By Lucia Lloyd, St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, Heathsville, VA
The Kingdom of God is Like ...
Mark 4:26-29 (NIV)
"He also said, "This is what the kingdom of God is like.
A man scatters seed on the ground.
Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up,
the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.
All by itself the soil produces grain
first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.
As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it,
because the harvest has come."
In my kindergarten classroom, I remember the row of little cups lined up on the windowsill. Every child had a cup with his or her first name and last name’s initial written on it in magic marker. Inside every child’s cup was dirt. Each child had placed a few seeds in the dirt and covered them with more dirt and watered them, and our teacher had told us that they would grow into plants. It was a kindergarten lesson in biology, but it was also a lesson in patience. I remember my eagerness each morning as I went to go check my cup of dirt, only to find that it was still just a cup of dirt. My teacher said, be patient: it is growing whether you can see it or not. I remember the excitement when in the cup that had my name in magic marker on it, I saw a tiny bit of green poking out of the dirt. The sense of wonder that creation itself was unfolding right there in a little cup on a kindergarten windowsill.
I spent this past week at a class entitled “Faith and the Practice of Writing.” The teacher, Nora Gallagher, taught us that thoughts do not arrive in the mind already fully developed; instead, it is in the process of writing that we discover what it is we have to say. As we looked at each others’ writing in our workshops, we found that others in our writing community could see what we were almost saying but hadn’t quite realized we wanted to say, and help us develop that. She stressed that for everyone, writing is hard work, but it is in the process of writing that we discover what we want to say. It is, she said, like faith, which you learn by practicing it.
This morning’s gospel lesson is beautiful in its simplicity. Jesus teaches: “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.” It is as if Jesus were preaching to the crowds outside, surrounded by visual aids all around him of growing plants. We don’t know how, but we can see that this growth thing happens. There are botanists and other scientists who have spent their lives observing sprouting seeds, doing scientific experiments on sprouting seeds, and the information they have found is important. But I expect that the best botanists are the ones who still retain that kindergartener’s sense of wonder at the magic that takes place inside that tiny seed.
It is that sense of wonder that makes the kingdom of God like a field of sprouting seeds. Some theologians, such as John Westerhoff, talk about how each person goes through stages of faith during their lifetime, as they move from childhood to adolescence to each stage of adulthood. He says that we don’t leave our childhood faith behind, we keep it and our faith develops each year like rings on a tree. I like that image. But my own experience of faith is more like a field or a garden in which different plants are growing at different times and bearing fruit at different times.
Even on a beautiful day like today, I’m going to ask you to bear with me and close your eyes just for a few minutes. Don’t be shy, you are among friends. With your eyes closed, imagine a tiny seed planted in the ground. Imagine you are that seed. Imagine the seed having a sense that there is water somewhere nearby, and imagine the inner parts of the seed swelling, until finally the outer shell of the seed has to split open. Now imagine the roots probing out. They have a sense of thirst. They have a sense of “down.” They have a sense of wanting to move down deeper into the ground to quench that thirst, and so they move out of the seed because they hope to find water for their thirst. As the roots grow, they do find water. It makes them want even more water, and so they grow deeper, and bend around a few rocks, and find the water they are thirsty for. And imagine yourself as a seed that is planted in the darkness underground. You do not see any light. But you have within you a sense that there is light somewhere, and you want some. You have a sense of “up.” And while the part of you that has a sense of thirst and a sense of down, is putting forth roots, the part of you that has a sense of “up” and wanting light also breaks out of the seed and starts reaching upward for a light it has never seen, having hope that the light is there and you want some. And then finally, you break through the earth and feel the sunlight for yourself, and it turns your pale light-starved self into the green you were meant to become. And you grow, and you flourish, and you bear fruit. Now open your eyes and look at the growing plants all around you. Behold the kingdom of God. Now, look at each other. Behold the kingdom of God.
6/14/09
Note: If you are still confused about how a gay Christian can feel they are 'right' with God I encourage you to read the section of the web site entitled "Gay and Christian? YES!"