 |
| Installing Rev. Perdue FBC Cooperstown, NY |
Hear now the Good News in brief---two
verses to be exact!
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.
(Mark 4:26-27)
Two verses, and yet so much to unfurl
and explore! On one hand, we have the
image of the Kingdom, the very crowning glory of Jesus’ vision of God made
known in the world and yet it is like seed, to be tossed around willy-nilly.
Jesus gives an image messy and unpredictable, far removed from the “cut and
dried” understandings about following Jesus we often presume.
Worse, contrary to our churchly habits
and sensibilities, Jesus presents us with the image of a farmer who goes out,
plants the seed liberally, and then saunters off until the end time.
At this point, I hear from Kansas my old
farmer father’s voice calling out: “Son,
what sort of fool does that?”
Admittedly, I have never met a
non-anxious farmer, including my father. For farmers, something is always
worrying you at the back of your mind: grain prices falling and rising (well,
mostly falling), pests and pesticides, drought, deer turning your crop into a
buffet, freak storms, too much rain, too little rain, flooding, hail, the bills
coming in and not enough money to cover everything this month, and the list
goes on.
Every farmer goes through this, having
that moment when you laugh at yourself. That foolish dream you had, thinking yet
again you could plant a crop and turn a profit. Sigh!
For the church “with ears to hear”, we
have an unsettling thought. The Church
that Jesus seeks to sow in the world does not fit into plans we alone devise,
let alone for us to micromanage!
The gospel will be planted where you
least expect it, and trying to guess how it will flourish and yield a goodly
harvest is at best guesswork and at worst presumptuous on our part.
Where the Kingdom of God grows, there
shall be a harvest and we have to learn how to live within the mysterious ways
of God.
But can we really handle mystery? Further, can we be in that mystery as a
Church and live to tell about it?
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.
In the splendid Oscar-winning film Shakespeare in Love, William is a young
man seeking money, not literary awards. He writes plays for the theatres with
their raucous crowds. Theatre was very much a rough and tumble experience in
Elizabethan England. There is a new play needed, and the theatre manager insists
that writer’s block is not an excuse. He demands a script readied for the
production of “Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter”, a comedy about love and
a bit with a dog doing tricks.
The film follows several characters as
they rush around, trying to stage a play not quite written with a financial
backer and his thugs threatening them with pain if there is no profit. A young woman disguises herself as a man so
she can tread the boards. At the
epicenter of this chaos is a young playwright named Will who seems too flaky to
be the great Shakespeare. Will this end
in disaster? Surely it will!
Throughout the film, people ask the
theatre manager Philip Henslowe what the play is about and more importantly
when the play will be ready. Henslowe bluffs to buy Shakespeare and the company
more time. When his financial backer storms in, ready to have his men beat him
up, Henslowe begs for more time, claiming the theatre business is one whose
“natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent
disaster”.
The financial backer asks, “So what do
we do?” Henslowe replies, “Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.”
“How?” the backer is incredulous.
Henslowe replies, “I don’t know. It’s a
mystery.”
If we let them be, the parables confound
and unsettle us, defying a quick or complete interpretation alike. In these
seed parables, we get a cautionary tale about thinking we know the ways of God
and how we should be God’s people. We build our houses of worship, our
traditions, our creeds, and still we have sacred texts that challenge and
remind us of a faith more comfortable with welcoming children gladly,
considering the lilies of the field, and scattering seed and letting things be. Or as 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.
I suppose the Markan parable would ask
to keep things loose and try not to tame the Spirit’s movement. We certainly
need to talk with one other. We need to pray and listen for God in the midst of
our ministry and missional work. We need to work with purpose and hope, but at
the same time, we are in God’s hands, not our own. The future holds much
possibility. So much Kingdom/Reign work is yet to come. God scatters seed
abundantly. The harvest shall be abundant. Rather than pondering the future or
undercutting its potential by our reticence to embrace it, we enter into the
mystery that is God at work in the world.
So, here we are, in the midst of a
mystery. A long-time pastor
retires. A period of search and call
happens. A new pastor was called, arrived
and has been serving here for a few months now.
What form will this new season of ministry take? What will be different about it? What will come up as the newest experience of
an old challenge? Will we grow, will we
flourish, will we have so-so crop yields, will the future be anything like the
past (a chronic question in every church), and can we handle a future that
looks nothing like the past (a scary question for every church)? What happens next? What does the future hold?
Hear the Good News:
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.
