The reality is that this Kingdom is less about seeds than it is about our consternation over how God does His work. We want to see results in the world or in our own lives. We are disappointment and disillusioned when you wake up every morning to bad news and when we see little sign of real progress in our own lives. We want to be an army to conquer in the Lord’s name but instead we are sent forth without luggage or extra money and called to trust in the Lord, speak out His Gospel of the cross and empty tomb, and love our neighbor. We want more.
Islam is attractive not because it is reasonable but because it appeals to our desire to punish the wicked and force the Kingdom of God to come. It is the same reason why we want to vote in the Kingdom of God at the ballot box – something both those on the far left and the far right want to do. It is the same reason why we want to turn the church into a purity cult and expel those whose lives do not measure up. It is the same reason why we count attendance and offerings and deem these to be the markers of a successful church. We want results. We want objective criteria by which we not only measure the progress of God but our own progress. So we make faith into a choice or a decision and make sincerity more important than what you believe. But it is all a lie and a scam.
The Kingdom of God is a mystery that defies explanation. The Kingdom of God comes not by might or money or management but as a seed planted in the soil that becomes a mighty plant that bears fruit and shades from the heat. Jesus tells us the parables of the seed not to explain how the Kingdom of God comes but to confront us with the mystery of God’s mercy. No one reasons themselves into the Kingdom nor can we reason or argue others into it. The Spirit brings the fruit of faith to the seed sown. The seed is always God’s work and never our own – we do not by our own reason or strength believe but only the Spirit works the mystery of faith.
And it IS about faith. Whether you are Abraham trusting in the promise of a nation begotten from your aged body or Moses who leads the people of God into the land of God’s promise, it is about faith. Whether you are disciples who drop their nets and follow Jesus or children raised up in the faith in a faithful home or adults who just stumbled upon this thing called Christianity, it is about faith. There is no explanation to the Kingdom. Only faith to plant the see and watch God grow it in others and in ourselves.
The church does not come by our management of God’s enterprise. We are not called to supervise God’s hierarchy but to be servants of the Word. If that is humbling to the pastors who stand before you every week, it is equally humbling to husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and neighbors. We do not manage God’s resource but expend it. We do not preserve or protect the seed but plant it. We do not decide which soil is best or how much to water it but trust the Lord to bring the seed to fruition in His own time and by His own means. The time is the fullness of His own rich moment and the means are the Word and the Sacraments. We trust in God as seed and sower – it is all the same.
The Lord is patient in His mercy. He reigns not to establish a better world here or a heaven on earth but to rescue the lost and restore them unto Himself. He reign has begun not with the herald of a trumpet and the advance of a mighty army but as the sower sowing the seed, nurturing its growth, and harvesting the fruit. With what shall we compare the Kingdom of God? I fear we today are much more inclined to compare it to a business operated for profit or an affinity group in search of followers or an influence group to shape what the world thinks, says, and does. So the idea of a seed seems rather mundane and ordinary and even powerless in comparison.
We wish that God would deliver us and the world from all that we dislike and all that we are weary of waiting for. We want to be instantly righteous and we want the Kingdom of God to come around us and among us in the blink of an eye. The ways of the Lord are painfully slow to us and cloaked in mystery that begs us simply to trust when we want to understand and predict and control. We want to be active when the path of faith seems so very passive to us. But the Lord is hidden in the seed of His Word and in the flower of that seed in the mighty tree of life that is His Church. He is merciful and works all things together for good even though this mercy and this work are deliberate and His timetable so plodding, it is for us and for our salvation that the Lord is slow. This is His saving work.
While we see nothing, the Lord sees the seed become the mighty tree. While we complain about slowness, the Lord intends to leave no one behind. Where we think it is a matter of our effort, the Lord points us to the cross and His work. Where we try and make faith into a decision or choice, the Spirit insists He plants faith in us and brings it to fruition. Where we think it is our job to build a world fitting for God, God fits us for His kingdom and builds us up in Christ day by day.
St. Paul hits it on the head. This life is the tent. Heaven is the eternal dwelling. It is not that the tent is nothing. It is that the eternal dwelling place is beyond our very imagination – what God has prepared for those who love His appearing. If we groan, let us not grown with the discontent of our earthly lives or a world not the way we think it should be but as a people yearning for the future God has prepared. If we groan, let it be as a people who are content with God’s forgiveness and mercy; who long to be in His presence forevermore and to do what the Lord has given us to do with this day and this moment. Let us be people of good courage, who refuse to judge eternity by whatever happens in this moment and who refuse to let the moment steal our eternal joy from us. We belong to the Lord.
Fathers ought to be aware of this mystery. We plant and the most important thing we plant in the lives of our children is heaven, the Kingdom of God, by knowing Jesus Christ. It is not about control but about faithfulness, not about predicting the outcome but trusting the Word of the Lord and faithful work to produce the fruit of faithful children. A father’s work is not magic but planting good seed and waiting.
Farming was once more aware of the mystery. The crop depended upon so many things completely out of the farmers control – from weather to weeds to the work of insects. As we have improved agriculture, we have also become enamored with the idea that it happens because of us and what we do. It is no different in the kingdom of God. Christ is the seed planted in us by the power of the Holy Spirit and He works in us according to God’s timing and for God’s purpose. This is the great mystery of the kingdom. We accept this by faith not because we God’s Word is unclean but because it is only by faith that the mercy of God becomes our joy, the shade from the heat of the day and the place where we are nested into the arms of our Savior for everlasting life. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment