The Rev. Noah Van Niel
June 17th, 2018
St. John the Evangelist
Proper 6 (B): Ezekiel 17:22-24; Psalm 92: 1-4, 11-14; 2 Cor 5:6-17; Mark 4:26-34
Of the many great adventures of Frog and Toad, the beloved Children’s Book series written by Arnold Lobel, one of my favorites has become “The Garden.” 
In this story Frog, ever the sensible one, lends Toad, ever the insensible one, some seeds so he can start a garden, cautioning him that gardening is “very hard work.” Toad plants the seeds, and expects them to grow…immediately. “Now seeds,” says Toad, “start growing.” Toad walks up and down a few times. The seeds do not start to grow. Toad puts his head close to the ground and says loudly, “Now seeds, start growing!” The seeds do not start to grow. Toad puts his head very close to the ground and shouts, “NOW SEEDS, START GROWING!” Frog comes running, thinking something is wrong, but once he finds it’s just Toad being impatient, he tells him to relax: he’s frightening the seeds. So that night, assuming that the seeds are afraid to grow Toad brings out candles and a book to keep them company all night long so they will not be afraid of the dark. Then all the next day he sings songs to the seeds. All the next day he reads poems to his seeds. And all the next day he plays music for his seeds. Eventually, exhausted Toad falls asleep. “Toad, Toad, wake up,” says Frog. “Look at your garden!” Toad looks at his garden and lo and behold the seeds have sprouted. “At last,” shouts Toad, “my seeds have stopped being afraid to grow!” “And now you will have a nice garden too,” says Frog. “Yes,” said Toad, “but you were right, Frog. It was a very hard work.”
This morning we have a whole set of gardening parables, one from the Old Testament, two from the New Testament. And in all those cases we encounter the mystery that is the growth of a seed or from tiny nothing into impressive something as a metaphor for God’s promised activity in this world.
In Ezekiel, God is speaking to the people of Israel in exile. They have been captured and brought under Babylonian rule, driven out of their precious homeland and their Temple has been destroyed. Things are bleak. And into that bleakness Ezekiel channels God and writes, “Thus says the Lord God: I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I will set it out…in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar. Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind…I the Lord have spoken; I will accomplish it.” God’s promised restoration of the fortunes of Israel is encapsulated in the image of this little sprig turning into a noble cedar tree.
And then in Mark we have two short gardening parables, attempting to capture the nature of the Kingdom of God. In the first, Jesus says, “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.” And the second, “[The Kingdom of God] is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” The coming of the Kingdom of God is mysterious like the sprouting of a seed; we know not how it comes to be. And it is also surprising since we can scarcely imagine its full glory from just looking at the seed. God’s subterranean activity, that’s outside our understanding and our senses, but ongoing all the same, that’s what these gardening parables are trying to tell us this morning.
And it’s an important message to deliver because the promise of the Kingdom of God is one of the most beautiful promises extended to us in the scriptures. A vision for the world that is rid of all pain and enmity and strife; all the war, all the anger, all the hopelessness. A kingdom of peace and justice and love. A kingdom so comforting and so expansive that all the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. Jesus is offering us a vision of the world that is so much more wonderful than what we can see now. That’s what God wants the world to be, he says. This is an inspiring vision. But when God says the world could be like that, we can get impatient, like Toad, and want that world NOW. If the world could be that wonderful, why isn’t it yet? Let’s make it happen. “Now seeds, start growing!” And our impatience can lead us to the misunderstanding that the growth of the seeds, the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven, will be accomplished by our own efforts.
But these gardening parables, be it Ezekiel or Jesus speaking, emphasize very clearly: God gives the growth, not us. We don’t even know how it happens. But that doesn’t mean that we are passive bystanders in the creation of God’s Kingdom. If we aren’t the ones to turn the seeds of God’s Kingdom into flowering trees, we are the ones who can create the conditions for that growth to happen. Toad, like any gardener, is responsible for the planting, the nurturing and the tending of the garden, not the actual growth of the plant, as he assumes. It is not our job to make the Kingdom happen, but to help it happen. And that’s a subtle but important difference. If we think we are by our own power going to dismantle structures of inequality, oppression and violence and rid the world of division and discord so that justice and mercy and love can flower across the earth, we are fooling ourselves. That work is too big for us to accomplish on our own. The reign of God will only be realized if it is grounded in the power of God, not in the power of human beings and if we are committed to giving God a chance to do His work of transformation.
I think this is a helpful articulation of what the work of the church should be: we can cultivate gardens for God to go about his work of growth. We can create spaces of love and peace and safety and transcendence so that God’s seeds will be given the space they need to flourish. For while most gardeners couldn’t tell give you a scientific explanation of how seeds grow, they know what they need to grow. The same is true of the Kingdom. We’re not exactly sure how it comes about—how people’s hearts are turned to compassion, or their feet moved to justice, or their minds come to faith—but we know what conditions allow for such growth to happen: prayer, worship, respect, kindness, equality, safety; communities of love. And that’s what we, in the church, can spend our energy creating: gardens of grace for God’s seeds of glory to sprout. If we can create those kind of gardens, then God will give the growth, that’s the promise. What the story of Toad and his garden teaches us about seeds, is ultimately the same message that Ezekiel and Jesus are asking us to believe about God: that He is at work bringing about the Kingdom, sometimes with us, sometimes in spite of us, but always for us. As the Church, and as individuals, we can participate in that work by creating communities and conditions for those seeds to take root, but we can’t make them grow. That may be frustrating at times, and we may get impatient because the seeds of the kingdom don’t necessarily sprout on our timeline, but there is also a deep and powerful comfort in the belief that they will indeed sprout one day. And we can rest in the promise that if we stand on the side of justice and love and mercy and peace we will one day be standing in a garden full of blossoms of blessedness.
There’s a great hymn in our hymnal, that we don’t sing too often, but the text captures exactly what I’m trying to communicate about the necessary faith, the appropriate hard work and the inexhaustible patience needed to bring the Kingdom of God to fruition. It reads:
God is working his purpose out,
as year succeeds to year,
God is working his purpose out,
and the time is drawing near;
nearer and nearer draws the time,
the time that shall surely be,
when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God
as the waters cover the sea…
All we can do is nothing worth
unless God blesses the deed;
vainly we hope for the harvest-tide
till God gives life to the seed;
yet nearer and nearer draws the time,
the time that shall surely be,
when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God
as the waters cover the sea.
The seeds of love, and peace and justice and mercy, the seeds of the Kingdom, have been sown in this world. It is up to us to create spaces and places for those seeds to flourish. And Frog is right, this is “very hard work.” It will require us to be incredibly active, incredibly patient and incredibly faithful all at the same time; like a good gardener. So let us take up our charge with vigor, trusting that God is working His purpose out and with our help, nearer and nearer draws the time when the earth will be filled with the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea.”