What
makes things grow? What makes plants grow? If you are a farmer and you want to
grow a crop, or a gardener, and you want to grow some vegetables, you know that
you have to plant the seeds.
Once the
seed is in the ground, there is not much more you can do. You can go out every
day and see how your seeds are growing. But looking at them does not make them
grow.
Our
modern day farmers might like to think that they do more, helping the plants
grow with fertilisers and pesticides. But the plants are much more dependent on
the weather, on the right amount of warmth and moisture, which you cannot
control.
They are
dependent on something else. They are dependent on the seeds themselves. For
the seeds hold the secret of life. Within the seeds are the living cells that
spring to life. Our agricultural scientists are doing lots of research about
how things grow. But they cannot make things grow.
So the
honest farmer will acknowledge that the growth that will finally yield his
harvest is out of his control. Rather the farmer will marvel as he watches the
crop he has planted shoot and develop and grow and fill out its grain ready for
harvest. And a farmer who knows God as the creator and giver will thank God for
this wonderful process of life and growth.
Jesus
uses this picture to describe the life and growth of the Kingdom of God.
Jesus said:
This
is what the kingdom of God is like.
A man scatters seed on the ground.
Night and day,
whether he sleeps or gets up,
the seed sprouts and grows,
though he does not know how.
All by itself the soil produces grain — first the stalk, then the head,
then the full kernel in the head.
As soon as the grain is ripe,
he puts the sickle to it,
because the harvest has come.
Mark 4:26-29
Jesus
speaks of the crop growing by itself – shooting up, sprouting leaves, growing
tall, forming a head, filling out with grain – while the farmer does nothing.
He just goes to bed at night, and gets up in the morning, and he does not know
how the plant grows so he just lets it grow, until it is time for him to go out
and harvest his crop.
The
Kingdom of God has a different sort of life. It is the life that God’s Spirit
creates, the life that is lived in the saving grace of a loving heavenly
Father. It is the life for which Jesus lived and died and rose again. It is
life beyond the terror and tragedy of earthly existence. It is life that is
lived in the fellowship of God. It is spiritual life.
When we
think of the Kingdom of God we might think of the glory of heaven. But when
Jesus taught of the Kingdom of God he usually used very earthy pictures,
because the Kingdom of God is created among people on earth.
And the
picture of the seed growing by itself tells us that it is not in our power to
make the kingdom grow. The Kingdom of God grows with a life that is beyond our
making. God works to create spiritual life, and to make this life grow. We do
not have the power to do so.
When we
think of the Kingdom of God on earth we think of the Christian church, for God
is giving life through the church. The gifts of God’s Word and the Lord’s
Sacraments are seeds that hold the mystery of life, the new life that comes
from Jesus Christ and is lived by the power of God’s Spirit.
We would
like the church to grow, and we often become frustrated because the church is
not growing. We ask what we can do to make it grow.
However
that is the wrong question. It is God who gives life to his Kingdom and makes
his Kingdom grow. The right question for us is how we can share in his life,
and how can the Kingdom of God grow through us?
We cannot
make the church grow. But we can be part of the growth of the church. And we
will be part of the growth of the church when we share fully in the life that
God gives.
Pastor Jim Pietsch
St Mark’s Lutheran Church, Melton
St Mark’s Lutheran Church, Melton