3rd
Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 6B
June
17, 2012
I encountered a
piece of a poem from one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver, this week, and I
think it’s a nice compliment to this week’s gospel. “Around me trees stir in their leaves and call
out, ‘Stay awhile.’ The light flows from
their branches. And they call out again,
‘It’s simple,’ they say, ‘and you, too, have come into the world to do this, to
be filled with light, and to shine.’”
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…But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle,
because the harvest has come…It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon
the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on 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 nests in its shade.”
The Biblical
scholar Bill Countryman writes of this passage:
“Jesus told a story about a farmer.
The man planted his fields and left them to time and the rains, while he
went about his daily routine, day after day.
The crop sprouted and grew on its own, shooting up, flowering, setting
seed. Then the farmer started the
harvest. Living a life of faith, hope,
and love is like that. We make our
contribution to it, but the ultimate power is that of God, which gives the
growth. This power works in and on us, not
because we are doing anything great or wonderful or decisive—we are merely
tending to our daily lives—but because it is the power of God’s love. Yet we get to harvest the fruits.”[i]
I almost have
to stop and catch my breath at the good news of the gospel this week. It is the gift of the knowledge from Jesus
himself of the joyful inevitability of the kingdom of God! Who ever heard of any kind of garden like he
talks about? Even I, who am
horticulturally challenged and who kill just about everything I try to grow,
know that there is more to it than that—weeding, watering, other stuff…But the
farmer in Jesus’s parable does not have to do any work other than scattering
the seed and then bringing in the harvest!
It’s ridiculous and it’s amazing and it is so very freeing to us when we
can realize that the Kingdom of God will reach its natural fulfillment, and
nothing that we can do or not do will get in its way!
I’m struck by
the connection in the face of these parables with the first step in AA: “We admitted we were powerless over our
addiction that our lives had become unmanageable.” This admitting that we are powerless is also
very important in the spiritual life, and it is one of the deepest gifts we are
given in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ—because only in recognizing and
understanding this powerlessness and its importance in our relationship to God,
only in that way can we truly be free!
Life is already
so hard! Why do we actively work to make
it even harder? We spend so much of our
time and our energy allowing ourselves to be upset, anxious, angry, and
stressed about things over which we are powerless and that just don’t
really matter in the face of the happy inevitability of God’s kingdom.
Today, may we
remember that the Kingdom of God, the new creation Paul writes about, will come
no matter what we do or do not accomplish.
We are given the deep privilege to make our contribution to it, through
the way that we live our lives, but ultimately, it is the love of God which
brings all things to fruition. May we
rest in that knowledge and accept the deep joy that is offered in that gift
today as we come to God’s altar.
“Around me
trees stir in their leaves and call out, ‘Stay awhile.’ The light flows from their branches. And they call out again, ‘It’s simple,’ they
say, ‘and you, too, have come into the world to do this, to be filled with
light, and to shine.’”
[i]
Countryman, William. The Truth About Love: Re-introducing the Good News. London:
Triangle, 1993, p 22
