Texts: 2 Cor. 5:6-10,13-17; Mark 4:26-34
“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.”[1]
In the name of the (+) Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I’d like to start with a quick story that our parish administrator told me the other day. Last week she was walking with the children to school, holding hands with her son. He was walking with his eyes shut – something which he does quite often, apparently. She decided to ask him why, and he replied, “Mummy, I do not need to be able to see because I am holding your hand”. Now there’s a great example of walking by faith and not by sight. He clearly trusts his mother implicitly (if only my own children were so trusting! Life in the Curate’s house might be a bit easier if they were), so much so that he doesn’t feel the need to look where he is going: he has faith in her ability to ensure that no harm comes to him and that they will get to the promised destination.
Of course, the destination is not heaven in the case of the story – far from it, unless perhaps one is a particularly enthusiastic teacher or student – but it serves as a modern-day parable to illustrate the idea being expressed by Paul in his letter to the Corinthians. In spite of the sufferings of this life (Paul has been describing some examples of these in the preceding part of his letter), the Christian has a reason for hope beyond everything the world might throw at him or her. This hope, our faith in Christ’s promise to us, is the source of our confidence. We do not need to worry too much about our earthly lives and the many distractions and anxieties which may arise from day to day. What really matters is the reality: “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation”. Christians long for the day when they will see the Lord face to face, and we trust that through everything we experience in this world, we are being guided towards that day. It doesn’t always seem like that, because that promised destination can’t be seen. But we have faith that it will come, and very soon.
I’m really glad I heard that story, because as I said earlier, it’s a little bit like a parable for our time. Like the walking to school scenario, Jesus’ parables were deliberately designed to employ imagery which would have been relatively familiar to his audience – even though it is clear that his audience didn’t quite understand the meaning behind them (this is presumably why we are told that “he explained everything in private to his disciples” here in our Gospel reading). Tom Wright describes[2] trying to understand parables as being a little bit like trying to pick out individual notes from a chord: everyone can hear the notes together – that is, the surface meaning of the story – but can we pick out individual notes? This is often a test employed at musical auditions, and for many people it’s a surprisingly difficult thing to do. But not for those with ears to hear, of course.
So, looking at our Gospel reading, we have two parables about the kingdom of God. Let’s focus on the first one: what might those individual notes sound like? Can we pull them out of the chord? On the surface of the story, the seed grows secretly, and apparently quite innocuously. It gets bigger, ripens and is harvested. But Bishop Tom suggests two notes within the chord: the harvesting with the sickle is in fact a reference to the prophecy of Joel[3] which deals with the Day of the Lord. The Jewish people looked for the coming day when, after a time of terrible devastation, the Lord would restore the fortunes of the people of God, reaping a harvest of judgement against the surrounding nations. So what Jesus is pointing to with his image of the sickle going straight in is that their ideas about the coming judgement aren’t quite right. Judgement is definitely coming soon, but it’s not simply going to involve vindication for Israel and condemnation for others. This will have been quite a controversial message, and quite a dangerous thing to be preaching – presumably one reason for the message to be crafted very carefully.
The second note involves what the seed itself is doing. There’s a cycle of sleeping and waking going on, just like we have in the seasons. The sower “sleeps and rises”, but it is easy to miss the nuance in the language. The word for rising here is one of the terms employed elsewhere in the gospels to refer to the resurrection. So while his listeners may have expected Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom of God to be all about the restoration of the fortunes of Israel, his message is somewhat different again. Jesus’ ministry is itself the moment of seed-time. People won’t see how the plant that God promised could ever grow from the seed. This is taken up in the parable of the mustard seed which follows – it’s a most unpromising looking seed. But the reality is that the seed grows into the greatest of all shrubs, with branches so large that birds may nest and find shade there.
We shouldn’t look down on small beginnings. Even one or two people meeting together regularly to pray and work together can have dramatic results. Here in this parish we have wonderful examples of small initiatives that often get overlooked. Did you know about the rosary group, for example? This small group meets each Monday morning to pray the rosary together. They’ve been doing this week in, week out since 1994. And then there’s the midweek masses, which often drop below double figures in numerical attendance terms. It’s tempting to look at this and wonder why we persist. It might seem more logical to spend our energies on higher profile mission activities – and we have plenty of those too: Playtime on Fridays being an example of how we are serving our community and getting “out there”. But we mustn’t forget the smaller stuff: God can do fantastic things with the unglamorous, the ordinary, and the unfashionable. We might not see the results ourselves, but like Jamie, if we persist with them, placing our hand in that of the One who loves us beyond all imagining, and have confidence, we can be sure that God will bring the seed to ripeness.
In the name of the (+) Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] 2Cor. 5:6-7
[2] in his Mark for Everyone
[3] Joel 3:13
Grasping at Holiness 