Proper 68 2009
Mark 4:24-36
In
Nottingham England this notice appeared in the window of a small shop: “We
have been established for over 100 years and have been pleasing and displeasing customers ever since. We have made money and lost money. We have had good payers
and bad payers. We have been cussed and discussed, messed with, lied to and lied
about, held up, robbed, and swindled. The only reason we stay in business is
to see what happens next. It keeps us hoping.” (1)
And this notice could appear in
the monthly newsletter of a small church in southern Northumberland County, Virginia:
We have been established for over 360 years and folks have been pleased and displeased ever since. We have been solvent and insolvent, in magnificent brick buildings and one room wooden storehouses, We have had good tithers and no tithers. We
have been cussed and discussed, torn down, bricks sold, communion silver sent away, disappeared and rebuilt three times. The only reason we are still here is that God is not through with us and we want to
see what God will do with us next. It keeps us hoping.”
Small things: small churches, small seeds, small seedlings. Out of small
things, mighty things can grow and come.
When I lived in the Pacific Northwest,
I came to love the Douglas fir – we see them here shipped in as Christmas trees in November each year.
As I recall the Douglas fir does
not have cones like pines – they are more like cedars in their tiny seeds. When
a cutover forest is replanted, the Douglas fir seedlings are 4- 7 inches tall. The
mature Doulas firs in the forest grow to 300 feet if left untimbered. The tallest
one measured was almost 400 feet tall. (2) Out of small things, mighty things
can grow.
Small seeds: Seed are small and mustard seeds are among the smallest of seeds – about the size of the poppy seeds
we use in baking. Tomato seeds are small.
Tomatoes were discovered in what are now modern day Peru and Ecuador by Spanish explorers in the 16th Century,
spread throughout Spanish America. and have now spread throughout the world. From
a tiny seed to a gangly plant with heavy fruit.
At first Europeans wanted nothing
to do with tomatoes. Poorer Europeans that the tomato plant thrived on benign
neglect and that one tomato plant could produce enough seeds for a large garden, yielding bushels of tomatoes, year after
year after year. The poor discovered that tomatoes could be sun dried for the
winter. And then the poor of Naples Italy cooked some tomatoes into a sauce and
spread onto a staple of their diet, a thin circle of bread. I believe we call
it pizza.
And now can we possibly imagine
a world without tomatoes? Next time in the supermarket, just look at how many
things result from a small tomato seed. Out of small things, mighty things can
grow and come.
70 per cent of the congregations
in the Episcopal Church are small churches. They are the tomato seeds of Christianity. Most denominations are like this. I think
that these small churches, found in small villages and crossroads throughout
the western world, are the seeds that God uses to provide nourishment for his people.
From the seed of the small churches row the good works, the kindnesses, the witness of lives that stock the shelves
of God’s supermarket, the Creation.
Seeds do better when they are tended. The fruit on the shelves of the Creator requires nurturing, weeding, and tending. And we are God’s gardeners – and God’s seed – in the
great store of Creation.
Good gardeners are good nurturers. They nurture what they plant. And they
are quiet nurturers for the most part. Love of life, of the whole of Creation
and the Creator, love of our neighbors, is what makes us good gardeners of both plants and the Church.
Good gardeners know to have patience:
patience to plan ahead, to prepare the soil at harvest’s and in the spring,
to order the seed in midwinter, to wait until frost danger is over. Patience
because no human planted garden can spring into full sprouting over night. So: patience in planning and preparing, patience in tending, patience in watering, feeding,
weeding, cultivating. Patience in just waiting for seeds to sprouts, sprouts
to grow, for harvest to come.
That’s the kind of patience
and nurturing small churches need to do great things, the kind of patience – and hard work – that nurtures the
seed that Jesus plants for us to bring to good harvest.
AMEN.
1.
source unknown
2.
Illustrations for Proper 6B, Emphasis on line, CSSS publishing
