Christ Episcopal Church
June 17, 2012
6 Proper B
One week from today, we will welcome 15 children and their families to Christ Church for a Reading Camp Welcome Dinner. The response to the dinner invitation has been wonderful and we are expecting to serve about 90 people that night. The dinner is the kick-off for a week of reading activities, songs, meals, field-trips and other events that Christ Church folk have been working on ever since Reading Camp ended last year. There have been children to recruit, lessons, meals, field trips, rainy day activities, and decorations to plan, and supplies to purchase. Like so many other things in life, the many planning activities take much longer than the event itself. Before we know it, we will be talking about Reading Camp 2012 in the past tense!
This morning, we hear Jesus say "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." Then Jesus says "The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs." These two parables point to something of the mystery of the Kingdom of God. When Jesus began his ministry, his first words were "The Kingdom of God has arrived, repent and believe in the good news." These parables tell us that the Kingdom of God is growing in our midst, starting from something very small and eventually becoming so large that all the birds of the air can make nests there.
However, these parables also make the emerging Kingdom of God seem effortless. The seed just sprouts and grows and all of a sudden, there is a harvest and the planter does not know how. Or what starts as the tiniest of seeds just becomes the greatest of all shrubs. Poof! Just like that. But when we go about the work God has given us to do, working to make the fullness of the Kingdom of God a more present reality in our own community, that work does not happen without effort. Whether we’re working on Reading Camp, the Neighborhood Fair, the Rainbow Table, the Food Pantry, Interfaith Hospitality Network, or any of our other ministries, a great deal of work is required by a large number of people. That work is joyful, wonderful work, but the effort required is still work. If the Kingdom of God is supposed to just grow in our midst the way a seed grows into a plant, why does cultivating the Kingdom of God in Springfield seem to require so much effort, as joyful as that effort may be?
When Jesus announced that the Kingdom of God has arrived, he did not exactly just sit back and watch the show. Jesus himself put in an awful lot of hours preaching, teaching, praying, feeding, healing and otherwise going about the business of the Kingdom of God. That is our first clue that perhaps these parables are not about the Kingdom just magically emerging in our midst. The second clue is that Jesus consistently taught in parables, not to state the seemingly obvious, but to get us to look beyond appearances and think deeply about the mystery that is the Kingdom of God. If these two parables are not about God’s kingdom growing in our midst utterly untended by our efforts, what are the parables saying to us?
In our reading from I Samuel this morning, we hear the story of a small boy who becomes a great King. When God sends Samuel off to find a successor to Saul, the first king of Israel, we might expect Samuel to go looking for someone with the qualifications to be a king. A royal lineage would be a good start, then some military and foreign policy experience, a little administrative experience, a strong build, and hopefully a squeaky clean past with no dirt to uncover. Instead, God sends Samuel off to find Jesse the Bethlehemite because God has chosen a king from among Jesse’s sons. There goes the royal lineage theory. Jesse’s grandmother was Ruth, a Moabite, someone who was considered unclean by the Israelites. Nothing royal there. When Samuel sees the oldest son, who apparently had the stature of a king, God says "Do not look on his appearance, or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord does not see as mortals see. They look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." So much for someone who looks like a king. So 7 of Jesse’s sons pass before Samuel and not a one of them is fit to be king of Israel. Jesse has one more son, the very youngest, but that son is out tending the sheep. So much for military or foreign policy experience! David, the youngest son, the least likely one to be chosen, is anointed king in the presence of his brothers, and, we are told, "the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward."
When we look at Jesus’ parables together with the story of the call of David, the parables look a lot less like they are about the lack of effort required to grow the Kingdom of God and a lot more like they are about the complete surprise in finding the Kingdom of God in some very unlikely places. Whether a small seed that becomes a great shrub, or some seeds scattered on the ground that become a great harvest, or a small boy chosen to be a great king, or a casual conversation that becomes a whole diverse neighborhood of people gathered on a hot parking lot for a Neighborhood Fair, or a young child who grows from an insecure reader to a confident one, all of these stories and experiences tell us that the Kingdom of God emerges in some very unlikely places and is likely to take us by complete surprise. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment