Does It Work?

"Does It Work?"

Mark 4:26-34

What, of all your things, is completely trustworthy?

Who, of all the people you know, is completely trustworthy?

What possession do you have that has lived up to all of its promise and potential?

Who, of all the people you have known, has lived up to all their promise and potential?

Answer:  Nothing in this world and no one is completely trustworthy.  Nothing and no one has, or ever will, live up to their promise and potential.  Including yourself.  If you think otherwise, you are destined to be constantly disappointed.  At best, we are only partially trustworthy.  At best we will live up to only a portion of our promise and potential.  And so will everyone and everything else.

Sorry to have to tell you that.  But you already knew it. 

The problem is, we have to go through our daily lives having to at least act like we trust in the stuff and people around us.  Every time we sit in a chair, we have to trust it will hold us and not break apart.  Every time we get in our vehicles and turn the key, we are trusting the engine will roar to life and not go, errr, errr, errr, or make no sound at all.  Every person we relate to in our business dealings each day has to be trusted to not attempt to take advantage of us.  Every person we tell a secret to, or share something personal we have to trust they will keep it and honor it.

One of the Wichita TV stations had that segment during their news, called “Does It Work?”  Since I don’t have TV, I don’t know if they do that anymore.  They check out products that are advertised, sometimes with outlandish claims.  Are the products trustworthy?  Do they live up to their advertised potential and promise?  I’d like to know what the percentage of products they find that don’t.

It’s all enough to make you wonder if you can fully trust anything in this life.  If part of being a human means developing a healthy skepticism.  So when something reliable and trustworthy comes along, would we actually recognize it?  If there was promise and potential, would we think to ourselves, This actually looks like something real with real power in it that I can trust!

I think that is what Jesus is trying to get the disciples to do by telling them this parable about the real and mysterious power of the seed.  We saw last week in Jesus’ other parable about the sower, the seed, and the different soils, the seed represents the Word.  The Word of God—the Gospel.

The disciples have to learn to trust the power of the message they are going to be taking out and spreading.  The disciples have to believe in the power of God’s Words, and that those Words will yield results in time.  Will they trust the very nature of the gospel they are preaching?  That’s what people will be looking for as they listen to the disciples.  People will be looking into the faces of the disciples, not hearing the message as much as they are trying to see if the disciples really believe it themselves.

That is the main thing people will be looking for as we share our witness of God’s Word.  Has the apparent power of the seed—God’s Words—been planted in our lives and have we given those seeds adequate time, so their mysterious power is really in us?  Do we trust the seed—the self-contained power of the Word?  Can others see it in our faces and hear it in our voices?

Yet, yet, even when we realize the potency and reliability of the seed—God’s Word—the parable also tells us we have very little control over what happens with that seed.  There are only two parts of the growth of the Word in another's life that we participate in:  the planting and the harvesting.  The rest that is expected of us is just letting God work, and trusting that God will make it work.  We plant, we watch and wait. We have patience and trust because it is mostly God’s work--it's not anything we do.  There isn’t anything we can do to speed it up or slow it down.  Everything happens in God’s own timing and by God’s own accord.  And God is wholly trustworthy.

One of the points Jesus is making in the parable, also, is there's a progression to the planting and growth of the Word.

First, there is the planting.  You have to plant something if you want anything to grow.  It sounds fairly obvious.  It’s like the people who hope they would win the lottery but never buy a ticket.  First things first:  You have to put the seed in the ground.  You have to share God's word in the people and situations close to you.

There's faith involved in planting.  I’ve seen it in so many farmers.  No matter what happened last year, or for many bad years in a row, farmers still plant when it’s time to plant.  The faith comes in because if you plant the seed, you expect something to grow.  Do you believe in the hidden power of the seed in the soil?

The second stage, according to Jesus’ parable is the waiting.  This is the time of unspoken anticipation.  Will it be a good or bad year?

I’ve already talked in the past about my son’s spiritual journey.  As I mentioned, he is currently outside the church.  I know I planted the seed in him as he was growing up and going to church every Sunday.  He knows what it’s all about.  He has year after year of experience.

In the anticipation stage, the farmer/gardner wonders if, once the seed is planted, anything will come up.  I have wondered that at times about Ryan.  I know the seed is in there.  He has heard God’s word.  He has even responded to it when younger.  I have seen the growth.  And I have seen how he pulled the plant out by the roots and tossed it aside.  So I continue to wait with anticipation.  I have seen a little green tip poking out of the disrupted soil.  He is open to God.  But he detests anyone who is arrogant enough to think they speak for God and know exactly what God is thinking and wants for everyone else.  We will see.  I don't have any control over that, says Jesus.  I must be content and patient to let God work, and trust that God is working.

The third stage is the appearing of the blade.  That appearance brings the initial relief, because something is happening.  The mystery and power of the seed in the soil is working.  Life is breaking forth and appearing.

As the plant grows and matures it produces a head.  Hope comes with the appearance of the head.  It is the hope that there will be some kind of production.  Something will be gained.  The soil and the plant have done their work.  There is grain in the head.  There will be a return on your investment.  But hope and anticipation are juggled with the hard lessons of life:  hail, wheat rust, corn smut, green bugs, and on and on.  You hope for the best while silently preparing for the worse, if it happens.

Then comes the harvest.  There is an end, a culmination, a consummation.  The seed of God’s Word is moving towards that end—the end which Jesus calls the Kingdom of God.  Remember, at the start of the parable, Jesus said this whole seed planting process is like the Kingdom of God.  That we will find out what the Kingdom of God is and is all about if we pay attention to how things grow.

There is also the element of mystery in the parable as to how all this works:  "...the seed sprouts and grows--he (the farmer) doesn't know how,” said Jesus.

In the Kingdom of God, things happen but we won't be able to understand it.  We will have more questions than answers.  There will be more that we don't know than know--even when it's happening right in front of us.  We will see it happening.  But it will be a complete mystery.

Thus our comfortability with the things of God will depend on our comfortability with mystery and the unknown.  Like I said, we have two parts in the process.  We get to plant the seed.  We get to help harvest what has grown.  But everything in-between, that God will do, we will have nothing to do with, because it’s beyond us.  Carl Sagan once said, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.”  That’s a great way to look at the whole mystery of what is needed to make things grow.  That is all that God has created and provided, so that when we do our little job of planting the seed, all has been prepared and made ready for growth to happen.

That is the trustworthiness God has created into the world, when God created the world.  It is the only aspect of this life that is trustworthy and reliable, where promise, potential, and God’s power all come together, and life happens.  What a great mystery.

Jesus didn't come, therefore, to bring answers and make everything known and easy.  Our relationship with God can grow--but we won't know how that happens.  If we don't know how it happens, we won't be able to explain it very well other than "put a seed in the ground and watch what happens."