A Kingdom Like Dandelions
June 14, 2009
June 14, 2009
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Mark 4:26-34, 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
We have a garden in the backyard – and this year, I was busy, and we didn’t get around to planting yet. But last weekend, Carl wanted me to look at the garden anyway, because he thought something was growing there…so off we went and found about a dozen pumpkin plants doing very well. This is particularly interesting because I have wanted a pumpkin patch for a while, but never planted one. We couldn’t agree on where it should be. So here it is. Our very own pumpkin patch growing just fine, without any help at all from us…including planting. We didn’t plant this patch. So we puzzled over this for a while until I figured it out. I asked Carl if he had added compost to the garden this year. Yes, it turns out that he did. And he also composted our Halloween pumpkins last fall…but as it turns out, the seeds hadn’t fully composted yet, so we have the surprise gift of a pumpkin patch when we didn’t expect it. The Kingdom of God, growing in my backyard….
Today’s passage from the Gospel reminds us that Jesus often taught in parables. As one scholar said, “In the preaching of Jesus, parables were not vivid decorations of a moralistic point but were disturbing stories that threatened the hearer’s secure mythological world – the world of assumptions by which we habitually live, the unnoticed framework of our thinking within which we interpret other data.”
How are these parables disturbing or threatening? They sound kind of good, actually – the seed that grows, like my pumpkins, all on its own – automate, in the Greek – without watering or tending. This was a story that people in a dry country with non-irrigated agriculture could relate to – what a delight! The crop raises itself and eventually is ready for the harvest.
In that, the crop is entirely different than babies. Children do not raise themselves, as Bobbi and Steve Bradley and Brita and Todd Hansen are already well aware. However, children do become themselves – it is amazing how much of who they are is already present at birth. Naomi is very outgoing – Madelynn is shyer. It may be that only one of them comes around to meet all of you this morning. Children are not blank slates at all. They come into our lives already being individual persons, like seeds in that so much of what they will grow into already present, encoded in who they are. Later we may recognize that much of who they have grown into was present early, although we didn’t recognize it yet.
That’s also a theme in this morning’s story from the Hebrew Scriptures. By way of background, earlier the people of Israel had asked for a king, so they could be like the other nations. Up to that time they were ruled by judges. God advised against it, but in the end, agreed to providing a king. King Saul was the first king of Israel, but he didn’t work out so well – and as we will hear in this passage, God had changed God’s mind about Saul as king – this is actually a wonderful piece of theology, that God is openminded, and changes God’s mind…. but that’s a sermon for another day.
So God tells Samuel, who is the prophet at the time, that he is to go to Bethlehem and meet with a man named Jesse, and God will tell him which of the sons of Jesse is to be the new king. And it is quite the scene, because if the prophet is coming to visit, the people there will be afraid that he comes on a mission from God or the king, and either way, they’re thinking it could be bad news. So they are afraid until he says he comes in peace and is only going to offer a sacrifice to God. And he goes to the home of Jesse, to anoint one of his sons…and you can just imagine this story as one after another of the sons of Jesse parade before Samuel – all of them impressive, but Samuel hears that God is not looking at appearances, but at the heart of each young man. Listen for the word of the Lord [the reading from 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13].
Can’t you just see that scene? One after another come the sons of Jesse – handsome, strong young men, and one after another God says to Samuel, “Not this one….” And so after seven, Samuel says, “Are these all of them?” and Jesse says something like, “Well, there’s the little guy – but he’s out tending the sheep.” And so Samuel sends for David…and although God has already said he doesn’t look at the outward appearance, we are told that David is pretty impressive anyway. And so we must presume that he must be even more special from within. And he is anointed king…although it remains a secret for a while.
So much of today’s readings are about what lies within, beyond sight, beyond our knowing…but within God’s sight. If only we could see with Kingdom eyes, if we could see as God sees, maybe we wouldn’t dismiss the little guy, or the fields where it seems that nothing is growing yet. How often do we dismiss the person who doesn’t seem to have much to offer, or the folks who don’t see things our way, or ourselves when we don’t seem to be progressing as we think we should?
How many people two years ago thought there was no point in paying attention to a young, relatively new senator from Illinois with a funny name?
How many people in British India thought there was no reason to pay attention to the peace activist in the handspun simple garb…until Gandhi led his people to independence, nonviolently?
How many people in the Roman Empire paid attention to the little band of believers – slaves, fishermen, women, and other no-accounts…until they grew into a Church that would change the world?
How many times have people in our own time dismissed the Church in the modern era, because it doesn’t seem to make a difference anymore – maybe in the civil rights movement, maybe in the abolitionist movement, maybe around child labor…but is the Church really a force for justice now? Or a force for change in our own lives? It could be. Maybe the Church is going to make the difference for some people who don’t have the right to marry yet. Maybe the Church together with Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Baha’i and others will be the force that helps people to understand climate change as a moral issue.
Perhaps the church isn’t a force for justice in our time because these parables rarely disturb us? Perhaps we’ve settled for faith as a comfort, and not allowed our faith to challenge us – but if we’re not challenged by our faith, if we’re not challenged by the Bible, then we can be sure we aren’t understanding what God is trying to say to us. God claims us as children of God…and called to go into the world as people of the kingdom – we don’t get one without the other. We are all both claimed and called. Maybe when we let God a difference in us, then the Church – you, and me, and God through all of us, will be able to make a difference in the world.
Today we have two baptisms, and I am particularly excited about these two, because together they say so much about the church and how God weaves us all together. One of the babies being baptized today is the daughter of a child of this church who is herself a child of a child of this church. Naomi is the fourth generation of her family to be a part of this church at one time or another. And her parents, Brita and Todd, are living in Texas so that her mother, Brita, can continue studying to become a Minister of Word and Sacrament.
The other baby being baptized today is the daughter of Steve and Bobbi, who are one of the couples who joined Frame during our most recent new member class. Madelynn’s parents have just begun worshipping at Frame this year. They have been members for two months. And I am excited that they have decided to become part of this worshipping community. New members bring a lot to a faith community – they bring new interests, new passions and they help us to redefine how we are called as a congregation – because our call comes out of who we are, and when who we are changes, our call changes, too.
Throughout time, God has repeatedly said to the people of God things like: Tell this story again and again, live by this tradition, each year have this celebration – God has shaped a people who are shaped by tradition. And God has also said to the people of God things like, do not remember the things of old for I am doing a new thing among you. And God has said, you have heard it said in the past but now I say it to you differently. And God has directed the people of God to welcome the stranger and the newcomer.
The Church is not a monument to what has come before and doesn’t change – it is, like the Wisconsin River or the River Jordan, a living flow. And just as you can never step into the same river twice…because the water moves on and flows to the sea, so it should be that you can never come to the same church twice, because we are growing and changing, and responding to the ways we understand God to be calling us to each new era.
We are to be a people who are woven together of the old and the new, of tradition and innovation, of the way we have always done it and the new ideas. The church needs both: people who have been here for generations and people who are coming today for the first time. We need to learn from the stories we have heard again and again, and to recognize that even now, God is planting seeds that will grow into something new in our midst.
And will grow all over – for the kingdom isn’t confined to this church and this town…and baptism isn’t about this congregation either. Madelynn and Naomi will be baptized into the church of Jesus Christ – and so they will be connected, as are we all, to the churches where Todd and Steve and Bobbi grew up, and the churches where their grandparents and great-grandparents worship, and the churches throughout the world who live at the crossroads of centuries of tradition, and God’s new activity in their midst.
One of the stories from the Gospel was about the seeds that were planted and then grew, all by themselves, into a crop to be harvested. The other parable, perhaps the more disturbing parable, is the parable of the mustard seed. We tend to think of this parable as being about the small things that grow into important things. But I think there is more going on here than that – after all, all seeds grow into plants that are much bigger than they start out to be. The parable of the mustard seed is a little less obvious – we need to know a little about the mustard plant in the Middle East. It is not exactly a large plant, Mark correctly describes it as a shrub. It’s not so much large in size as it is large in scope – it is prolific. It is, to be precise, a weed. And Jesus says, the kingdom is like a crop that we harvest…and the kingdom is also like weeds that sprout up all over. The kingdom is like unexpected gifts…and the kingdom is also like persistent annoyances. Think about dandelions – one of the weeds with which we all contend. No matter how hard you try to get rid of them, they still come back. Just a single dandelion can infect much of your yard after a little breeze. They even push their way up through the sidewalk. And yet, from a distance – like many annoyances – they are really quite lovely.
When we think of the Kingdom of God as being like dandelions, we understand that the Kingdom of God can sprout, unwelcome, into the most orderly plans. The kingdom of God, once the winds of the Spirit encounter it, can spread. The Kingdom of God isn’t always what we expect…or want. And the Kingdom of God can persist in the most inhospitable circumstances. And we aren’t responsible for making it happen. Like the untended crop, AND like dandelions, God brings it into being. The Kingdom is God’s project; we don’t make it happen, and we can’t keep it from happening. Maybe that’s the disturbing news in the parable for us, who tend to live so much by our own efforts.
But we can welcome the Kingdom, as we pray almost each week in the Lord’s Prayer: thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We can welcome this dandelion kingdom that comes unbidden and in ways no one expected.
And in presenting their daughters for baptism, the Bradleys and the Hansens, like so many others of us, are welcoming the Kingdom into their own lives, and opting for living in God, where they will have unexpected gifts, and unwanted annoyances. If they choose to embrace what Richard Foster calls the “with-God” life, they will live deeply, and experience joys and challenges they would not experience if they made their own wishes the foundation for their family life. They will find themselves nudged by God, comforted by God, strengthened by God, provoked by God, loved by God, and led by God into places they would not have chosen on their own.
And so do we all when we choose the “with-God” life instead of the “me-first” life. We choose to serve someone other than ourselves, we choose to cast our lot with a kingdom of ragtags, ruffians, ragamuffins and royalty. We choose a life of harvests and dandelions, of love, laughter and loneliness, of difficulty, depth and delight, a life at the intersection of now and forever, a life in which we are connected with all of life, and often out of step with our own culture; we choose to be carried, like the dandelion, by the wind of the Spirit. In short, we choose a life in the Kingdom. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Mark 4:26-34, 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
We have a garden in the backyard – and this year, I was busy, and we didn’t get around to planting yet. But last weekend, Carl wanted me to look at the garden anyway, because he thought something was growing there…so off we went and found about a dozen pumpkin plants doing very well. This is particularly interesting because I have wanted a pumpkin patch for a while, but never planted one. We couldn’t agree on where it should be. So here it is. Our very own pumpkin patch growing just fine, without any help at all from us…including planting. We didn’t plant this patch. So we puzzled over this for a while until I figured it out. I asked Carl if he had added compost to the garden this year. Yes, it turns out that he did. And he also composted our Halloween pumpkins last fall…but as it turns out, the seeds hadn’t fully composted yet, so we have the surprise gift of a pumpkin patch when we didn’t expect it. The Kingdom of God, growing in my backyard….
Today’s passage from the Gospel reminds us that Jesus often taught in parables. As one scholar said, “In the preaching of Jesus, parables were not vivid decorations of a moralistic point but were disturbing stories that threatened the hearer’s secure mythological world – the world of assumptions by which we habitually live, the unnoticed framework of our thinking within which we interpret other data.”
How are these parables disturbing or threatening? They sound kind of good, actually – the seed that grows, like my pumpkins, all on its own – automate, in the Greek – without watering or tending. This was a story that people in a dry country with non-irrigated agriculture could relate to – what a delight! The crop raises itself and eventually is ready for the harvest.
In that, the crop is entirely different than babies. Children do not raise themselves, as Bobbi and Steve Bradley and Brita and Todd Hansen are already well aware. However, children do become themselves – it is amazing how much of who they are is already present at birth. Naomi is very outgoing – Madelynn is shyer. It may be that only one of them comes around to meet all of you this morning. Children are not blank slates at all. They come into our lives already being individual persons, like seeds in that so much of what they will grow into already present, encoded in who they are. Later we may recognize that much of who they have grown into was present early, although we didn’t recognize it yet.
That’s also a theme in this morning’s story from the Hebrew Scriptures. By way of background, earlier the people of Israel had asked for a king, so they could be like the other nations. Up to that time they were ruled by judges. God advised against it, but in the end, agreed to providing a king. King Saul was the first king of Israel, but he didn’t work out so well – and as we will hear in this passage, God had changed God’s mind about Saul as king – this is actually a wonderful piece of theology, that God is openminded, and changes God’s mind…. but that’s a sermon for another day.
So God tells Samuel, who is the prophet at the time, that he is to go to Bethlehem and meet with a man named Jesse, and God will tell him which of the sons of Jesse is to be the new king. And it is quite the scene, because if the prophet is coming to visit, the people there will be afraid that he comes on a mission from God or the king, and either way, they’re thinking it could be bad news. So they are afraid until he says he comes in peace and is only going to offer a sacrifice to God. And he goes to the home of Jesse, to anoint one of his sons…and you can just imagine this story as one after another of the sons of Jesse parade before Samuel – all of them impressive, but Samuel hears that God is not looking at appearances, but at the heart of each young man. Listen for the word of the Lord [the reading from 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13].
Can’t you just see that scene? One after another come the sons of Jesse – handsome, strong young men, and one after another God says to Samuel, “Not this one….” And so after seven, Samuel says, “Are these all of them?” and Jesse says something like, “Well, there’s the little guy – but he’s out tending the sheep.” And so Samuel sends for David…and although God has already said he doesn’t look at the outward appearance, we are told that David is pretty impressive anyway. And so we must presume that he must be even more special from within. And he is anointed king…although it remains a secret for a while.
So much of today’s readings are about what lies within, beyond sight, beyond our knowing…but within God’s sight. If only we could see with Kingdom eyes, if we could see as God sees, maybe we wouldn’t dismiss the little guy, or the fields where it seems that nothing is growing yet. How often do we dismiss the person who doesn’t seem to have much to offer, or the folks who don’t see things our way, or ourselves when we don’t seem to be progressing as we think we should?
How many people two years ago thought there was no point in paying attention to a young, relatively new senator from Illinois with a funny name?
How many people in British India thought there was no reason to pay attention to the peace activist in the handspun simple garb…until Gandhi led his people to independence, nonviolently?
How many people in the Roman Empire paid attention to the little band of believers – slaves, fishermen, women, and other no-accounts…until they grew into a Church that would change the world?
How many times have people in our own time dismissed the Church in the modern era, because it doesn’t seem to make a difference anymore – maybe in the civil rights movement, maybe in the abolitionist movement, maybe around child labor…but is the Church really a force for justice now? Or a force for change in our own lives? It could be. Maybe the Church is going to make the difference for some people who don’t have the right to marry yet. Maybe the Church together with Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Baha’i and others will be the force that helps people to understand climate change as a moral issue.
Perhaps the church isn’t a force for justice in our time because these parables rarely disturb us? Perhaps we’ve settled for faith as a comfort, and not allowed our faith to challenge us – but if we’re not challenged by our faith, if we’re not challenged by the Bible, then we can be sure we aren’t understanding what God is trying to say to us. God claims us as children of God…and called to go into the world as people of the kingdom – we don’t get one without the other. We are all both claimed and called. Maybe when we let God a difference in us, then the Church – you, and me, and God through all of us, will be able to make a difference in the world.
Today we have two baptisms, and I am particularly excited about these two, because together they say so much about the church and how God weaves us all together. One of the babies being baptized today is the daughter of a child of this church who is herself a child of a child of this church. Naomi is the fourth generation of her family to be a part of this church at one time or another. And her parents, Brita and Todd, are living in Texas so that her mother, Brita, can continue studying to become a Minister of Word and Sacrament.
The other baby being baptized today is the daughter of Steve and Bobbi, who are one of the couples who joined Frame during our most recent new member class. Madelynn’s parents have just begun worshipping at Frame this year. They have been members for two months. And I am excited that they have decided to become part of this worshipping community. New members bring a lot to a faith community – they bring new interests, new passions and they help us to redefine how we are called as a congregation – because our call comes out of who we are, and when who we are changes, our call changes, too.
Throughout time, God has repeatedly said to the people of God things like: Tell this story again and again, live by this tradition, each year have this celebration – God has shaped a people who are shaped by tradition. And God has also said to the people of God things like, do not remember the things of old for I am doing a new thing among you. And God has said, you have heard it said in the past but now I say it to you differently. And God has directed the people of God to welcome the stranger and the newcomer.
The Church is not a monument to what has come before and doesn’t change – it is, like the Wisconsin River or the River Jordan, a living flow. And just as you can never step into the same river twice…because the water moves on and flows to the sea, so it should be that you can never come to the same church twice, because we are growing and changing, and responding to the ways we understand God to be calling us to each new era.
We are to be a people who are woven together of the old and the new, of tradition and innovation, of the way we have always done it and the new ideas. The church needs both: people who have been here for generations and people who are coming today for the first time. We need to learn from the stories we have heard again and again, and to recognize that even now, God is planting seeds that will grow into something new in our midst.
And will grow all over – for the kingdom isn’t confined to this church and this town…and baptism isn’t about this congregation either. Madelynn and Naomi will be baptized into the church of Jesus Christ – and so they will be connected, as are we all, to the churches where Todd and Steve and Bobbi grew up, and the churches where their grandparents and great-grandparents worship, and the churches throughout the world who live at the crossroads of centuries of tradition, and God’s new activity in their midst.
One of the stories from the Gospel was about the seeds that were planted and then grew, all by themselves, into a crop to be harvested. The other parable, perhaps the more disturbing parable, is the parable of the mustard seed. We tend to think of this parable as being about the small things that grow into important things. But I think there is more going on here than that – after all, all seeds grow into plants that are much bigger than they start out to be. The parable of the mustard seed is a little less obvious – we need to know a little about the mustard plant in the Middle East. It is not exactly a large plant, Mark correctly describes it as a shrub. It’s not so much large in size as it is large in scope – it is prolific. It is, to be precise, a weed. And Jesus says, the kingdom is like a crop that we harvest…and the kingdom is also like weeds that sprout up all over. The kingdom is like unexpected gifts…and the kingdom is also like persistent annoyances. Think about dandelions – one of the weeds with which we all contend. No matter how hard you try to get rid of them, they still come back. Just a single dandelion can infect much of your yard after a little breeze. They even push their way up through the sidewalk. And yet, from a distance – like many annoyances – they are really quite lovely.
When we think of the Kingdom of God as being like dandelions, we understand that the Kingdom of God can sprout, unwelcome, into the most orderly plans. The kingdom of God, once the winds of the Spirit encounter it, can spread. The Kingdom of God isn’t always what we expect…or want. And the Kingdom of God can persist in the most inhospitable circumstances. And we aren’t responsible for making it happen. Like the untended crop, AND like dandelions, God brings it into being. The Kingdom is God’s project; we don’t make it happen, and we can’t keep it from happening. Maybe that’s the disturbing news in the parable for us, who tend to live so much by our own efforts.
But we can welcome the Kingdom, as we pray almost each week in the Lord’s Prayer: thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We can welcome this dandelion kingdom that comes unbidden and in ways no one expected.
And in presenting their daughters for baptism, the Bradleys and the Hansens, like so many others of us, are welcoming the Kingdom into their own lives, and opting for living in God, where they will have unexpected gifts, and unwanted annoyances. If they choose to embrace what Richard Foster calls the “with-God” life, they will live deeply, and experience joys and challenges they would not experience if they made their own wishes the foundation for their family life. They will find themselves nudged by God, comforted by God, strengthened by God, provoked by God, loved by God, and led by God into places they would not have chosen on their own.
And so do we all when we choose the “with-God” life instead of the “me-first” life. We choose to serve someone other than ourselves, we choose to cast our lot with a kingdom of ragtags, ruffians, ragamuffins and royalty. We choose a life of harvests and dandelions, of love, laughter and loneliness, of difficulty, depth and delight, a life at the intersection of now and forever, a life in which we are connected with all of life, and often out of step with our own culture; we choose to be carried, like the dandelion, by the wind of the Spirit. In short, we choose a life in the Kingdom. Thanks be to God. Amen.