Sermon Seeds: Flourishing
Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B
(Third Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 6) 
Lectionary citations
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13 with Psalm 20 or
Ezekiel 17:22-24 with Psalm 92:1-4, 12-15
2 Corinthians 5:6-10, (11-13), 14-17 or 2 Corinthians 5:6-17
Mark 4:26-34
Sermon Seeds
Focus Scripture:
Mark 4:26-34
Weekly Theme:
Flourishing
Reflection:
by Kathryn Matthews Huey 
God’s ways are mysterious, it’s true, and two of the readings for this Sunday inspire a sense of wonder in narrative and parable illustrations of God’s power to take small things and make them great. In the Old Testament story of David’s anointing by Samuel, tension builds as God (mysteriously) instructs the prophet not to anoint the obvious choices, the ones the political consultants or pundits would choose today (the ones with the best numbers in the polls or the best faces for television), the ones who somehow appear most qualified or capable because they are older or stronger or more impressive.
“Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord,” Samuel thinks as he looks upon the fine elder son Eliab in verse 6. In some mysterious way, however, Samuel understands that God is concerned with the unseen, the heart, of the person, the very center and core of the one to be anointed. Bring in the little one, the one left out, the one not considered or included; bring in David, the shepherd, and make him a shepherd-king, anointed by God to lead the people and to live on throughout their history as the greatest of kings, the hope of the people, a vision for the future.
Mysterious and hidden things
Who would have thought it, that day, as the older, taller, finer sons were brought forward as obvious choices but were then rejected? Who knew what potential lay in the youngest, the smallest of all? Who knew what power God would give to the power-less? Seeds are small, too, and often buried or overlooked, but what power lies within them! Jesus offers parables in the Gospel reading from Mark that compare the reign of God with the mysterious, hidden way of a seed’s growth, a process that fascinates us even today, in spite of our technological progress and the “wonders” it produces. It’s like that, Jesus says, the kingdom of God is like that: hidden and mysterious, and a very real wonder all the same.
These two seed stories illustrate the way Jesus taught, using parables (the familiar parable of the sower is the first in this series of three, although not included in today’s lectionary passage; the “hidden power of the seed” parable is found only in Mark). For a teacher who sat on a hillside and taught crowds of learned and unlearned, rich and poor, downtrodden and powerful, using the power of story was an effective way to preach something as hard to describe, let alone define, as the kingdom of God. Henry Brinton shares the novelist Reynolds Price’s observation that “next to food and drink, our most basic human need is story.” Jesus used parables, Brinton says, “to satisfy the spiritual hunger of the people who crowded around him, aching for insight and inspiration” (New Proclamation Year B 2009). Today, the power of story is evident, of course, in the response of many people to spiritual themes in film and novels. (I can almost hear a 21st-century Jesus saying, “The reign of God is like that last scene in the movie, Places in the Heart…”) Perhaps we need to nurture our ability to tell great stories in person, and to listen to them with open hearts and minds for hidden but powerful truths.
More than just a good story
Parables, however, are more than just a good story, or a simple and useful illustration to make things clearer. If anything, they may have made things more obscure to the hard-hearted and the close-minded. Parables make us think, and think hard. It’s been said that as soon as you think you understand what a parable means, you probably don’t. (Just recently, I listened to a preacher from a very different culture interpret a familiar parable from that very different perspective, and I remembered that parables continue to yield fresh challenges in every setting.) However, we can still wrestle with these two little stories of Jesus and come out at the end, perhaps, having drawn a bit closer to that great mystery of the kingdom of God.
In the age of science, we tend to think in logical and rational ways, perhaps using the left side of our brain more than the right. It seems that parables exercise our right brains more, and it wouldn’t surprise us if the reign of God has much more to do with the right brain than we have understood. Dianne Bergant describes the way that parables “engage two very different realities and use one to throw light on the deeper meaning of the other,” challenging our imaginations and our ability to see “connections” we might otherwise miss (Preaching the New Lectionary Year B). I suspect, then, that parables are not very good bedtime stories, because they stimulate and unsettle our brains rather than soothe or settle them. Megan McKenna’s image of parables as “a trapdoor into another world” is dramatic, as we may not find that other world a place we want to inhabit. (Are we ready for the cost of discipleship?) Still, McKenna writes, “Mark reminds his church that this isn’t just a story: it is the truth of their own lives” (Reading Mark in the Shadow of the Cross).
How can we describe God?
Even so, this truth isn’t easy to grasp intellectually. John Pilch cautions us against easy conclusions that pin things down or make things too simple and clear, because even the most powerful parable cannot adequately describe the reality of God. We can use the language of analogy, to say what God is “like,” realizing all the while that nothing truly compares to God (The Cultural World of Jesus Year B). Of course, while words – and stories – cannot describe God fully, Fred Craddock observes that the meaning of parables is more readily grasped by those who have a personal investment in Jesus and in the reign of God: “Parables, then, have a revealing/concealing quality, creating their own hearers and non-hearers” (Preaching through the Christian Year B).
Listen to Eugene Peterson’s eloquent translation of the mustard seed parable, using an image that’s a bit more familiar to us: “‘What kind of story can we use? It’s like a pine nut. When it lands on the ground it is quite small as seeds go, yet once it is planted it grows into a huge pine tree with thick branches. Eagles nest in it.’ With many stories like these, he presented his message to them, fitting the stories to their experience and maturity. He was never without a story when he spoke. When he was alone with his disciples, he went over everything, sorting out the tangles, untying the knots” (The Message). The parables, like everything Jesus said, are about God, not, John Pilch writes, “a place (kingdom) but rather a person (God)” (The Cultural World of Jesus Year B). In fact, Fred Craddock calls Jesus himself “a parable of God….the presence of God” (Preaching through the Christian Year B). That might explain why these stories were and are so provocative, coming from One who mysteriously and powerfully conveyed “who” God is.
The underdog of seeds
The little mustard seed might seem like a sweet little image, as if it’s the little underdog, the good seed that survives against the odds and flourishes, triumphant over the “big seeds.” (There are all sorts of places to take this, including the life of a congregation and the odds it faces.) However, it seems that mustard is not only not a “sweet little” image, it’s not even a “neutral image,” according to Richard Swanson. Jesus’ hearers would have been offended by the reference to a “ritual weed” that they would never be caught planting. One thinks of kudzu in the southeastern United States, where years ago I was told that a small but invasive vine had grown into the thick green covering on trees and signs and even buildings. No one could control it or get rid of it, they told me, and I was reminded of that when I read Swanson’s description of the mustard plant as “uncontrollable and disorderly,” embodying “an offense against Torah observance in a chaotic world” (Provoking the Gospel of Mark).
In the midst of such disorder, Swanson continues, a stable and orderly community that loved God would illustrate that life is about more than power, and in its faithfulness to God’s law, it would offer “real hope” for those coming out of chaos (Provoking the Gospel of Mark). Also, the “shrub” (rather than tree) that grows from this seed may have reminded Jesus’ listeners of the great cedars of Lebanon in the Hebrew Scriptures: Ezekiel 17:22-24 speaks so beautifully of God taking a “sprig” from a mighty cedar, “a tender one from the topmost of its young twigs,” planting it high on a mountain so that it can produce fruit and become “a noble cedar” that, like the mustard plant in Jesus’ parable, provides rest in its branches for “winged creatures of every kind.”
Unexpected places and people
We don’t hear Jesus’ words with the same filters that pick up these meanings, and they add another layer of questions for us to ask about the reign of God which, it seems, may be found in unlikely and unexpected and “unworthy” people and places after all. Could the parable suggest, Barbara Reid wonders, that the “pesky” plant resembles “the tenacious faith” of the lowliest among us, those who “don’t count” in the eyes of the world? (The Lectionary Commentary: The Gospels). Just as a parable surprises and baffles us, so do God’s ways, mysterious and deep and bringing something great out of something very, very small, and the wonder, and the power of it all. Swanson quotes Martin Luther: “If you truly understood a single grain of wheat, you would die of wonder.” From Ezekiel, and from Jesus, we learn that this wonder comes from God’s work, not from our own efforts.
Thus, a passage with two mysterious little stories about littleness and mystery suggest a number of possibilities for reflection. What if Jesus is reassuring his audience that God is in control, no matter how things appear, and no matter what we do or don’t do? Charles Cousar recalls the interpretation of classical liberalism which would have read in this text “the inevitability of growth, the progressive development of the reign of God” that “reflected the optimistic mood of the times.” While we are perhaps not so optimistic in our present age, we can still trust in what is happening behind the scenes and beneath the surface, and the One who is making it happen. The question we might ask is, “What are we hoping for? What occupies our thoughts, and of what do we dare dream?” Cousar cautions that God’s “promise does not have to do with the immediate success of the church (membership, budgets, and so on) or with the prosperity of individual believers, but with the ultimate triumph of the reign of God….That reign is always shrouded in mystery, not sketched as a blueprint for the course of history but talked about in stories” (Texts for Preaching Year B).
The antidote to anxiety
Barbara Brown Taylor appropriately titles her sermon on this passage, “The Automatic Earth,” as the Greek is best translated in its gift of “agricultural grace.” She focuses on our anxiety amid the uncertainty here, living “between the planting and the harvest.” Her sermon exposes some of the symptoms of our anxiety, including perfectionism, drivenness, moral outrage, restlessness, dread of being alone, and estrangement from God. She calls anxiety “an occupational hazard of being a finite creature in a universe of infinite possibilities” (now there’s an unnerving thought!) and suggests that we might repent of our conviction that we must work out our own salvation, on the one hand, and that, on the other hand, we are doomed to fail. “What is absent when anxiety is present,” she writes, “is faith…that God will be God, that the automatic earth will yield its fruit, that life can be trusted.” The antidote to anxiety, then, is courage, chosen “over and over again, every day that you live, if real living is what you are after….Then,” she writes, “scatter your seeds” (Mixed Blessings). It’s a beautiful interpretation of the text.
There’s so much around us today, as there always has been, that may press us down in spirit. We see war and hatred, prejudice and injustice, hunger and violence, the everyday grind of so many lives, the apparent hopelessness and intractability of some problems and conditions. It’s difficult indeed to know the ways of God, so often hidden from view or not detected (or noticed) by us. Nevertheless God is at work always and everywhere, bringing about God’s will in unexpected and marvelous ways, like the amazing things that can grow from the tiniest of seeds. I am reminded of Henry David Thoreau’s words, “I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.”
Small epiphanies and large hopes
There is, of course, much more to the story. We live not so much in optimism that thinks we can fix everything but out of the hope born of confidence that God is in charge of everything, and we are simply called to participate in what God is doing in the world. That is why we find flashes of brilliant hope and the promise of a greater day to come. They may only be flashes, but they are powerful epiphanies nevertheless. Here and there, in longed-for reconciliation within families and among friends, in healing from illness and grief, in the decisions by a community that places its most vulnerable members at the top of its agenda rather than at the bottom, in sharing and celebration and the release of grudges, in the end of war and the seeking of peace, in the breaking of bread and the nourishment of our souls and our bodies, in giving voice to the voiceless and lifting up the hopes of those in despair, we see the mysterious ways of God.
It may begin, or seem to persist, in smallness, in small steps and small hopes, but the path, Jesus says, leads to greatness, a greatness we cannot see or even imagine today. God can see it, and God can imagine it, and most of all, God intends it. The tiny little seed grows into the greatest of all, the mustard tree, strong and great enough to offer shelter and goodness and the stuff of life for those who need to find a home.
Smallness and might
There are so many large and powerful entities that surround us as individuals and as churches. Even our own denomination, the United Church of Christ, seems so small when compared to other organizations that attract the attention (and time, and energy) of our members. And yet, and yet. What hope lies beneath statistics and reports, what potential lies in giving voice to the smallest but persistent of witnesses, the early truth-telling of our tradition, the evangelical courage, and the extravagant hospitality that express our commitment and describe our deepest hopes not only for our church but for the world beyond its walls!
As you look at your own life and the life of your church, when were there moments along the way where you could feel God’s hand at work, mysteriously, making choices and offering possibilities that no one would have predicted or thought of on their own? When were you small and perhaps feeling insignificant, and yet, in the end, chosen? Does your church feel small in the community and the world that surrounds you? Do you see the power and strength of your church in numbers, or in the spirit that thrives within it? Can spirit be counted or measured? How can you be the mustard seed that grows and provides shelter and refuge and sustenance to God’s creation, and to the people of God?
The Rev. Kathryn Matthews (Huey) serves as dean of Amistad Chapel at the national offices of the United Church of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio (https://www.facebook.com/AmistadChapel).
You’re invited to share your reflections on this text on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.
A Bible study version of this reflection is at http://www.ucc.org/weekly_seeds.
For further reflection:
Martin Luther, 16th century
“If you truly understood a single grain of wheat, you would die of wonder.”
Emil Gudmundson, 20th century
“May we have faith in life to do wise planting that the generations to come may reap even more abundantly than we. May we be bold in bringing to fruition the golden dreams of human kinship and justice. This we ask that the fields of promise become the fields of reality.”
Anne Frank, 20th century
“Everyone has inside of [them] a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!”
David Levithan, 21st century
“Remember that at any given moment / There are a thousand things / You can love.”
Anne Lamott, 21st century
“When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.”
G.K. Chesterton, 20th century
“If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?”
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.
The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.” And the Lord said, “Take a heifer with you, and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’ Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.” Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, “Do you come peaceably?” He said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.” But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.” Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.” He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.
Psalm 20
May God answer you in the day of trouble!
The name of the God of Jacob protect you!
May God send you help from the sanctuary,
and give you support from Zion.
May God remember all your offerings,
and regard with favor your burnt sacrifices.
May God grant you your heart’s desire,
and fulfill all your plans.
May we shout for joy over your victory,
and in the name of our God
set up our banners.
May God fulfill all your petitions.
Now I know that God will help God’s anointed;
and will answer them from God’s holy heaven
with mighty victories by God’s strong hand.
Some take pride in chariots,
and some in horses,
but our pride is in the name
of the Sovereign our God.
They will collapse and fall,
but we shall rise and stand upright.
Give victory to the ruler, O God;
answer us when we call.
or
Ezekiel 17:22-24
Thus says the Lord God: I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I will set it out. I will break off a tender one from the topmost of its young twigs; I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain height of Israel I will plant it, in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar. Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord. I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree; I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken; I will accomplish it.
Psalm 92:1-4, 12-15
It is good to give thanks to God,
to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
to declare your steadfast love in the morning,
and your faithfulness by night,
to the music of the lute and the harp,
to the melody of the lyre.
For you, O God, have made me glad by your work;
at the works of your hands I sing for joy.
The righteous flourish like the palm tree,
and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
They are planted in the house of God;
they flourish in the courts of our God.
In old age they still produce fruit;
they are always green and full of sap,
showing that God is upright;
God is my rock, and has no unrighteousness.
2 Corinthians 5:6-10, (11-13), 14-17
So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord — for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.
(Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade others; but we ourselves are well known to God, and I hope that we are also well known to your consciences. We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you an opportunity to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast in outward appearance and not in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.)
For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
or
2 Corinthians 5:6-17
So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade others; but we ourselves are well known to God, and I hope that we are also well known to your consciences.
We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you an opportunity to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast in outward appearance and not in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
Mark 4:26-34
He also 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. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 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.”
With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
Liturgical notes on the Readings
In ecumenical liturgical practice, there are normally three readings and one psalm at each Sunday service, in this order:
First Reading: Hebrew Scripture
Response: Psalm (or Canticle) from the Bible
Second Reading: Epistle (or Acts or Revelation)
Third Reading: Gospel
The first two lessons are normally read by laypeople, the Gospel by a Minister of the Word or a layperson. In Roman Catholic, Anglican and liturgical Protestant churches, it is uncommon for an ordained minister to read all of the lessons.
The psalm is not a reading but a congregational response following the lesson from Hebrew Scripture: it is normally sung with a refrain or recited by the congregation as poetry. Occasionally, a canticle is appointed in place of a psalm; it is sung or recited in the same way. The New Century Hymnal provides a complete liturgical psalter with refrains and music.
A hymn may be sung as an introduction to the proclamation of the Gospel.
During Ordinary Time (seasons after Epiphany and Pentecost) two alternative sets of OT readings with responsorial psalms are provided. The first option is a semi-continuous reading through a book of Hebrew Scripture; the second is thematically related to the other readings.