Mark 4:26-29
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
March 2, 2025
Do you long to grow to be more like Jesus, and to see your faith family, your church, do the same?
Today’s parable encourages us to keep longing and hoping for such growth!
We know, from the other parables Jesus tells, that “seed” is for Him a preferred metaphor for God’s word. We further know, from many scriptures, that God has embedded into His every word a potent power to produce spiritual growth. That’s why God declares in Isaiah 55:11 that the word that “goes out from my mouth…shall not return to me empty” but shall “succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”
God typically relies on people to deliver His word. He first gives it to us and then asks us to “scatter” it all over the place. Our scattering His seed, like the farmer in today’s parable, is crucial. There’s no harvest unless we scatter God’s word.
It’s worth noting, however, that “scattering” takes no particular talent or skill. It amounts to just tossing around some light organic matter, almost randomly. After all, in the first parable we studied in this series, most of the seed the farmer tossed about fell where it could not grow!
While it’s often a mistake to draw a conclusion from what’s not there, it’s also worth noting that in the parable today there’s no mention of the farmer nurturing the ground either before or after he scatters seed upon it. It says nothing about his watering it, fertilizing it or weeding it. He may well have done such things, but Jesus doesn’t speak of such activity, because He’s focusing on God’s action, most of which the farmer has nothing to do with. Jesus emphasizes that the seed “sprouts and grows” of its own accord, and that the farmer “does not know how” that happens. He just expects it to happen by the seed’s own dynamism.
Moreover, just as the seed produces of itself, “the earth produces of itself”, no thanks to the farmer. The work of the farmer is to make a modest contribution and then bank on there being a life force embedded in the seed and a life force embedded in the earth, neither of which he put there, that’ll bring about the harvest even without his help. Things grow independent of his efforts.
Again, the parable doesn’t speak of the farmer doing anything after he scatters the seed until the harvest has already arrived, at which time he grabs a sickle and gathers in the crop. Until then, the plants develop on their own, around the clock – as much when he’s asleep as when he’s awake – as if to remind him his help isn’t essential and his contributions are next to nothing.
Today’s parable counteracts our tendency to take ourselves too seriously and to make too much of our responsibility. It brings home the fact that we don’t so much move the Kingdom of God along to its fulfillment as we tag along behind it as it fulfills itself by a dynamism we neither created nor kicked into action.
I think of a pastor who was called in to visit a man in a hospice house who’d started to think about meeting his Maker once he died. The men hit it off, and they talked freely about both ultimate matters and those of lesser consequence. In the course of those conversations, the dying man mentioned how much he missed going out and getting pastrami sandwiches. So the pastor began to bring him a pastrami sandwich every time they’d meet to talk about striking up a friendship with God.
The pastor had to be out of town for a month. By the time he returned, the man had passed. But he had left the pastor a note. It read in part: “You’ll be glad to know I finally gave my life to God. But I don’t want you to think my decision was due to your eloquent encouragement or beautiful prayers. It was entirely due to the pastrami sandwiches.” You know, there’s not much we need to do; but we very much need to do it!
To see the spiritual growth we long for, we have to do our little part; but we hang our hope on God’s doing the determinative part. We don’t trust in our plans and programs and performance – or in our diligence. At our best, we forsake self-importance, get out of God’s way and give God the freedom to work the wonders of His grace on His own. For His action alone is decisive.
As we so live, we 1) wait on God with patience, 2) let go and let God, and 3) hope in God with expectancy.
First, we wait on God with patience. The parable’s spelling out the growth stages through which the plants pass – “first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head” – reminds us how plants grow by means of a process that takes a while. We cannot hurry it. Things must follow their natural – or perhaps supernatural – progression. Our challenge here comes two facts: that the most significant growth rarely happens in an instant and that we can’t see it developing deep underground, hidden from view. No wonder Jesus in Luke 17:20 exclaims, “The Kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed.”
The greatest and most extensive changes are very often not immediately evident. We might, for example, look at the church and see it doing the same old things it’s been doing for decades – and doubt whether it’s growing at all. We have to remember that the most profound growth happens in the heart of each individual and in the spirit of a community as a whole. Such growth is initially invisible. Therefore, we have to “walk by faith, not by sight” as the Bible puts it.
Second, we let go and let God. We refrain from trying to force growth, and relinquish efforts to manage each stage of the process. We leave well enough alone by leaving things in God’s hands. We don’t kill plants by digging up seeds to supervise their germination or by pulling up sprouts to direct them in their development of their root system. We entrust our plants to God’s sovereignty over their life cycle.
In the life of the church, this means we don’t bully, badger or pressure anyone to do anything; we just offer opportunities, extend invitations and wait. Sometimes to love people best is to just leave them alone, with God.
We wait on God with patience. We let go and let God. Finally, we hope in God with expectancy. We embrace the truth the Apostle Paul articulated about the growth of the church in his day when he said: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” God alone gives us growth as individuals and as the church together. We count – not on our skill or energy in spreading the word, cultivating human soil or bringing in the harvest – but on the goodness and power of the One who makes it all happen. We believe that if we do what little we can, God will do what only He can. He’ll develop seedy sinners into fruitful plants of the Spirit whose bounty of good fruit – and pastrami sandwiches – will feed all who hunger for God and His righteousness.
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