H. Michael Brewer
Crescent Springs Presbyterian
18 June 2006
SOWING THE SEED
Mark 4:26-29
The other day my neighbor Steve asked me what kind of grass seed I was using, because my patches of
new grass looked really green and healthy and his efforts to grow new grass had failed dismally. Turns out
we used the same kind of seed bought in the same store. I said, “Did you get the ground ready?”
He said, “Yeah.”
I said, “Did you give it plenty of water?”
He said, “Yeah.”
I said, “Go figure.”
He said, “Yeah.”
After a while, he went back to his grill and I returned to my weeding, each of us pondering the mystery.
“The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and
day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk,
then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle,
because the harvest has come.” (Mark 4:26-29 NRSV)
Of course, Jesus isn’t really talking about gardening. He’s talking about life. He’s talking about God’s
purposes unfolding in the world. He’s talking about you and me and how we make sense of discipleship and
work and grace.
And there is work to do in God’s kingdom. Gardens don’t grow without sweat and blisters. The ground
needs to be turned, the seeds planted, the soil watered and weeded. The work matters. The effort counts. Our
Lord expects us to sow the seed, to sow generously, offering what we have in the growing of God’s kingdom.
Oh, we’re tempted to let the whole thing slide. What difference could my efforts make? If I had some big
gifts, some major talents, then I’d get out there and do something. But I’m not a shaker and mover. I’m just a
little guy. What could I do?
You remember the story of little David the shepherd boy squaring off against giant Goliath. Do you also
remember that before David went into battle, King Saul dressed David in the King’s own armor? Bronze
helmet, chain mail, Saul’s big sword strapped to David’s belt. Then he took one step and almost collapsed.
According to Scripture, “He tried in vain to walk, for he was not used to [the armor].” (I Samuel 17:39) David’s
got top-of-the-line armor and kingly weapons, and he can’t put one foot in front of the other. About this time it
dawns on him, “If God wanted Saul to fight Goliath, God would have sent Saul. But God didn’t send Saul; God
sent me. If God wants me to do this thing, then I’d better be myself, even if my only gifts are a slingshot and a
few rocks.”
Want to waste your life and leave no mark on the world? Just ignore your own gifts and spend your years
wishing you had somebody else’s. Trust me. You’ll pass through this world without a ripple. Or you can quit
grieving about what you don’t have and make use of what you do.
Fanny Crosby was blind from infancy. She could have sat on the sidelines of life, bemoaning what she
didn’t have. But Fanny had a knack for verse, a gift for music, and she used what God gave her. She wrote
9,000 hymns, songs like Blessed Assurance and All the Way My Savior Leads Me. Only God knows how many
lives were touched, how many hearts were strengthened, how many souls found Christ because Fanny Jane
Crosby sowed the seeds that came to hand. Her gravestone bears these words from the Gospel of Luke:
“She hath done what she could.” I don’t know your calling. I don’t know your talents. I don’t know if you are
faithfully using the gifts God has put within your reach. But it’s a question worth asking yourself, and it’s a
question worth answering.
But our work isn’t the last word on anything. I like the story of the country preacher who dropped in on a
member of the flock one July afternoon. “That’s a beautiful garden you and God have grown,” the preacher
said. The farmer mopped sweat from his face and said, “Yes, it is, but you should have seen what a mess it
was when God was working it without me.”
I appreciate the sentiment, but I also understand that no amount of effort can make a seed grow. Work as
hard as we will, the mystery of grace remains. God invites us into a partnership, but in the end only God can
wake the seed, only God can give the growth, only God can bring the harvest. Everything we get is a gift.
Whether it’s gardening or living, we plant and water and pray, but the seed comes from the hand of God, and
the harvest arrives by the grace of God.
Gardening is risky business, beset by summers with too much rain or not enough, late frosts and early
frosts, beetles, caterpillars and blights. Discipleship is risky, too, investing ourselves in God’s kingdom when
so many destructive powers are working to blight that kingdom: poverty, war, runaway technology, fragmenting
families, racism, terrorism, materialism.
It doesn’t look good out there. The odds are stacked against God’s plans. So we might wonder, “Why
bother? Why keep trying? Why sow seeds that don’t stand a prayer of bearing fruit?”
Why? Because we trust God to awaken the seeds of God’s own choosing, to sprout the seeds down in
the secret places of the heart and the secret places of the world where no eye can see. We are trusting God to
nurture the growth, first the blade, then the stalk, then the flower. We are trusting God to uproot the weeds and
drive away the predators. In short, having done what we can do, having sowed the seeds we can sow, we
trust God to do the one thing that is forever beyond our power—to bring the harvest. We may not be able to
see it happening—not in ourselves, not in our communities, not in our world—but the trusting is at least as
important as the sowing.
I planted squash in my garden one summer and every single plant died, hit by some bug. The funny thing
is we still got plenty of squash from the vine that grew wild in the compost pile. Sometimes you plant the seed
and God blesses it. Other times, despite all the digging and sweating, the plants languish and die—and God
provides in some way you never expected.
That’s how it is in God’s garden. Uh, I mean God’s kingdom. We do our part. We sow the seeds. But
when the harvest comes, you know it was really God’s doing. That’s why every tomato tastes like grace.
Soli Deo Gloria!