*Call to Worship
One: This is the litany of the growing seed.
One: This is the litany of the growing seed.
Many: With what shall we compare the world that God wills?
One: It is as if someone would plant a seed, and sleep and
rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow—we do not know how!
Many: With what shall we compare the world as God wills it
to be and become?
One: It is like the white pine seed, knocked from its cone,
carried off by the crow, dropped in the forest. It is the tiniest of seeds, but
when it grows it is the tallest of trees, and the eagle makes a nest in its
branches, to raise its young.
Many: Let anyone with ears, hear, and rejoice in the coming
of a world that God wills.
One: It is like this world, but with abundant life for all
God’s creatures. And it is coming, we do not know how. Alleluia!
Many: Alleluia! Amen.
Seeds that
sprout and grow are as wondrous to me now as they were in kindergarten, when we
planted marigold seeds in Dixie cups and left them on the basement classroom
window-ledge. Sometime after we had forgotten they were there, Mrs. Snodgrass
handed them down and there were little green plants! Look at that! I was so
proud to take that little green plant home to my mother. Proud, not of what I
had done or made, but proud of that little seed, that it had managed to rise up
out of the dirt and seek the sunshine.
The kingdom
of God is as if a child should bury a seed in a cup of dirt, and should come
and go, day after day, to learn about letters and numbers and colors and
shapes, and the seed should sprout and grow, she does not know how. But when it
does, there is such joy.
Even now,
whenever I plant a row of seed, I am amazed that something happens, amazed at
the power contained in each little seed. And I am amazed at how generous plants
are. Thirteen, almost fourteen years ago, I moved into the parsonage and began
plant a garden. The plants came not just from the local nursery, they came from
you. Dorothy Janes gave me some iris, and so did Norma Miller, and Marge
Vuchetich, and Elissa Hartwig, along with lilies and hostas and chrysanthemums.
I have some phlox from Grace Forbord’s garden and some Peonies from Nancy
Gould. The parsonage garden has received seeds and bulbs and corms and shoots
from other gardens, and in turn has produced an abundance of plants to divide
and share with my neighbors, so that when I go for a walk around the
neighborhood, I can see how our garden has spread. The kingdom of God is like
that. It spreads, it naturalizes,
which is a gardeners’ term for going wild and taking over. The kingdom of God
starts with a few modest acts of charity, mercy, and justice, and then it just
goes wild.
The kingdom
of God is as if a gardener should prepare the soil to receive the seeds and
bulbs and shoots from other gardeners, and should sleep and rise night and day,
and the garden should sprout and grow, she does not know how, but when it does,
there is a giveaway.
Even more amazing
to me is the knowledge, wisdom, and will contained in the garden. We lived in
Vermont for a summer. Vermont is a state that was once more populous than it is
now. The forest has reclaimed land that once had been cleared for grazing and
farming, and houses and gardens. As you walk through what you think is a
wilderness, you will come across stones, stacked to make fences, like the fence
Robert Frost and his neighbor repaired in the poem. It is also possible to make
out the old dooryards, for that is where the lilacs grow. Lilacs planted by
folks who gave up Vermont and moved west, more than a century and a half ago.
The summer
after Vermont we lived out west in the Sandhills. Our second summer there, the
hills were covered in wild sunflowers-- sunflowers as far as the eye could see.
People our age had never seen such a thing. The old-timers had heard of such,
from their parents. Even Gerald Boots, born in a soddie in Grant County in
nine-teen-some-teen, couldn’t be sure he had ever seen such a sight. In Stories
of the Sioux, Mari Sandoz’s collection of tales that she heard as a child,
there was mention of one summer way back in the buffalo time, before man came
to earth, when the hills were covered with sunflowers, and the buffalo wrapped the
flowers around their horns for decoration. Legendary sunflowers, they were. Who
knows how many generations those seeds had slept in the sand, to be awakened by
just the right amount of rain and sun and wind.
The kingdom
of God is as if the homesteader should plant a hedge, or the buffalo should
scatter seed, and long after both have returned to the dust from which they
came, the seed is still sprouting and growing, and the children of the earth weave
crowns of flowers for their hair.
The seeds
of God’s mercy have been scattered, and have taken root and grown in you. You
are God’s garden. Go to seed! Scatter that love and mercy and compassion
generously, wastefully even—because nothing is really wasted. Seeds may lie
dormant for ages, but seeds will sprout and grow, and so will the kingdom of
God, the love of God, life in God, we do not need to know how. Thanks be to
God! Amen.
