The Kingdom of God is Like - Being Surprised

The readings for this Sunday are here (track 2). 

Jesus said, “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.”

Some years ago, a young man walked into the Episcopal student center I directed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And he might have walked in for any one of a million reasons. Maybe he finally saw the chalkboard sign I’d put on the sidewalk every one of the other 999 days he’d walked by without turning in. Maybe he’d finally seen our social media posts. Maybe a friend had caught his ear with an invitation and he listened. Maybe he had learned about our outreach projects and come to believe that a community known to its friends for love without strings might be able to make room in love for him, too. Maybe his class had been canceled. Maybe it was because I’d propped the front door open 130 degrees, and not only 105. Maybe he had to pee and we had a bathroom. Who knows why anybody does anything, really. So I asked him.

Hey friend. What brings you in today? He looked at me nervously. 

Shrugged his shoulders. I don’t know, he said. I’ve walked by this place 1,000 times and never once thought about coming in. But today. I don’t know why I’m here. 

“Friend,” I said, slowly remembering Jesus' words about the imperceptible seed that precedes all of our efforts, “Do you need a place to pray?” He looked up at me, with visible relief on his face. Yes. That was it. Yes, he said. I would like that a lot.

“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 doesn't know how.”

It is not always easy to say we don’t know how. We’ve been taught to believe we should know how, we must know how, but believing we know how can sometimes blind us to the invisible thing that’s actually happening. Can cause us to lose sight of the One whose first action we are always attending. The young man came through the doors that day because God was calling him in the beautiful, patient, and relentless way God does.

My own first year of college, I found myself in a village called Taize, chaperoning a group of high schoolers from our church, on pilgrimage. Our group of twelve or so met up with two thousand others, mostly young adults, for the week we would share in rhythms of prayer and work together. One afternoon, a large group of us from a host of English speaking countries were talking with one of the brothers who lives in the religious community there. During a poorly structured Q and A, one of the teenagers cut to the chase, the elephant in the room so large we didn’t see it until he said it, but inevitable when you invite two thousand teenagers to hang out with a hundred religious brothers. “Why did you do it?” he asked. “I mean, really, no wife or kids. No real job. No future. It’s just. You don’t even own stuff, right? Weren’t your parents disappointed when you told them? I'm planning on being a doctor. I know how disappointed my parents would be if I just up and threw my life away.”

The brother smiled a true smile that bore an absolute kindness and told us how, one day, he came upon the story Jesus told about a pearl of great price. I tiny thing that everyone else had missed. Of so much worth to the man who found it that he looked around and couldn’t believe his eyes, that no one else saw the treasure, too. So he went home, sold all that he had, and bought the field for the treasure it contained. I have found the pearl, the brother said simply.

Jesus says the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed so small no one thinks to value it, because they do not see the life it will sustain. A moment so small as to be misjudged inconsequential. So they don’t value it for what it is, which is the source of all true value. But, no worry, this seed grows anyway, even while they are sleeping, apart from anything they do. It’s a humbling thought, that things we overlook or undervalue are often nearer the heart of God than the things we exchange them for. It’s a heart-holding thought - a heart-sustaining thought - that the mercy of God continues in this world and in our lives, regardless.

I sometimes wear a tiny leaf around my neck to remember all these things about God’s kingdom. For me, it takes a visual reminder because my world is full of strong nudges and loud arguments in the opposite direction. Arguments like, “The bigger the better.” And “dress to impress.” “Make a big splash.” And, “If a thing goes well, it’s to my credit. It’s because I did the hard work and finally got the thing right.” And sometimes these things might be true. But these things are not as true as we often think. And, more importantly, says Jesus, these things are not what the kingdom of God is like.

The kingdom of God, says Ezekiel, is the sprout from the stump that no one prepared for because it was the radical thing we did not see coming. The reality that lived on the other side of our hopes, so wild as to be just out of reach of even our prayers. The unexpected new life after the old life appeared to be felled. The kingdom of God is like being surprised.

So now there’s a tree from a mustard seed so small that Jesus has to remind them of their relation. A strong tree to join all the others in scripture, with room in its branches for birds, joining the tree in the garden of Eden, at the story’s beginning. Joining the timbers Noah used in obedience to his Lord to fashion the lifeboat of salvation, prefiguring - we are told - our baptism and the saving life found here. A tree to join the oaks under which Sarah and Abraham opened their hearts and their table to strangers from strange lands and later discovered that, opening their hearts to strangers, they had opened their hearts and their table to God. A tree to join the tree, in Revelation, growing on both banks of the river, the river whose streams make glad the city of God.

It is a hard thing to receive, that we are not as good at identifying the things that make a moment meaningful, what makes a moment what it is, much less successful, as we would like to believe. A harder thing to accept that these ingrained habits of misidentification sometimes blind us to true things about God. The God who preferred the whisper and the quiet to the earthquake and fire. But once we do receive this, our eyes can be opened to grace such that striving finally surrenders to thanksgiving and the joy of the new life we did not predict.

The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground. And Christ is the seed on the ground. The One in whose branches we are learning to live. “Very truly,” he told them, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” We find this fruit at this table, and here at the cross, standing at the center of the scriptures' sacred trees. Behold, the wood of the cross, we pray, on which was hung the world’s salvation. To gaze on this cross, we are told - a cross, of all things - is to begin to be healed.

It’s radical how much unlearning this story, these trees, require of us. Like the bigger the better. Like dress to impress. But instead, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Still the seed, the treasure, we so often miss, is undeterred by our not seeing. Instead, the stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. And his love now makes us one, that is, calls us into a church made of living stones, where we will be like him.

The 2nd century Christian apologist Justin Martyr describes the lives of those whose eyes are trained on Jesus in this way:

We who ourselves used to have pleasure in impure things now cling to chastity alone. We who dabbled in arts of magic now consecrate ourselves to the good and unbegotten God. We who formerly treasured money and possessions more than anything else now hand everything over to the treasury for all, and share it with everyone who has need. We who formerly cheated and murdered one another and did not even share our home with those who were different or from a different tribe, because of their customs, now, after Christ's appearance, live together and share the same table. Now we pray for our enemies and try to win those who hate us unjustly so that they too may live in accordance with Christ's wonderful teachings, that they too might enter into the expectation.

That they might enter into the expectation. Because for too long we stood outside it. They, yes, but us, too. No matter, though, it grew. Look alive, and take heart. The kingdom of God has come near. And the kingdom of God is like being surprised. 

Amen.