Hope in a Seed

Our lesson this morning comes from the fourth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, Mark chapter four, and I’m going to start reading with verse 26. You can go through verse 34. He also said, the kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and would rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow. He does not know how. the earth produces of itself first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. When the grain is ripe at once, he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come. He also said, with what can we compare the kingdom of God or what parable we use for it? It is like a mustard seed which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of the seeds on the earth. Yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make their nest in its shade. With many such parables, he spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples. Friends, this is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

So, this sermon comes with a homework assignment, and you can do it before or after you try to beat the Baptist to the restaurants. I don’t know which your choice is going to be, but here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go shopping today right after church. I want you to go to the produce section or your favorite place to shop. It could be Walmart. It could be neighborhood Walmart. It could be Ruston Groceries. It could be super one. And if I’ve left a grocery out, I’m sorry. I don’t stop there, so I don’t know the name of it. And here’s your assignment by a piece of fruit. Okay. An apple? An orange. Don’t care. Piece of fruit. And I want you to take the piece fruit home. And I want you to open it. And I want you to count the seeds, because you can count the seeds in a piece of fruit. So let the piece of fruit be the apple for right now. You can count the number of seeds in an apple. But you can’t count the number of apples in a seed. And I thought I’d completely gotten away with that this morning in the early service. And at the end, somebody came up to me and said, why can’t it be an avocado? I can count avocado seeds. I said, okay, make it an avocado. You can count the seed in an avocado, but you can’t count the number of avocados in the seed, right? It’s sort of the law of sowing.

Jesus starts the fourth chapter of Mark’s gospel with an agrarian image. A man goes out to sow. And that’s the way they did it in. In those days. They just took the seed and threw it on the ground. It wasn’t. It wasn’t orderly. It wasn’t done with the best method. It was random. And Jesus said of this seed, some of it falls on the path and it’s hard. And the birds just come, and they eat it up, and some of the seed falls on rocky ground. It doesn’t have much soil. It springs up, but sun beats down on it and it fades, and some seed falls among the thorns, and it pops up and the thorns choke it off. And some seed. Falls on good soil. It brings forth 30, 60, 100-fold. And Jesus gets the disciples together and he says, look, the seed is the Word of God. And you as my apprentices, you as my followers, are called to sow this word into the lives of others. And they all nodded their head because it sounded reasonable. Now doesn’t sound reasonable to us. Jesus said. As he finishes off the fourth chapter, some Saturdays seed. And they don’t know how it grows. And here’s what we do with our seed scattering. Seed scattering. We do a cost benefit analysis. We look at the soil and we go, nope, I’m not going to sow a seed there because that seed will be wasted. And Jesus said, you missed the point. You scatter the seed. You are not responsible for the result. You are responsible just for sowing the seed. The result belongs to God.

And you don’t feel led by the spirit to sow a seed. There you just so and scatter seeds and God grows them. Scatter the seed, you scatter it. Even if the soil doesn’t look right, you scatter it. Even if you recognize what Jesus was saying, that not all seed will grow. Not everything you do in the kingdom of God, not everything you do for Christ, will prosper. Some loving acts fall on the path. Some acts done in the name of Jesus Christ fall in shallow soil. They’ll pop up for a while, but then life beats down on that crop and it fades. Let God figure out the growth. You scatter the seeds. And we talked last week. Or I know some preacher talked about this, and some of the seeds you scatter are forgiving. Seven times seven. It’s going the extra mile. It’s turning the other cheek. It’s not judging. And sometimes by doing those things, you sow the love of God, the grace of God in the life of an individual. You. You let them see that they are loved that they’re understood that somebody has compassion for them, somebody cares for them. And then Jesus goes on in the 25th chapter of Matthew’s gospel, he talked about giving food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, clothing for the naked, welcome for the stranger, and a visit for the lonely. Again, without the cost benefit analysis about whether or not that seed is going to be successful, Jesus said, do it to everybody. And what does he finish up by Saying? Because you’ve done it. One of the least of these my brothers or sisters. You’ve done it to me.
We were called to scatter the seeds of God’s love and grace. We are called to scatter the seeds of God’s mercy. The Hebrews called it the Advo de. And I know you know that word because I preached on that word on November 20th of 2022. I’m sure you remember that stunning sermon, your Advo da, the same Hebrew word is translated work. It’s translated worship. It’s translated service. How do you sow the seeds of God’s Word when you go to work tomorrow morning? Or if you go to work this afternoon, that’s where you sow it. That’s how you sow it with the people you work with. You sow the seeds through your worship. You sow the seeds through your service to Christ. In other words, with your life you are sowing the seeds. Of God’s love and God’s Word. And we don’t understand it. Some grow, some do not. We’re called to faithfulness. We’re not called to success. We are called to faithfulness. Just keep sowing the seeds and letting them grow. So, the seeds are sown, and they grow secretly. And the other thing Jesus said is that second kind of seed, the mustard seed, they grow strong, and we have mustard seeds for you today.

I understand that my church members have patience because there is one mustard seed in that, and we’ll have one mustard seed for you. Here’s the deal with the mustard seed. You can leave it like this and just be reminded that something that small. Can grow greatly. Or if you want to take the mustard seed home and plant it, go ahead. Just put it in a little shallow soil, keep it moist, put it on a windowsill where it can get some sun. Because this variety of mustard seed wilts in the summer. Some of you know that mustard is a winter plant, not a summer plant. And we know that because we planted a lot of mustard seeds this spring just to see what would happen. And they went – Louisiana. So, you can grow it if you want to. And I encourage you to do that. You’re going to get a stem with one, one leaf on it. And if you nurture it and talk kindly to it and keep it watered, it will become a mustard plant. The kingdom of God is like that mustard seed. The kingdom of God becomes powerful. The kingdom of God becomes mighty. Great things happen in the Kingdom of God just with one small seed taking root. We prayed for it earlier this morning. Thy kingdom come; thy will be done. We’re praying for God’s kingdom to come in our midst. We’re praying for us to be those that are the delivery system for God’s kingdom. And if you think about it, it started with Jesus and it went to the 12. Then it goes to the 70, then it goes to the 120, and then it goes to the 2000. And the church just keeps growing and growing. And here we are today, there billions of us on the face of the earth, and we’re filling up churches everywhere, and we’re building hospitals and orphanages. We’re feeding the hungry, we’re clothing the naked, we’re giving water to the thirsty. We’re doing the things Christ commanded us to do. And for 2000 years we’ve been doing that. And it all started with a small seed.

So, what are you going to do with this? How are you going to sow seeds? And what seeds do you sow? And a better question is, what seeds have been sown in your life? Who has brought you hope? Who has brought you God’s love and grace? Who has been incarnate, a Jesus follower for you? And I think the church needs to get a holt of the idea that we’re the super Sowers. We are. We are like service merchandise. You remember service merchandise? Oh yeah, it was in every mall, and you would go in there and it was bright and glitter, glittery. And they had all the cool stuff. And you would, you would pull the little tab by the cool stuff, and you’d walk up to the register prayerfully, and the person would check you out and they would say, well, we’ll have that next Thursday for you. You can come back or let me see if we actually absolutely have one in a warehouse. Most of the time they didn’t because service merchandise was not a retail sales entity. It was a catalog showroom. And I think the church needs to become a catalog showroom for the seeds that we can. So, in the world, we need to have some of our seeds on display for you and I to learn what can be done, what can be sown, and what can we do in our world That will so the gospel of Jesus Christ in the last 25 years. In North America, only. 40 million people have walked away from the church. 40 million. Did they not catch what we were sowing? Did they not understand God’s love and grace? Did they not get connected with who we are called to be and what we’re called to do? If the church is going to make a difference in our world, if a church is going to become a catalog showroom that shows the seeds and trains people to distribute the seeds and helps people nurture seeds and grow seeds, I think three things need to happen. We need to understand our identity. We need to figure out who we are, where Jesus followers were, Jesus apprentices. We’re not social justice warriors. We’re not social workers. We are called to follow Jesus Christ. It is all about Jesus.

We need to understand that God has called us to transcendence. That this is not about being a better person. This is about being in touch with a holy God. It’s about being in his presence. It’s about experiencing his holiness and his love and his grace. It’s about experiencing his changing, transforming power. If we are going to identify as Jesus followers, as Jesus’ apprentice apprentices, we need to understand. We need to prioritize Jesus. It’s all about Jesus. It’s. It’s all about Jesus. It’s all about Jesus. And then we need to become community if we identify as Jesus followers, if we are prioritizing Jesus in our lives, that creates a community, a community of mutuality, a community of people who are walking side by side, sowing seeds, supporting each other as they sowed the seeds, telling stories of what happens when the seed takes. Confessing the fact that they threw some of their seeds on the path. But that’s okay, because God told us to do that anyway. It’s about creating community. Unfortunately, people come to the church looking for a community, and the only thing we can figure out how to do or what to do with them is we give them a committee and we think, well, if we just put them on a committee that builds community, absolutely, positively not. We have become a nation of isolated individuals. You can get on your screen, and you can live behind a screen, and you can do everything you need to do with that screen. You can have people come to your door, deliver your stuff. You can have people come to your door, pick you up and go get some stuff. You can pay your bills on the screen. You can be entertained on the screen. You can interact with others on the screen. You can go through all of life. And not have contact with another human being. I am so ancient. I remember a time when you would pull up to a gas station and people would come out and put gasoline in your car. I’m so old. I remember Walmart before they went digital, and you could actually talk to somebody who was checking you out. I dare you to find those people in Walmart right now. I can remember going into a bank or pulling up through that piece of technology known as the drive through teller, and you would write a check and you hand it to the person, and they would talk to you back and forth, and they would count out their money to you. And right now, you go to a machine, put the card input pin number and hit a button, and you can hear the machine going, which. Counts the money right out to you. We’re not teaching one another how to be community. We’re not teaching each other how to relate to each other in Christ. We are inviting people and creating accidental isolation. We identify as Jesus. Followers were called to deep transcendence, and we are called the community to building authentic, organic communities of seed Sowers.

How does this work? God does it. Where should we sow the seeds? Everywhere. Who do we trust for the results? God. The seed grows secretly, and the seed grows strong. And you and I are called to be super Sowers. So. Check out that homework and let me know. Even with the avocado. I want to know how many avocados come from that one seed. You make a difference in so many lives. People you know, folks you work with, friends you have. Sow the seeds of God’s love and grace in their life and understand it’s not about being successful. It’s about being faithful to the task to which Christ has called you and me and his church. Would you stand and pray with me? We thank you, O God, for the calling that is ours in Christ Jesus to sow seeds. to sow seeds of love and mercy, to sow seeds of compassion in our world. And we pray, Oh God, that is, we sow the seeds you would give the growth and bring in the harvest. Bless us to our part of it. We pray in your name. Amen.