From smallest seeds a greater love

 

Mark 4: 26-34
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
June 13, 2021

Words like “profligate” and “prodigal” have negative connotations in our language and culture, and yet Jesus uses them and the imagery they conjure to describe and define the kingdom of God. Jesus tells parables of human beings who are wastefully extravagant with wealth or seeds or the goodwill of others, but then God outdoes them all with unconditional, undeserved, unlimited love, fearless compassion, radical forgiveness, and restorative justice. How much grace will it take for humanity to grow and change? God’s reply time and again is, “How much do you need? I got all the grace and all the time in the world.”



And yet there is a definite feeling of urgency on our part, that time is running out. It feels as though the seeds of hate and fear, violence and injustice are just as, if not more profligate than the ones of covenant and courage, interdependence and forward movement. Rather than carefully planting these hopeful seeds, guarding them with a fence or netting, waiting for the right time, instead Jesus tells us those who plant for God’s kindom are to scatter these seeds, not knowing where they will fall and then to let them go. Where’s the strategy, the growth plan, the predicted return on the investment? How can we trust there will be a harvest and yet that’s precisely the invitation Jesus offers.

Earlier this week I attended Rep. Paul Baumbach’s constituent coffee at the Newark Country Club where we could meet outside under an awning. As usual, Paul invited other folks to come and speak about what’s current in their work: Sen. David Sokola, Newark mayor Jerry Clifton, and recently elected Newark Councilwoman Wendy Creecy.



Wendy brought with her the mother of a severely autistic 19 year old young man. He suffers from seizures. He struggles with an eating disorder called pica in which he tries to ingest nonfood items. He wears an adult diaper. His 21 year old sister helps take care of him because it has been very difficult to get support services for him. Wendy invited this mother so she could talk with Paul in private but then the mom decided she would share her story, scatter her seeds of hope and desperation with everyone. She handed Paul her reusable shopping bag, heavy with notebooks and files dating from November 2020 to now, asking if he would carry her burden for a few minutes while she spoke, a simple but powerful gesture. She and her wife are exhausted from working to pay bills and writing emails and making phone calls to agency after agency, from doing what love demands of them. After she finished speaking, Paul’s partner Pam put her arm around this mom like a mother hen gathers her young and sat down with her with pen and paper.

We all know stories like this. We know people like this. We try to help people like this. Some of us know what this mother’s life is like. There are thousands of people like this in our state. There are millions of people like this in our country. This pandemic has revealed that not only has our system failed the most vulnerable among us but that the system was never really designed to uplift and support, to save the most vulnerable. Success stories like the new Hope Center in New Castle County are the exception rather than the norm. We may rescue folx from drowning, pull people out of the fire, but the water is still rising, the fire is still burning.



We still try to apply empire thinking to God’s kindom. We still think in terms of waste and worth because we’ve monetized everything we can do to help. We’ve monetized love and justice which dehumanizes those who need help. We’re reluctant to be profligate and prodigal with our money and resources. We don’t want to create a dependence. And yet every time we turn on a light switch or a water faucet, we’re dependent on hundreds of people whose job it is to make sure the light goes on and the water is clean. Most of the food on our table depends on truck drivers and food packers, growers and pickers, grocery store stockers and cashiers. From the gas in our cars to those who design and sell us our vehicles, to those who keep our roads and bridges in good repair, we are dependent on someone else.

In order to get to interdependence, some folks need more help than others. Behind our human behaviors there is an unmet need. There are those who have to fight every day to have their humanity recognized: transgender and queer folx, disabled and neurodivergent, impoverished and underpaid, Black and brown and indigenous, elders and women and children, and every way these can intersect. When someone is drowning, we don’t ask them to swim a few feet for us. That mother was nigh unto drowning and yet for the most part the burden is on her to save her own life.



Sometimes I think we focus so much on what the outcome will be, we withhold some of that precious seed, because we too are anxious about tomorrow and for good reason. There are days it is hard to let go of it all and get a good night’s sleep. For a while now I’ve been saying there isn’t enough sleep for the times we live in. We’re all sick and tired of being sick and tired. We’ve gotten burned enough to know we don’t want to get burned again. And yet all of this makes it more about us than it does about the one who is in trouble and desperately needs help.



I’m sorry this sounds more like lament than hope, but the first job of a seed is to be buried and die. We who thrive in this dominant culture, in empire, must sit with our discomfort, allow that disruptive seed to bury itself within us and see what grows inside of us. Like the earth that trusts that the sun will shine and rain will fall, there is a sacred mystery alive within us and among us that connects our sorrow and joy to others’ sorrow and joy, that tethers our hearts into one heart. It is a greater love that makes a courageous space within us to imagine: what would it look like for our church to be profligate, to be wastefully extravagant with our love to someone who is in trouble and desperately needs help? God’s unconditional, undeserved, unlimited love lives in this world when it grows in and through us.







Benediction – enfleshed.com (adapted)



Hierarchies harm our hearts and our homes. 

May these hierarchies crumble.
May we instead look upon everything as a siblinghood:
Mustard green, radish, wood thrush,
the loved parts of ourselves,
the parts we are learning to love,
those comfortable in their oppression,
those clawing their way to new life,
those who need to lie down and rest,
most of us who are somewhere between.
Praise, praise, the Spirit meets us where we are.
Let us go forth. The garden awaits.