 | The New England Church PulpitNew England Congregational Church UCC |
"SEEDS OF HOPE" | Mark 1.1-20 | March 21, 2004 |
The hope by which Jake lived is not unlike that which Jesus talked about in this parable. There is a lot of living in the hope of a Burpee’s seed catalog, there’s a lot of hope in a seed which one plants. The mystery of the seed planted in the trusted soil is the hope of which winter dreams are made.
The infinitely great is already in the infinitely small. The tiny seed contains a handful of grain and the tall stalk that holds it. The beautiful flowers, enough for a bouquet, and the stem that holds them are already in the tiny seed. You can’t see it, and it seems a preposterous hope, but it is there. A word of encouragement planted in the heart of a discouraged child can transform an adult life. The daily bump and grind of parenthood seems fruitless sometimes, but small seeds of love and kindness, seeds of acceptance and challenge result in huge rewards in the garden of adulthood.
When seed is scattered, Mark reminds us, the seed sprouts up whether the gardener worries about it or forgets about it, whether the gardener knows how the seeds germinate or is uninformed about the process, whether the gardener believes that it will grow or doubts that it will grow. There is something about the seed and the soil, the seed trusting the soil and the soil nurturing the seed, that causes plants to grow.
We want to believe that the seeds of hope, the seeds of joy, the seeds of peace which the divine gardener has planted will come to fruition, but we live in a time of anxiety and we often feel we must ‘help God out’ with the fertilizer of worry or by cultivating angst or by genetically engineering the seed just in case God hasn’t realized that things could be perfect.
Michael Sandel has written an article in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly entitled ‘The Case Against Perfection’ that is a paradigm for living with the unknown. In it he talks about a world gone mad with engineering perfection in everything from plants to athletic competition to children. The risk of losing and the necessity of winning at all costs has prompted us human gardeners to undermine what William May calls an ‘openness to the unbidden.’ We don’t want to take chances that we’ll lose, we’re afraid of the unknown, we’re afraid that the seeds we plant won’t turn out to be the plants we want.
In the stage play The Fantastics, the two fathers, who are gardeners, are bemoaning the difference between the seed of their loins and the seeds they plant. They praise the predictability of the garden: plant a radish, get a radish, not a brussels sprout. That’s why I like vegetables you know what you’re about. Children, they pine, are not as predictable, and require an openness to the unbidden.
Sandel talks about the new world of planting the seeds of our offspring, however, as if they were so many vegetable seeds. We have the technology to create designer children. If they choose, parents can now choose the gender of their child in vitro before conception by choosing the right seed from the father in advance. With cutting-edge technology and a fair amount of precision, parents can choose to create a child with athletic prowess and can choose to abort a child with musical talent, or vice versa. “The problem,” Sandel comments, “is not that parents usurp the autonomy of a child they design. The problem lies in the hubris of the designing parents, in their arrogant drive to master the mystery of birth. Even if this disposition did not make parents tyrants to their children, it would disfigure the relation between parent and child, and deprive the parent of the humility and enlarged human sympathies that an openness to the unbidden can cultivate.”
William May points out that parents give their children two kinds of love: accepting love and transforming love. Accepting love affirms the being of the child, whereas transforming love seeks the well-being of the child. Each aspect corrects the excesses of the other. A child that is only accepted as is, without challenging them to bigger and better, is a child that knows little future. A child that is only seen as valid if he or she is transformed into something bigger and better, is a children driven to perfection and non-being. This insight is instructive for people of faith who believe in trusting the unbidden, open to the natural possibilities of seed and soil. Finding the balance between accepting love and transforming love is the goal of the gardener in God’s world garden. Developing sensibilities to what needs to be accepted and what needs to be transformed is the life of faith. In life there are no guarantees, no matter how much we try to engineer things. Control is an illusion at all points. Life is not as predictable as planting carrot seeds and getting carrots. It is, however, exciting to see seeds of love and acceptance and transformation blossom into whatever God would have them become. One never knows when an act of love will take root and grow. One never knows how a deed of kindness will flower in another’s life. And the obsession of controlling, the angst of knowing and the arrogance of wanting guarantees should not deter our willingness to sow seeds of both acceptance and challenge.
The life of faith invites us to abide the unexpected, to live with dissonance, to rein in the impulse to control. We cannot control where seeds will fall, whether on rocky soil, or in shallow soil, or in the hot sun that might kill shallow-rooted plants. Our job is not to control the planting or engineer the soil or the seed to guarantee success by our standards. Our goal is a life of faith that is hospitable to the unbidden, willing to affirm the wonderful diversity God creates as life’s garden, ready to challenge sprouting seeds to maturity in faith. God’s world garden is planted with seeds of many kinds and tended by all kinds of gardeners in all kinds of soil that will produce all kinds of flowers. People of faith are challenged and transformed by the diversity, by the unknown, by the rocky soil by the scorching sun. This is the seed catalog that generates hope in the possibilities of a world still evolving. Amen.
–Gary L. McCann
Koran 15.19-26
We have spread out the earth and set upon it immovable mountains. We have planted it with every seasonable fruit, providing sustenance for yourselves and for those whom you do not provide for. We hold the story of every blessing, and send it down in appropriate measure. We let loose the fertilizing winds and bring down water from the sky for you to drink; its stores are beyond your reach. It is surely We who ordain life and death. We are the Heir of all things.
(Translated by N. J. Dawood)
PASTORAL PRAYER
God of life, we give thanks for blessings that have come our way, for the joys of life that energize us and send us out in new ways at the beginning of each new day. For things that we labeled bad that were ultimately good, for unexpected joys found in everyday experiences, and for a good night’s rest at the end of the day, we give thanks.
God of our world, because we love the world we live in we pray for the grace to quarrel with it. You have had a lover’s quarrel with the world since the beginning, and this has become the history of the world, and you have called us to enter into the fray. Give us the insight to argue with the worship of success and power, with the assumption that people are less than their ratio of productivity, with the notion that we are only what we do, and with the accepted myth that we are only successful if we have money, position, achievement, and power.
During this lenten season, may we reevaluate our assessments of success, the purpose of power, the value of money, the prestige of position, and the goals of achievement that all of these may be in keeping with the larger purposes of your love of the people in our world than in our own personal gain. Give us the courage to admit to our own misguided attempts to create life in our own image and in ways that would guarantee our contentment at the expense of others. Give us a change of heart and a change of direction.
Give to those who are grieving a glimpse of hope, to those who are ill a vision of wholeness, to those who are ravaged by war the dream of peace. To those who are homebound and those discouraged, give encouragement. To those who are celebrating, give joy and delight.
May this day have all that we need to serve and all that we need to be all that we can be. In the name of the Christ, Amen.
| Copyright © 2004 by Gary L. McCann. All rights reserved. |