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The Key
Jesus gave us a wonderful parable.
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. (Mark 4:26, 27)
He does not know how. This phrase strikes me. It inspires me. It gives me a sense of freedom. I don’t need to know everything. I don’t need to control the result.
I am not talking about not preparing thoroughly and expecting a good result. I am not talking about that kind of laziness.
But we all know that we cannot control the result in everything that we do. We are trying to live a good life that builds the kingdom of God but we don’t know how the kingdom of God is established in our life. Nobody knows.
What Jesus is trying to say is that we are not the ones who build life that reflects the kingdom of God. It is ultimately God who builds the kingdom of God. The key is God, not us.
That’s why St. Paul said,
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. (1 Corinthians 3:6, 7)
Jesus lived like that. He showed us how we should live by his example. He didn’t do his work all by himself. He always let God work through him. Because he knew ultimately it is God who would bring about God’s kingdom.
We are not God. Let us not try to be god. We don’t know what the final outcome of the kingdom of God will be like and how God will bring that about.
Broken Vessels
What is the implication of this truth about our life? It gives us tremendous confidence. We do our best to live a good life. But sometimes we feel that even our best is not good enough. We don’t see the result and when we don’t see the result, we get discouraged, we get anxious and we even lose hope for going further. We say to ourselves, “What’s the point?” But ultimately God will bring about the mysterious result in the way we don’t know.
Listen to St. Paul and see his attitude towards his life.
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)
God will ultimately shape a good life out of us. We are broken vessels and yet God brings good life out of these broken vessels. Not because you are good, you produce a good life.
Don’t be mistaken. Not because you are a good vessel, God puts his treasure.
St. Paul said.
But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. (2 Corinthians 4:7)
Until he met Christ, he didn’t realize that he was a broken clay jar. He thought that God’s work would be done through him because he was great. But he realized that that was not true after meeting Christ.
He said more clearly this wonderful truth when he talked about the resurrection. Resurrection is not the reward for our good behavior.
So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. (1 Corinthians 15:42-44)
The Smallest Seed
Jesus articulated this thought more clearly in his second parable about the kingdom of God.
It 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.’ (Mark 4:31-32)
The mustard seed is the smallest of all the seeds on earth. That means it is insignificant. But when it is sown it grows and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and the birds of the air can come and rest. But we don’t know how. We don’t know how the smallest seed becomes the tree where the birds of the air can come and rest.
Often when we see ourselves, we see only the smallest seed. We see ourselves very small and insignificant. Sometimes we even feel we are worthless. But don’t ever forget that the smallest seed has the potential in it to become the greatest tree. That’s what the seed is. It has that potential. That’s why Jesus used the example of the seed.
We only see the smallest seed. Why?
Because we have eyes of fear. Last Wednesday, I reflected on the King David for the Korean Wednesday service. Even when he was merely a shepherd boy, he had this confidence to defeat the gigantic Goliath because he had not the eyes of fear but the eyes of faith.
Terrible Events
Recently, we have witnessed two terrible events. One is the discovery of the remains of 215 indigenous children. We are confronted again with the evil that was done to the indigenous people in this country. They have been saying this all this time. Just think about how you would feel when your children are taken away against your will and some of them never come home.
Another story is what happened in London, Ontario. A whole family had a wonderful evening walk in the neighbourhood, not knowing what is to come. They were all killed, including grandma, except a 9 year old boy. The killer intentionally killed them by mowing them with his truck, simply because they were Muslims.
What a crazy world!
When I heard the story, I cried deep inside. I asked why? And I felt so helpless and powerless. When we hear stories like this, we feel so helpless and powerless. We have temptation to say that we just have to accept it as a part of our reality. But I don’t want to do that.
I would never lose hope in the goodness of humanity. We human beings are created by God. After God created human beings, he said “Good.” I believe that we human beings can restore the “Good” God declared. I was helpless but I was not hopeless.
The lead singer of the group “Tragically Hip”, Gord Downie, produced an album, “Secret Path”, inspired by the story of Chanie Wenjack, 12 year old Ojibway boy who died attempting to run away from the residential school, in Kenora to his home about 600 km away.
That was his last album before Gord Downie died of his brain cancer. He wanted to raise $100 million.
But Gord Downie didn’t give up.
Our parable taught us not to give up. Not To Quit. Simply because we don’t know how the seed grows, we should not give up. Just because we see only the smallest seed, we should not give up. Just because we don’t see the result right away, we should not give up. We should continuously spread the seed even though we do not know the result. We may not change the whole world but we will keep sowing the good seed. We will sow and wait.
That’s the spirit we had when we raised the fund for the Rose of Sharon Nursing Home.
Spread the Seed
We say power corrupts and the absolute power corrupts absolutely. But powerlessness can also corrupt. This is what Mary Jo Leddy, a Canadian writer said,
We are tempted by power, and it corrupts – our family life, our church life, our social life. But, even more significantly, I think we are tempted by powerlessness – and powerlessness corrupts (Mary Jo Leddy)
Our sense of powerlessness cannot give us an excuse to give up doing what is good. Feeling of powerlessness is what we experience often. What can I do? I am small. I have no talent. The system is too big and I am nobody. We see challenges too big for us to handle. Yes, we all feel that. Yes, many times we feel helpless. We feel our hands are tide. We also feel pretty small compared to the problems we face. But don’t make that as an excuse not to do what is right.
God will use the seed we sow. God will make the seed grow. We don’t know how. But God will do it. But if we don’t spread the seed, even God can’t do anything about it.
In the second parable Jesus said,
It 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… (Mark 4:31, 32)
Faith is not believing what you can see. Faith is believing what you cannot see. Faith is not believing what you can do. Faith is believing what you cannot do.
That’s why the Hebrew writer said,
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)
When we spread the seed, let us believe that God will make it grow. The result is not in our hands. We don’t control it. God does. That’s why we don’t give up. We don’t lose hope.
We spread the seed and we wait. But this waiting is not merely killing time. We wait with hope. We wait constantly spreading the seed. This waiting with hope, waiting with faith is our resistance to accept things as they are. It is our commitment to constantly spread the seed. There are people who choose to hate those who are different from them. We don’t accept that as it is. We will spread the seed of love, peace, harmony, and understanding.
If we don’t have hope, we will not wait. We will give up. But since we have hope and faith, we wait. We sow the seed and wait. Sometimes we feel helpless but we are not hopeless. We have that hope and this hope will save us and this hope will come true.
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