “reign of God,” which I stole here. Both this parable and the following one in Mark about the mustard seed, Jesus says, are designed to show us what life is like in the rightful space or reign of God.
The farmer scatters seed, similar to the sower parable; scatters it recklessly, abundantly, everywhere. Then things change.
Night and day: there’s a continuous thing going on here, a passage of time. Day after day the farmer is going about day-to-day life, life which is unrelated and disconnected to the field and the seed growing. Whether they are asleep or awake—it doesn’t matter. Paying attention or not, working or not, the farmer in this parable seems irrelevant to the growth process.
While the farmer does their separate thing, the seed sprouts and grows “automatically”— the Greek word here is literally automate—and here’s the key: the farmer “does not understand how it happens.”
Not only is it not the farmer’s accomplishment, it’s literally beyond the farmer’s understanding.
This miraculous-yet-completely-natural-everyday-growth is so wondrous that it is beyond human understanding!
Then Jesus gets really detailed to bring this idea home. The earth does this on its own. First a blade, then the forming of the head of wheat, and then the grain ripens.
We can carefully watch the process, we can observe and dissect the steps, we can figure out that things are slowly moving in the right direction; but we cannot in the slightest understand, comprehend, or control how this miraculous-yet-natural growth of life actually happens.
There’s another cool connection here.
The original language for “the earth produces the crops on its own” is the same language used in Leviticus 25. Way back after the Exodus, God tried to build in rest for humanity and the earth. God designed sabbath years, where once every seven years, the people were not supposed to plant their fields.
For six years you may plant your fields…but during the seventh year the land must have a Sabbath year of complete rest…But you may eat whatever the land produces on its own during its Sabbath.
Leviticus 25:4-6, New Living Translation, Abridged
Even without their work of planting, “the land produces on its own” during the sabbath year.
This is exactly the same language Jesus uses in this parable in Mark. Within the reign of God, Jesus is reminding us that it’s God’s life-giving grace that provides all we need. It’s not all on us. It’s not our hard work. God’s life-giving power produces, wondrously, on its own.
“You don’t fully understand this, but I’m trying to remind you,” God says, “that I will take care of you. I make all this life stuff grow. I want to show you a life of health and dependence that even includes rest, and still have you see how I provide for you outside of and beyond, deeper and more richly than your work and effort.”
The story finishes with what feels like a harsh turn: a harvest with a sharp sickle.
It’s the same language as is found in the First Testament book of Joel. In Joel, the sickle harvest image is about the day of the Lord, the day of reckoning where God will judge and make all things right.
My brain spoke up again. “Do we have to take a sickle and kill God’s work to make it helpful to humanity? Why is everything in our world about killing and consumption? Isn’t there something better, God?”
And along came Mary Ann Beavis to turn it and rescue this for me. Her commentary on this parable reminds us that
“…agriculture is a cyclic activity—sowing and harvest are not one time events.”
Mary Ann Beavis in Paideia commentary series, p. 84.
No doubt Mark has in mind a reference to Joel 3:13, and the harvest in the “day of the Lord” here. We don’t have to get rid of that, but we also don’t have to let it dominate all of how we understand this parable, because as Mary Ann Beavis says: sowing and harvest happen over and over again— night and day, and season after season, this wondrous life-bursting activity of God goes on.
But my brain was still rebelling against this message of dependence and trust.
I kept coming up with what ifs. Sure, God and the earth produce all this life. But imagine if the farmer actually, you know, cared. Fertilized, watered, weeded. Imagine how much better of a harvest could be made! So sure, awesome, God and the earth produce this miracle of life, blah blah blah—but just imagine if we really joined in and did the work! It would be so much better!
There’s me and my “do the work first” mentality taking over again. And really, there is the history of capitalism, and the exploitation of the earth. Our “work hard to get the big reward” mentality is what brought the dust bowl destruction of the 1930’s, and what brings the continued ruining of soil by farming practices that destroy the ecological balance of our planet.
Inside this parable, inside its echoes of sabbath year from Leviticus and its wondrous promise of God’s constant life-giving activity beyond our comprehension, Jesus is whispering another way of living.
We can learn trust. We can learn rest. We can learn dependence.
And, in this parable we are challenged to begin learning how to deconstruct the “good works in, means good results will always come” mentality.
This world, despite what it seems to teach…the reign of God, despite how we often misinterpret it…the deeper truth is that life is not a mechanical process dependent on our actions.
The hopeful message is that it is God—it is the Divine Fusion of Regenerative Love, who brings about growth and good things in this world. This parable, despite my brain’s objections this week, is a hopeful one!
God is always at work unfailingly to bring life and growth; whether we are trying or not, paying attention or not. Whether the life and growth come as we hope it will or not, God’s very being generates life, and sustenance, and growth in us—and in the entire world.
And this parable is a corrective one, too.
It challenges our frantic striving, calls into question our over-confidence in our own efforts and methods, and forces us to see the ways we warp God’s activity by trying to overproduce by our own efforts.
Trust, dependence, gratefulness, and wonder over God’s life-giving work are the goals.
I’ve realized, especially over the last seven years through many hard things and many changes, how easily I slip into thinking that God owes me something for my right choices and hard work.
Rather than trust, dependence, gratefulness, and wonder, I get depressed that “all this amazing work I am doing for God” is not resulting in me getting to do the job I want, or having an easy path through life. I compare my experience to others, I get grumpy and envious.
God’s not taking care of me! God’s not living up to Their end of the bargain! Because I’m NOT the lazy farmer! I planted, and watered, and fertilized, and weeded, and I deserve a harvest, God!
But that’s the baseball parable, based on all my amazing work, rather than the one Jesus actually told.
When I try to live in the reign of trust, dependence, gratefulness, and wonder…when I try sabbath and rest, casting seeds, and going about my day-to-day life looking for the wonder of God’s activity…
Well, then I can celebrate gifts of wonder—like getting to be at Fireside and The Woods camp this week for 24 hours, because they needed a driver, experiencing overwhelming gratitude and joy as I got to briefly watch God’s life-giving, redemption power at work in so many ways.
I can notice with awe, on a walk with a friend at the Tualatin River Wildlife Refuge, how slowly, over time, God has opened life-giving connection and vulnerability between us that is giving the two of us encouragement.
Trust, dependence, gratefulness, and wonder. They are better companions than working harder, and expecting (maybe even demanding?) God to come through.
May we let this parable of Jesus fight us a bit and wear us down.
May we see how we are trying to make deals with God, and let that go, in order to find trust, dependence, gratefulness, and wonder. May the Divine Fusion-Flow of God birth new life and growth in us that we can see and celebrate, over and over again.