St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wesley Chapel, FL
Preacher: The Rev. Adrienne R. Hymes, Vicar
Third Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 7 Year B
Mark 4:26-34
June 13, 2021
Who doesn’t love a good mystery? Even young children love a good mystery. Perhaps many of you have memories, as I do, of the wonder and mystery of Christmas Eve as a child. My family would attend Christmas Eve service, come home to change out of our church clothes, and walk to our neighbor’s home for cookies and punch. While my sister and I were bouncing around with energy awaiting Santa Claus’ visit, my mother would always say, with some exhaustion in her voice, “Santa Claus won’t come until you’re asleep.” Even so, many children will try to get a glimpse of the inner workings behind the phenomenon of going to sleep with a Christmas tree that has a bare skirt at its foot, and waking up to that same tree, which seemingly sprouted gifts overnight. Children do not know how this happens, they just know and that it happens. As children grow older and start to date, they might hear their parents’ commentary regarding their attire, “Maybe you should put more clothes on. You don’t need to show everything. Leave something to the imagination, some mystery.”
Speaking of mysteries, in our gospel passage in Chapter four of Mark’s gospel, Jesus said, “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” (vv. 26-27)—it is a mystery.
Chapter four is a block of a series of parables, in which our gospel passage is situated. Earlier in the chapter, Jesus was clear that he used parables to keep the outsiders at the superficial level of understanding to prevent them from accessing the deeper secret of the kingdom of God. Ironically, this group of outsiders included church leaders. While there will always be those who have ears to hear and to receive the message a speaker intends to convey, there will always be those for whom the message is a mystery—they just won’t “get it.”
These Kingdom of God parables, the growing seed and the mustard seed, are rich with agricultural imagery about the inevitability of God’s action in creation and creation’s ultimate purpose of becoming what God is calling it to be. Both parables use imagery that hangs on phrases like, “sprout and grow,” and “grow up and become.” Jesus used these universal images to teach a particular religious truth or moral lesson. The kingdom of God, was a universal image which Jesus used to teach about the particular person who had been preaching, teaching and healing in the crowd’s midst. The universal kingdom of God had come near to the crowd, in the particular person of Jesus. The kingdom of God is not like Jesus; the Kingdom of God is Jesus, and not everyone hearing his words would “get it.”
We know, too, that Jesus explained the meaning of the parables privately with his disciples so that they might begin to develop their own acuity for hearing not only what was spoken, but also make sense of what was not spoken in the presence of mixed company. Jesus scattered the Word of God upon his disciples in the public crowds, and they were privy to Jesus’ intentional work of spiritually forming them into their purpose of proclaiming the good news of God in Christ.
When a new church is started, it is called a church “plant”—broad imagery that extends to the ministers who are known as planters. This imagery, at once, describes the function and the identity of those who are called to do such work. These ministers are the ones who radically scatter gospel seeds of invitation and hospitality on the ground “out there” and they are the seeds themselves—the ones upon whom God acts in order that they might sprout and grow—not overnight like the gifts under the Christmas tree, but over a lifetime.
This congregation is a reflection of Jesus’ parable of the growing seed. Starting from a vision placed on the heart of this diocese many years ago, to the calling of a missioner to scatter the first gospel seeds, to the gathering of a handful of visionaries who would sprout into Wesley Chapel Episcopal Church, to a stable house of worship with a vibrant, growing congregation. While we, the seed scatterers, would sleep and rise, night and day, faithfully walking by faith and not by sight, God gave the growth—we do not know how.
Now, it is true that we know the methods of our seed scattering and we can produce documentation of what has been, and is, being done. But our kingdom-building work, at this appointed time, is optimally described as radical seed scattering. We neither control where the gospel seeds fall or who they fall upon, nor do we know the mechanics of how those seeds sprout and grow; it is a mystery. But the source of the miracle, and gift, of growth is no mystery. We do well to be grateful for the mystery of God’s growth that in our human weakness, God invites us to co-create with him in the sprouting of new life through baptism, and in the nurturing of new life in Christ through the sacraments.
In the mystery of the Holy Eucharist, the real presence of Christ is with us, and in us, as we eat and drink of the holy food. As we sleep and as we rise, night and day, the Holy Spirit acts upon us so that we may grow into the full stature of Christ. We know not how this happens, but we have faith that it happens, and we trust that by the preaching and hearing of the Word of God, we may be ripe for harvesting when Jesus returns to judge the world.
Unlike those whom Jesus kept in the dark about the secret of the Kingdom of God through his parables, Jesus invites all who come to him in faith into the mystery of his passion, death, resurrection and ascension—the Paschal mystery necessary for God’s plan for universal salvation to be fulfilled. As Easter people, by faith, we willingly and joyfully surrender to being formed by the Paschal mystery, as we live our lives by the ancient, steady rhythm of the church calendar. This steady rhythm of the church sets God’s faithful people apart from the public, secular ways of the world, so that we may be spiritually formed in the body of Christ in private. Recall that Jesus shared the secrets of God’s kingdom to his disciples in private; so it is for his disciples today.
As we move through this season after Pentecost, may we focus on Jesus’ public ministry and his preaching of God’s Word, made manifest today, so that we may grow in faith and be ripe for the day of harvest. In the meantime, in this in-between time, we boldly proclaim the mystery of faith: Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again. Amen.
