Growing Into Mystery
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Many have noted the significance of the prevalence of agricultural and horticultural metaphors used by Jesus to describe the Kingdom of God to his listeners. No doubt it is a deliberate choice by Jesus to employ such images with such frequency. The socioeconomic situation in which the earliest hearers of the Good News lived and moved and had their being was foundationally and fundamentally tied to the cultivation of various crops and other similar labor-intensive goods. People of great power and influence were people who had some stake in the production of these fruits of the Earth, though not the kind of backbreaking stake the crowds had, the ones we meet at Jesus’ feet as he speaks.
Because of their intimacy with the soil, Jesus’ words concerning the Kingdom of God, words about tangible signs of growth and of diligent care, rang most clearly in the ears of those who were already at odds with the kingdoms of the world, eager for a revelatory truth about a life beyond what they experience. But Jesus was, of course, more than just a skillful orator who “knew his audience.” Truly, there is something about the husbandry metaphors that make them some of the most appropriate for speech about the Kingdom of God. Because Jesus uses them so often, I likely don’t even need to rehash why it is that the Kingdom of God is like a seed or soil or a sower or yeast or even treasure buried in, of all places, a field. Still, even if we were to lay out all of that knowledge, much of the wisdom in these parables falls into the realm of mystery, as is most of the language around a Kingdom so mysterious itself. So even though readers of the Gospels have been reflecting on those metaphors for all of their existence on Earth, there is still much that transcends our comprehension, much like the mystery of the germination, growth, and fruit bearing of the plants these metaphors employ.
And yet, as clear as the Great Teacher makes the importance of learning about the Kingdom of God through the work of cultivating living, growing things, and while I have certainly benefited from both the literal and spiritual fruits of the cultivators in my life, I say, with some embarrassment, that I do not share the impulse, the desire, perhaps the effort, to grow good food from the soil, either for myself or for others. I “tend” to one plant, a ZZ plant, which, for those like me not in the know, requires just about the least care that a plant can survive on. I didn’t eat my vegetables growing up, something I have only marginally improved on in my adult diet. I remember the excitement of my father as he picked from his six (always six) tomato plants in cages every year of my childhood. I have done and seen some difficult things in life, but I have not seen, firsthand, how the Kingdom of God is like a seed or what it looks like for a thornbush to choke out a thriving plant. I say this because I doubt I am alone. Many who do this good work of imitating the cultivation seen in these parables do so as a hobby, or, at the least, not as their primary vocation. Though there are some who manage and keep gardens for budgetary reasons, for most in my circles, it is a luxury to have the time and energy to produce garden goods amidst a system which always seems to be demanding more production at every turn as it is. Of course, my friends who tend to growing things as an act of resistance are onto something that I will likely never see, but the Good News for those of us who care for souls but not seeds comes, surprisingly, from the first parable we read this week.
The way Jesus characterizes the Kingdom in the first parable in this week’s readings highlights an aspect that is not always evident in the metaphors he uses elsewhere, though it is no less crucial to the breaking in of the Kingdom than anything else. This parable makes clear what is always the case in the good work of cultivation: part of bearing witness to the Kingdom of God is surrendering to the slow but inevitable process of growth, much of which takes place outside of human control and influence. The sower in this story is unlike the sower in Matthew 13. The latter tells of the sowing in analytical terms. The hindrances to growth are explored in great detail, and the signs of good growth become the focus at the end of the parable. That parable is all about controlling the conditions for the sprouting, vulnerable plant. While it does convey good knowledge for those who desire to see the Kingdom of God flourish, it does so by suggesting that human influence has a lot more to do with growth than is actually the case. The truth of cultivating good, healthy plants is a lot more like the sower in this week’s story. There is something so honest about the practice of “sleeping at night, rising at day” as the seed sprouts and grows. If the Kingdom of God is truly a Kingdom of God, it makes sense that its cultivation would depend not on our conditions, but rather on the sustenance that comes from an otherworldly gardener.
See, while I have never been as closely familiar with the growing of things as I often feel I should be, I do come from a community whose livelihood is inextricably tied to the success of crops. I have worshiped most of my life with farmers, farmers who have taught me the very meaning of prayer when they pray for a bountiful harvest. I have rarely seen faith like the faith of those whose lives depend on good growth, especially when the drought has lasted a bit longer than one might be comfortable with. These are people who are beholden not to an academic calendar or a liturgical calendar, but to a harvest calendar. If there was anyone who would be tempted to try to manipulate and dominate agriculture to bend to their will, it would have been the community from my childhood (and countless others like it). And yet, they exemplify for me the 27th verse of our Gospel text. They sleep at night, they rise at day, and the seed sprouts and grows, and they do not know how. These farmers are smart, so there might be something more significant about this kind of knowledge than just the mechanism of germination and growth. It seems that this kind of not knowing means something more like entering a mystery, a mystery of sustenance and relinquishment. It is a not knowing that knows that the goodness of God is made evident in the predictability of cycles of planting and harvesting, sowing and reaping. Among societies in which personal control over one’s environment is seen as a virtue, there is something radical about not obsessing over the garden, not letting concerns about the weather or the yield dictate every waking moment. At one level, the farmer knows well how the plant grows, for their life is completely and utterly tied to it. Yet, the same farmer, in community with all their fellow farmers, approaches every long summer of waiting with a peaceful acknowledgment that the growth that truly matters has next to nothing to do with their labor.
And so we return to the parable. The way of the Kingdom, like the growth of the field, is a way of mystery. And it is a very particular kind of mystery. This mystery is a slow, steady, almost erosive kind of mystery. Submission to a Kingdom that we are not in control of means submitting to a process of undoing and unlearninging the frenetic and anxious pace of life. This mystery is entered into with the kind of patience and letting go that does not map onto our current cultural values. The Kingdom does not arrive on our schedules or by our work. There is a time for planting and a time for harvesting, of course, but the life of the divine Kingdom comes to be through decidedly inhuman activity. Here, Good News looks less like pulling weeds and pruning buds, and more like waking each morning to witness what no amount of human endeavor can accomplish, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. If we give our attention to the mighty work of God who is establishing the Kingdom all around us, perhaps we, too, might be prepared to enter the mystery, allowing our lives to look less like the work of our hands, and more like being ready, sickle in hand, to enter into abundant life that transcends what we think we know, into a Kingdom we might inhabit, and, along the way, become who we have always been.