Pentecost 4 Mark 4:26-34 “Growing in Christ”
Ezekiel 17:22-24 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 Mark 4:26-34
I grew up in the farm country of Northeastern Pennsylvania. I worked on neighboring farms and helped my father plant and tend a garden through the years I spent living at home. The farmers in the area would plant one or two huge crops of corn, beans or grass hay on their properties, and each year they would plant different crops.
In our gardens we would plant a whole variety of plants such as sweet corn, cabbage, radishes, carrots, potatoes and tomatoes. I liked radishes because they grew really fast and even though they were small early on in the year, there were lots of them and it was only a short time before you could begin to harvest them. Potatoes on the other hand had to grow all year long and we normally waited until the frost had killed the plant before we dug them up.
One year, we moved our garden to another part of the field and let the weeds take over the old garden. That year our garden did not do so well. So the next spring, we started to dig up the old garden and to our surprise, the garden was full of really nice potatoes. Here it was springtime and we had more potatoes from our garden than we ever had before. They grew all by themselves; hidden in the weeds over the summer and protected from the frost by being in the ground, we had no idea that they were even there until we turned over the soil.
Gardens are not as popular as they were when I was growing up, but in Biblical times, farming, ranching and fishing were the main occupations. So when Jesus wanted to tell the people about the kingdom of God, He spoke to them in parables comparing the Kingdom to the things people were familiar with.
Parables were His favorite way of teaching, and Mark tells us Jesus did not say anything to the crowds without using parables.
Jesus made His teachings come alive and captivated audiences by using parables. His lessons however, were not obvious in their meaning to those who heard them. On the contrary, His parables required a great deal of thought and a certain amount of knowledge from the Old Testament from the listener. The prophecy spoken of in Ezekiel helps immensely in gaining a better understanding of what Jesus was saying. The point is the more you cultivate your knowledge about the Bible, the more you grow in the understanding of God’s word.
So although, His parables have a revealing nature, the lessons also have a concealing quality about them. Jesus did not use parables to explain things to people's satisfaction. Rather He called attention to the incompleteness of all their previous explanations and understandings. Essentially, He did more to upset his hearer’s understanding than to assist it.
Our Lord’s parables in today’s lesson essentially knocked the props out from under their current understanding of the Kingdom of God. Many of the Jewish people and even to a certain extent, His own disciples thought that the kingdom would come visibly and with great fanfare. So, before Jesus could assist their understanding, he had to upset their understanding. Then, after they had thought about it for a while--pondered, studied and struggled over it, Jesus would explain His parables to them.
Even so, Jesus had to teach them over and over again that God’s kingdom is a spiritual Kingdom, not an earthly kingdom. Saint Luke (17:20,21) records that Jesus told His disciples and the Pharisees, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.”
God’s earthly kingdom is found in the hearts of God’s people. God establishes His kingdom in the hearts of people through the planting of His word in our hearts. Remember, “Faith comes through hearing.” Romans 10:17
So the key to understanding our lesson today is to know that the seed planted in the soil is the Word of God planted in the hearts of men. Just as seed has some mysterious and wonderful power to grow and produce a harvest in fields and gardens, God’s word has a mysterious and wonderful power to grow in the hearts of people. And those people in turn produce a harvest for the Lord. Ask any farmer or gardener and they will quickly tell you that the person who sows the seed has nothing to do with the power, through which the seed grows.
We may witness the gospel to those around, indeed that is what Jesus has commanded us to do, but it is up to God to make the seeds grow. So also anyone who plants the seed of God’s word can only stand by and let the word work by itself. Sure we can decide we do not want to plant His seeds. And we can hinder its growth by planting it carelessly, but we cannot cause it to grow. Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians (3:7), “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.” Only God creates faith in the hearts of men. Our job is to witness—to plant the seeds of God’s word in the hearts of people around us. God will decide whose hearts He will open up.
Neither the one who sows the seed nor the one in whom the seed had been planted is responsible for the growth. Instead, the power is in the seed itself, that seed is the very word of God.
Usually we can see the growth in a Christian’s life from the beginning of faith to Christian maturity. If you have ever planted tomatoes and watched how fast they grow it sometimes amazes us.
The same can be said of some people, the Holy Spirit works in their hearts and you can see the change in their hearts. Sometimes their growth is slow, but they grow up strong and steadfast in their faith like a mighty oak tree.
Others however, are like potatoes in a hidden and forgotten field. They grow up in broken homes or live in places where the word of God is rarely spoken and yet someone told them or they read about God’s word or perhaps they were even baptized as a baby—and that was all that was necessary. God’s word took hold and one day to everyone’s surprise and joy, there they were, walking in faith, trusting in Jesus Christ. I pray that we will all be excited and happily surprised at who is in heaven when God calls us home.
When God calls people home however is also a cause for concern among us. The problem we sometimes have lies with the timing of the harvest. God doesn’t always wait for us to reach maturity in our Christian growth before He takes us to heaven. From our point of view God calls children home too soon while He leaves elderly to linger too long. Sometimes we pick tomatoes while they are still green and sometimes we wait for bananas to become overripe depending on how we want to use them. “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
Of course God does not treat us as fruits and vegetables, you are much more important than that. You are so important that Jesus Christ died for your sins so that you could live with Him in heaven for all eternity. But God will not keep us away from His eternal reward one moment longer than necessary. Still we miss those who He has called home. And we worry about whether those who were young had enough faith or whether the old will have lost their faith because of their afflictions.
The good news however is that the seed, which has just sprouted, and the seed that has reached maturity have an equal place in God’s kingdom. God plants the seeds of faith, not us. So those who are young in their faith those whose faith has matured still receive the gift of salvation and eternal life. That gift is given to you and to me freely through the Holy Spirit. Again remember what Paul tells us in Ephesians (2:9-10) “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
The Holy Spirit gives faith to you and me. We witness our faith to others and the kingdom of God grows. It grows within the hearts of all men in which the Holy Spirit successfully plants the Word. Once the seed is planted it prospers, even though His word may remain hidden at times, it is silently growing. God promised that in His word spoken through Isaiah, “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”(Isaiah 55:10-11)
So today I encourage all of you to be patient and lean not on your own understanding, but listen to the word of God. Study and learn the scriptures and the word of God will grow in your hearts and fill you with confidence and security that the world cannot give.
I’ll tell you a secret. The Word of God, the seed that is planted in your heart is also Jesus Christ.
John tells you so in the opening of His Gospel. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. (John 1:1-5)
When the Holy Spirit entered into your heart and began to grow, that light started to shine in your heart. The Word is no longer a secret among you who know Jesus. And each time you read the Bible, look for Jesus on each and every passage. Jesus is the key that unlocks the Bible. He is the Living Word, hidden in the Bible, hidden in Baptism and in the Lord’s Supper. He is also growing inside of you. So likewise, you are growing in Christ each time you turn to Him in faith; each time you worship Him in word and sacraments.
You now live by faith and not by sight. Jesus may come to you unseen now, but one day He will come back and His angels will to carry you home. How will they recognize you as belonging to God? Because the Word is growing within you. And when the angels look at you, they will see one who has grown in His image. “We shall be like him, for we shall see Him as He is.” (1 John 3:2) In Jesus Name, Amen.