This spotless and sparkling promise of newness can be deeply satisfying. It’s like when you stand in the middle of your newly cleaned house or your newly planted garden and take in the beauty of order and the satisfaction of a job well-done. Some of us, like me, would like for life to be this orderly ALL the time. Piles of unorganized papers on my desk, stray weeds in my flower beds, children’s toys in a jumble, a string of unanswered emails, too many things on my “to do” list, a bunch of tangled emotions …. they all push my “frantic” button. I churn into action and can’t truly rest until things seem “perfect” again.
Luckily, there’s good therapy out there for folks like me. Jesus, too, offers us all some spiritual realignment in today’s Gospel. Despite what you might have learned in Sunday School, our parables today are not just nice little pieces of encouragement about spreading God’s Word. They’re not a trite reminder that great good can come from small beginnings. Instead, parables mess with our minds by using images, kind of like what good poetry does. They make us see things in a new way by putting us before different sets of jarring metaphors and then forcing our imaginations into a shift in order to deal with them. Today’s parables want us to see what this “new” Creation that Christ is bringing us looks like. The catch is that it’s not going to look anything like what we might imagine on our own. And it’s certainly not going to look anything like my vision of a well-ordered life.
In the first short parable of the Man Casting Seed, we see a farmer who’s not acting like any good gardener that I know. He throws a bunch of seed out there and then goes about his business. He doesn’t weed, or fertilize, or plan, or even water. At home, I recently tried to plant some Columbine seeds that way. The Bishop’s Office gave a package of seeds to all the priests and deacons for clergy retreat. In a hurry one day, I dumped them in a flower bed and threw some dirt on top … and totally forgot about them. Believe me, nothing happened. There is no abundant harvest of Columbine in my yard.
Any real gardener or farmer is going to laugh out loud at Jesus’ story about a wonderful harvest sprouting up automatically out of the ground, unregulated by human hands. Jesus, though, is describing fields that produce grain purely by God’s grace, like the untended fields of the Jewish Sabbatical and Jubilee years. Jesus is clearly addressing folks like me in this parable, folks that think that they can order, plan, and control our lives, our world, and even God’s grace by our own hard work. Jesus’ farmer plants, but he trusts the soil, the seasons, and the growth process enough to relax and let them produce their fruits.[1]
At St. Ambrose, as we anticipate the new season that awaits, can we do the same? Can we plant faithfully and then let go? If we’re anything like the folks that I observed yesterday, I think we are off to a good start. As our parish helpers swept and cleaned, cottonwood seeds continued to fall from the sky like a shower of dryer lint. If I had been out there sweeping, I would have fretted that my work would be ruined. I might have even thrown down my broom in disgust. But they swept and smiled, staying faithful to their task, knowing that cottonwoods will be cottonwoods, and all will be well.
Jesus’ second parable for today is more well-known. It’s the image of that tiny mustard seed, the one that grows into a tall shrub, where birds can rest themselves on its branches. Perhaps you’ve heard that mustard in the Near East is considered an invasive shrub? It would have been considered “unclean” in any self-respecting Jewish field, a weed that takes over everything around it. No Jewish farmer in his right mind would ever have planted mustard seeds on purpose. In Jesus’ parable, this invasive shrub is then compared with the great cedar of Lebanon. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the cedar of Lebanon usually represents Israel, God’s chosen nation. It’s a tall, majestic tree that will magnanimously shelter the lesser nations of the world in her branches. Jesus, then, in his imagery, juxtaposes the strong, proud tree of his scriptures with a noxious weed.
If you go over to our ditch, way up by the fence, you’ll find St. Ambrose’s version of the mustard seed: a large patch of Myrtle Spurge. You’ll see its yellow flowers spreading every which way from down in our ditch. This plant is toxic, invasive … and legally unacceptable! That’s right, by having it around, we are breaking the Boulder County rules. Our garden guild spent tough, long hours trying to dig it out on our side, as good citizens do. What if Jesus turned up today, though, and took the microphone. What if he smiled and told us that God’s New Creation would be like a patch of Myrtle Spurge. Out of nowhere, it springs up and grows so large that all the birds in Spanish Hills can come and rest among its blooms. What would you say to him? You’d probably be pretty confused and upset, don’t you think?
But that’s exactly what Jesus wants, you see. He wants to make clear to us that we can expect God’s kingdom to sneak into our careful plans as stealthily as cottonwood fluff. We can expect it to spread as wildly and as uncouthly as a noxious weed, blessing the world with gifts that we probably won’t understand or desire. As we clean up and tie up loose ends in our parish, carefully planning for the new growth to come, we need to be prepared for Jesus’s kind of farming. We need to be ready for surprises, for growth to come where we least expect it, for outcomes that we might not recognize right away as positive.
When we suddenly recognize Jesus in the face of the person whose political views drive us straight up a wall, God’s Kingdom approaches. When we stop clawing our way to prosperity long enough to rest with loved ones in the shade of God’s grace, then God’s Kingdom approaches. When we start to believe that we are “enough” even in our imperfection, God’s Kingdom approaches. When we give up a cherished dream for the sake of another and find joy, God’s Kingdom approaches. When we look at our immense needs and feel only thanksgiving for the abundance of God’s blessings, God’s Kingdom approaches. When a small parish calls a new rector sight unseen in the midst of a world-wide pandemic, installs her outdoors in the 98-degree heat, surrounded by cottonwood fluff and noxious weeds, strives for Beloved Community before we can meet in person, sets up a prayer flag station for our neighbors before we can meet inside the beloved church building … then we must rejoice, for such craziness is the Kingdom of God.
[1] Debie Thomas, “The Sleeping Gardener,” June 6, 2021. Found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3036.
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