Let the Seed Grow Mark 26-34
“The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground…….. 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.”Mark 4:26, 31,32
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of a mustard seed is the tremendous growth that can come from such a small seed. Growth is an amazing phenomenon. There are many noticeable examples of growth in plant life. I was reading recently of the majestic Seguoia of California which starts our as a seed weighing one three thousandths of a ounce and may end up 270 feet tall, with a base of forty feet and a weight estimated at 6,200 tons – a growth rate of 600 billion times
There is mystery and wonder in growth wherever we find it. Certainly in the growth of our children we can’t help but be amazed. Physically they start out quite small and grow bigger each day, and we are quite unaware of their growth until the clothes that we bought just a few months ago do not fit anymore. Growth continues until one day we realize that they are “grown up”. Of course they not only grow physically but emotionally and socially. At time we marvel at this growth and sometime we despair at it. They marvel and despair at their own growth. There is a story some parents tell of their boy who was an at an awkward age of moving from childhood into adolescence. He was eager to take up his new style of life as a teenagers , but reluctant to give up some of the pleasures he had known as a child. So although he was combing down his hair now, he was wetting it with his water pistol.
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In Jesus parable that we have in the Gospel today, we are introduced to some of the mystery and wonder of growth in the Kingdom of God. It may start with a tiny seed here and there and when it begins to grow the results can be quite astounding. You can never despair at what seems to be the slow growth of God’s work in the world. All of a sudden you will realize that more is happening than you were aware of.
There was an interesting dialogue in the movie, O God when Jerry was told by God to deliver a message to the world but no one seemed to be listening he felt that his mission had failed. “We blew it ” he says. But God says, “I don’t think so. You never know; a seed here, a seed there, something will catch hold and grow.”
The growth in the Kingdom of God is related to our human growth, because in some sense it is within us. The seed is within us wanting to break forth and mature. We not only have the potential of growing physically, emotionally and socially. We also can grow spiritually. The growth of Kingdom within us is basically a growth from egocentricity, where the whole world centers around ourselves and we strive to control and manipulate everything and everyone around us, to a maturity in which we have a breath of vision, spiritual awareness and a capability of committing ourselves to a cause beyond ourselves. When you look at the spiritual growth of some people in the Bible, we see that kind of growth coming through three basic types of experience: suffering, the realization of a power greater than themselves operating in their lives, and loving and caring for someone other than themselves.
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Do you remember that little piece that was quite popular a number of years ago. Johnny Cash even put it into a song: It was called One Solitary Life.
Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty and then for three years he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never owned a home. He never had a family. He never traveled more than 200 miles from the place that he was born. He never did one of those things that accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself. While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth while he was dying, and that was his coat. When he was dead, he was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.
Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone and today he is the centrepiece of progress and I am far within my mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, and all the navies that were ever built, and all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned, put together have not affected human life upon this earth as has that one solitary life.
Sometimes when we are unable see so little evidence of God’s activity in the world and we see so little growth of the Kingdom of God , when Gospel land seems so far away, we wonder “What’s the use?”. However, We are all in this struggle and we all have the seeds of the Kingdom within us. The kind of cultivation that we need is to be always open to God’s activity in the experiences that we encounter each day, and LET THE SEED DO THE REST. It is up to us to trust the process, and to be faithful in the pursuit of our true self . Then God who has started a good thing within us, will surely bring it to completion.
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