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Sermon
at The Church of
the Holy Apostles, New York City,
June 18, 2006, The
Second Sunday of Pentecost, Year B
by The Reverend William A. Greenlaw, Ph.D.
Ezekiel
31: 1-6, 10-14
Psalm 92: 1-4, 11-14
2 Corinthians 5:1-10
Mark 4:26-34
Two weeks ago we celebrated the Day of Pentecost with
great fanfare, pulling out all the stops as befits the third
greatest feast of faith. At the end of that service, the paschal
candle led us back to the font from which it had first come 50
days earlier at the Great Vigil of Easter. And we were reminded of
all that had come together in our journey from Advent to Christmas
to Epiphany to Lent to Holy Week to Good Friday—all leading to
those glorious great fifty days of Easter.
But the message in that return
procession to the font was that it is now we who are to take in
that proclamation as we seek to incarnate it in ourselves, our
church, our community, and, indeed, our world.
Now there is always a brief
detour in living out this liturgical drama, and that is observing
Trinity Sunday, done this year in conjunction with celebrating the
40th anniversary of Father Peter Carey’s ordination to
the priesthood. And what a grand day last Sunday was.
But today, truth-be-told, at
least some of us gather here with a sense of relief that we are
finally in what are not only the “Sundays after Pentecost,” but
what is also colloquially known as “ordinary time,” or what will
be the seemingly almost unending series of “green Sundays.” We’ve
had heights and depths, and despair, and then
incredible heights beyond measure, and more heights. And then
more heights, still.
This reminds me of a former
rector of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin describing his
conception of heaven as “one long high mass.” As enticing as that
might sound at first blush—at least to one in the early day’s of
being enthralled by “smells and bells,” I began to think of that
image as rather wearying—or, heaven help me, even boring—as in too
much of a good thing!
All of which is to say, at some
point, we need to come back down from the mountaintop, to catch
our breath, to be a bit more relaxed, to regain perspective and
balance. It’s not unlike what some of us, myself included, have
come to feel about Lent in recent years. And that is that its
simplicity and directness and lack of being remotely close to our
sometimes over-the-top festive times here is a relief—at least for
a few weeks.
This is also not unlike the
balance I find between what we do on Sunday mornings and what we
do on Tuesday evenings. Sundays we are at our more extraverted
best, doing what we do as well as we can make it happen, with
God’s grace. And make no mistake, what we do on the Lord’s day is
normative for us. But what happens at our Tuesday eucharist and
Bible study is also wonderful. For there we can find our quieter,
more introspective, more reflective side. It is where the church
can sometimes be almost quiet, rather than our wonderful, natural
acoustic amplifying not only every intended sound but also every
unintended noise that can sometimes make finding peace and
quietness very hard on a Sunday. Yet we need both the inner and
the outer to be in some kind of balance in order to be whole and
healthy—and if you have not experienced Tuesday nights, I invite
you to experience that part of our corporate life sometime soon.
It is certainly fitting that on
this first Sunday of ordinary time, we are helped to get our
bearings by reflecting on the Kingdom of God—not at least at this
time in terms of the ultimate hope of the church, but as a
present-day reality that is available and accessible to us—if only
we can be open and discerning.
The late canon theologian of this
diocese, Richard Norris, liked to put it this way: When Jesus
proclaimed to his hearers that the Kingdom of God was at hand, he
came bearing in himself what it was he proclaimed.
That is to say, in the very
encounter with this Jesus, there was an uncanny presence that
simply overwhelmed those who had eyes to see and ears to hear.
There was something available and accessible and gracious. To
encounter this Jesus was to be marked for life, marked indelibly
in one’s whole being. For this was and is of God.
If only we can be open and
discerning, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, we can know
unmistakably that we too are invited in—and in a way, that
is what the whole Advent to Pentecost cycle we have observed the
last six months does liturgically.
But then as now, folks want to
know, they want to know what this Kingdom of God actually
is. And that is where Jesus answers in his most
characteristic fashion—by telling parables. The most seemingly
ordinary human situations could be turned into occasions for
encountering the kingdom of God. Consider that Jesus never really
flat out defines the Kingdom of God. No, he more often than not,
starts out saying, “the Kingdom of God is like…..,” and then he
goes on to weave a human situation we and all his listeners could
easily picture.
It is important to realize that
this means Jesus himself is not anything like a literalist. He
doesn’t tell it like it is, laying it all out, just so, in linear
fashion. Rather, he tells a story. He does something like
creating a dream-world in the listeners’ mind, and, by drawing
upon human intuition, he invites his listeners to ponder the
meaning of his tales. The truth of the parables is evoked
rather than simply laid out. Jesus is, if you will, a poet.
There is, therefore, an elusive quality about his parables. They
are elliptical, rich in layers and shades of meaning. Their depth
is astonishing, especially if we are willing to struggle and work
with them.
And so, let’s take
a very brief look at our two parables for today. The first
consists of three short sentences. “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.”
A farmer scatters
seed. And then this farmer takes it easy, just keeping an eye on
things as they grow. Finally, the farmer comes in and takes the
harvest when it’s ready.
The only problem
here is that in Jesus’ time, any farmer would spend a good bit of
every day manually clearing away stones, pulling weeds, keeping
his crops safe from harm as best he could. It was back-breaking
work. There was no free lunch here. Yet Jesus portrays a farmer
who sows his seed and then does nothing more than make sure he
gets plenty of rest. He watches it all come together. And then
he collects from the bounty. And this is supposed to be like unto
the Kingdom of God. Or, as one wit put it, this is Jesus telling
his hearers about the “Zen of farming.”
But, imagining that
this parable is about farming is tantamount to saying Moby Dick
is about whaling. Well, there may be some truth in that, but,
oh my, there is so much more, and it is the “so much more”
that is precisely the point: The growth or lack thereof of the
Kingdom of God is not, is not, within our control or our
power, any more than the farmer actually gives life to the seed.
We do not control or make possible the growth of the kingdom or
even the discovery of it. Rather, God does, even as God
ultimately enables seeds to grow.
What matters is
that we are available to God, present to the Spirit, open
to receiving the blessings and fruit of the Kingdom. Open to
sowing. Open to reaping. Open to recognizing that it is God who
gives the growth—and who wills that for us and for all creation.
We do not build the
Kingdom; the kingdom builds us. God works in us in ways that are
mysterious and grace-filled. Those who are so blessed, simply
know, simply experience themselves as blessed beyond measure
by something quite beyond themselves. And in being open to living
our lives in the light of this knowledge and experience, we, and
those we encounter, can experience God’s presence in countless
grace-filled ways.
If we turn for a
moment to the parable of the mustard seed, we have here but two
sentences: “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 makes nests in its shade.”
The parable of the
mustard seed is a clarion call to beware: the things that are of
God may seem insignificant, even unimportant from our vision just
now, perhaps especially the world’s vision just now—as in, for
example, every meal served, every act of kindness, every
counseling session held with the every single soup kitchen guest,
created in the image of God and of inestimable value to God. And
how about in every interaction members of this community have with
one another? Of how we express, however indirectly, the faith
that is within us in those we encounter in our workplace, in our
daily lives?
Herbert O’Driscoll
has put it beautifully in speaking of the kingdom: “Small is
large.” From megadeals and megastores to megabytes, our culture
is fixated on the large, the grand—and we might well add, the
gross. Small, especially the really small, is scarcely worth
mentioning, scarcely worth even noticing.
The point of all
this is, of course, to see that the seemingly small can in fact
loom very large indeed. A small gesture, a small act of kindness,
a decision to pray, to ask God for help and guidance, our giving
of ourselves in reaching out to another—any one of these things
can be that seed which can grow and transform our situation,
transform others, even transform ourselves in the process.
Holy Apostles is
an extraverted sort of place, where we rightly and properly, in my
opinion, spend a great deal of time and energy on the big issues
of the day that so consume our world, our nation, our city, our
church. Our vision is large and our witness is large.
But precisely
because of the largeness and even comprehensiveness of our vision,
we run the risk, I run the risk, of losing our appreciation for
the seemingly “small” things that have everything to do with the
quality and meaning of our lives and can make such a difference in
the lives of those we encounter—and in our own lives. And the
miracle is, so often this is where we can also find the very
presence of God in our lives, in that still, small voice.
With what can we
compare the Kingdom of God? Consider the seeds that are all
around us and within each one of us. Let them be sown in all the
nooks and crannies of our lives. And then wait. Wait to reap the
abundant harvest of all that God can do with those seeds.
Amen.
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