When we say yes to God in our lives, we allow for works to be done that may surprise us. A year and a half ago I peddled my bicycle up to St. Andrews Episcopal Church, ready to say yes to whatever and where ever it was that God had plans for me. The first Sunday I attended St. Andrews I had been in Tacoma one week and was still settling into community life at the Tacoma Catholic Worker- an ecumenical community in downtown Tacoma that offers hospitality to the homeless, maintains a garden, and resists all forms of violence. I had recently left my job, apartment and familiar town of Eugene to follow a desire to create a world in which it is easier to be good (which is one way of explaining what Catholic Worker communities attempt to live out). My family, all back east, were almost as puzzled as I was about my move to Tacoma. I realize now, reflecting back on my time at St. Andrews that when we surrender ourselves to God's presence and work we may experience a transplanting- it may be shocking to the system- as my move to Tacoma was and as my life in the parish of St. Andrews began- but we will in God's time experience new growth and and bear fruit.
The first parable we heard today from Mark's gospel uses the image of scattered seed in comparison to the kingdom of God. The seed is cast and the man or woman continues on with her days and nights, returning to the seed to find first stalk then head and then full grain. We can stand in amazement with this sower of seed at the growth we take no credit for. Toss it out and the seed will grow; "the earth produces of itself". What a relief this parable offers us; the seed grows without our knowledge. We weren't even watching. We were probably filling our lives with our own meanings and direction while the seed we planted is being transformed under our very feet. We should be reminded by this parable that faith is believing in the seed's potential and ability to grow into a kingdom. And this kingdom is more welcoming than we can even imagine.
Ezekiel's prophetic words read this morning help us understand the nature of God's kingdom and attempt to prepare our hearts and minds for a new kind of king, a 'tender twig' planted high on a mountain in order that is will produce boughs and bear fruit and become a noble cedar. From humble beginnings a home is created; 'under it every kind of bird will live in the shade of it's branches. It shall be recognized as lord over all other trees. What is dried up and low will be made high and flourish, Ezekiel tells us. This is a clue to us today when we are seeking glimpses of God's kingdom; it is and will be from the low that the lord will come. It will be with humility, strength and compassion that God's kingdom reigns and offers us all a home in it's branches.
What type of kingdom do we see, trust and live into? Naim Stifan Ateek, a Christian Palestinian committed to a nonviolent resolution of the Palestinian-Israel conflict, reminds us to examine our willingness to wholeheartedly follow Christ's instruction to love one another. Ateek recalls an incident at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 recorded by muckraking journalist, Lincoln Steffens in his autobiography. Clemenceau of France listed the potential costs of peace; "If we want to give up war," he said, "We must give up our empires. You, Mr Lloyd George will have to come out of India. We French will have to come out of North Africa. And you Americans, Mr. President, will have to relinquish your dollar rights in the Philipinnes, Mexico, and Cuba. We, the dominant powers, will have to give up our empires, tear down our tariff walls, free our colonies, and open up the world." The heads of state present informed Clemenceau that this is not the peace that they had in mind. Clemenceau banged his fist on the table and roared at them "then you don't mean peace, you want war."
Those of us who hold power, be it that of race, economic position , sexual orientation, attractiveness, intelligence or other privilege, we often resort to our own visions for the future based on the world we naturally and selfishly seek, not based on the vision of the kingdom of God, brought to us by Christ and inherited as his followers. Are we like the diplomats saying they want peace but choosing differently? Are we professing our belief in the kingdom of God, but living as though our salvation depends on our own planning and resourcefulness? God offers us a rest in the shade of his kingdom. We may be perched in his branches but relying on our limited perception of the love, power and presence in the kingdom of God. Our perceptions may limit us from seeing, enjoying and spreading the good news of the kingdom Jesus offers us.
What is distinctive of this seed of God's planted among us from our everyday culture of living in the world? Forgiveness. In forgiveness we are living as a new creation. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians; "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" Where in this new creation are we putting our hope? Do we continue to look to kings and rulers anointed by God, but living out a worldly kingdom based on a tight grip of government on our economy, international relations and information? For us as Christians, hope has been shifted from the likes of a ruler, warrior type, to Christ's suffering and triumph on the cross. Jesus became the new model for leadership as suffering servant.
The confidence that Paul writes to the Corinthians about is found only in our own transcendence beyond our worldly visions and understandings, and in our belief in the ever present and coming kingdom of God. A belief in God's kingdom takes shape in our own willingness to trust in it's power and goodness. God promises an abundance of love, compassion and justice in His kingdom. If we choose to trust this promise, we can let go of our too often prevailing motivation of scarcity. Paul's letters are filled with reminders of the obstacles of the flesh. Our bodies keep us seeking food, clothing and warmth. From a place of disbelief in God's kingdom and it's abundance, we gather more than we eat, buy more than we need, and build larger buildings than we could ever really occupy. An unchurched friend of mine recently wrote me a letter describing her new found belief in sin. She was at first repulsed by the concept of judgment and punishment, but began to understand sin as those choices we make that keep us from God. I do not think she is that different from Paul. He writes to remind a struggling community to keep clear what is the world and what is of God; and to have confidence in what is from God.
Teilhard de Chardin wrote; "Man is the crown of God's creation; not the static center of the world, as was long believed, but the axis and point of evolution, which is far more beautiful." In the face of evil, we have often found violence to be an answer. As God's people and the axis point of evolution, we are now given Christ's example of suffering servant to follow in, to live from and to act out. Christ left us with his peace, a peace that was unknown to the world before. Christ left us with a peace that defies what our worldly selves may reason to be of God's kingdom on earth. That is why we find the epistles full of distinctions between our flesh and and spirit. Not because our bodies are evil, for we are created in the image of God, but because the animal of our being often hinders us in meeting God. We trust our own eyes, our own plans, our own timing, instead of trusting in God's kingdom.
My first night in Tacoma I looked around my new shabby closet size bedroom at the Catholic Worker. In addition to the rain falling outside my window, I could hear someone coughing up a lung in the bathroom and everything seemed to smell like dirty socks. Everyone kept reminding me that 'we are all broken' but I missed my less broken, more educated and better smelling friends back in Eugene. Living with the homeless was not new to me, but the Catholic Worker in Tacoma dropped me further into solidarity with those experiencing poverty addiction and abuse. People come to our doors not as we invite them, but as they need. This leaves us vulnerable to the spirit's movement. Although I believed in the work of hospitality that my community supported I missed the life I had assembled for myself, and always held in my control. Being moved by the spirit, through suggestion, readings, prayers and the people God put into my life to walk with me I was transplanted into a life unknown to me before. I had to trust that whatever piece of God's kingdom he anointed and blessed and sent me to was and is strong enough to not only step with in faith, but trust completely with all the weight of my life. The Tacoma Catholic Worker community had been around for twenty years and was living, as well as it could, as the hands and feet of Christ in the world. I had to drop what occupied my own hands and say yes to what God called me to do. As I have learned, things don't turn out as expected. Once I had adapted to living with the homeless and broken folks at the Catholic Worker, I thought I had met the challenge God had called me to. The more I listened to God's calling the further I moved from what was within my comfort zone. At the same time, I was more and more saying yes to serving at St. Andrews. I began to see my community expand beyond the people I live with and the folks on the street that we share our lives with, to truly include you, my church family at St. Andrews. God's work is never finished in any of us- and for me that means that I will be physically leaving St. Andrews to attend the Seminary at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin Texas. Just when we find rest and think we have caught up with God, we find God may be calling us to a new branch of his kingdom.
As "the point of evolution", as Chardin called humanity; what are we waking up to in our post-modern world, in our own rapidly changing Episcopalian lives in the 21st century church? What parts of God's kingdom are emerging from the dry ground of our lives? What joy is hidden in what we consider to first be a nuance? Where is the good news in these parables? Where is the gospel in Ezekiel's prophesy of the tender cedar twig set on a mountain to grow into a haven for all creatures of every kind? Where is the good news in Paul's message to the Corinthians? They all give us encouragement to see that the kingdom is here and offers us a place in it's branches. These readings assure us that we will be surprised by the mystery of the kingdom's growth, it's humble origins and it's strength towering over what we can see of this world.
For me, right now, the good news of God's kingdom offered in these parables has manifested in this moment through the spirit that brings us here to St. Andrews, the spirit that moves among us and ties us to the heavenly kingdom full of the church's saints and prophets come before. The good news is that we are the vessels for God's kingdom to be poured out upon the world, we are living in the kingdom and have a source of eternal hope in Christ.
Amen.
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