Pentecost 2: Small Seeds

The Ven. Howard Stringfellow III
June 18, 2006
I Samuel 15:34—16:13; Psalm 20; Saint Mark 4:26-34

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

I am delighted to be with you once again. Your healthy congregation, your healthy clergy, and your healthy staff are continuing to succeed in keeping me on the right side of the law. And I am grateful. I am a true church mouse. I would rather be here than at convention, or camp, or even the golf course.

Not lost on me today is that we have two tiny parables that begin with tiny seeds while it is Father’s Day, while the Cathedral’s campers are camping, and while conventioneers are conventioneering in Columbus. Amid all of these contexts we have tiny parables that begin with tiny seeds.

We begin today, also, the long sequence of Green Sundays, Sundays where we pretty well work our way through the Gospel of Saint Mark from chapter four to chapter thirteen from now until Advent Sunday, December 3.

It’s a time of year when we look at Jesus in the Gospel and see him as a teacher and a healer. We put aside, for a time, his identity as the Lamb of God who was sacrificed for us and for the sins of the whole world, and look to him as a teacher, a reconciler, and a healer.

And what do we see in him today? We see him teaching through two tiny parables some remarkable things, some things that may startle us by taking from us the control we may think we have.

He tells us, in the first parable, of seeds that are planted and then harvested. No human effort is required between the planting and the harvesting. That, to me, is very striking. The seed grows, as we hear, the planter “does not know how.” And also, in the second parable, the kingdom of God begins as the smallest of seeds and grows into “the greatest of all shrubs.”

I’m bound to tell you that the certainty of the harvest from nearly invisible beginnings with very little human effort appeals to my Type B personality and my tendency to under-function. The kingdom resists our control. We cannot sell it, market it, duplicate it, preach it, represent it, or otherwise do anything to make it grow. God does all these things. God’s work begins exactly where ours ends. We have been entrusted with tiny seeds to plant, and we plant them and harvest them as best we can. God does the rest. Type A personalities and over-functioners beware. Planters, real farmers, when they have finished irrigating, spraying, and fertilizing still wait in faith. They wait in the mystery of God’s time, and they wait in the unknown of God’s pleasure. The growth happens while they sleep and not as a result of their efforts.

Father’s Day, campers upon returning home, and even a contentious convention are opportunities, fields to plow and to plant for those of us who join in the celebrations and who stayed home. And we have some tiny, almost invisible, seeds, seeds that contain a certain harvest, seeds that certainly will grow into what God wants them to be. What more could we ask?

Who knows how some small gesture of friendship, some brief word of encouragement, some kind deed hastily done, or some small act of putting oneself out has grown in someone whom Christ dearly loves? Who knows how many people have seen their faith in Christ increase because they have received some tiny seeds? Nothing that we do in God’s name is too small to be used in his kingdom.

Silently and imperceptibly at times, perhaps, the kingdom grows. We can let, I think, all of our personalities go. What Jesus asks of us is not one type of personality or another, or one program of growth or another, but to rely upon the promise of the kingdom just as we know we have to rely upon God when we plant a seed. Seeds grow in the dark ground even when we cannot see them. Seeds grow in us and in our world, yearning for meaning and purpose, even when we cannot see them.

In Christ’s Name. Amen.