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Sermon for Advent 3 – Messiah’s Winnowing Spoon

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Luke 3:7-18
As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

Stir up the wills of your faithful people, Lord God.

Advent is normally my favourite season of the church year. I don’t think that is uncommon for pastors. 

Christmas is of course the Super Bowl (or Grey Cup) of the church year. Christmas is like the most popular chain restaurant in town, everyone goes there and it is a big party. But Advent is more like that hole-in-the-wall family run restaurant with the most delicious food you can find, that most people seem to pass by without much notice.

The rich flavour of Advent is found in the images that we hear – the way of Lord, valleys filled up, mountains made low, crooked paths made straight that we heard about last week. This week it is the spicy brood of vipers, the fiery winnowing fork burning the chaff. Next week it will be angels and virgins, and promises and hints of Messiah. Advent’s beauty is in the blending of hints and promises of Messiah together with real life. With the messiness of people looking for something better. 

Real people like the crowds in the desert going to John the Baptist, looking and hoping for something different than what they know. Real people like the hypocritical religious and political leaders that we know as well as 1st century Israel did. Real people like a girl dealing with an unplanned pregnancy and the reality of impossible life choices. 

Advent speaks to the real circumstances that people – everyday, average people – deal with all the time.

And Advent weaves the coming of Messiah through it all. Christmas tells us of the extraordinary. Advent brings God close to the ordinary.

Normally, we prefer to focus on the light of the coming Messiah shines brightly through the cracks of our Advent images. We love to see Messiah bursting into our world.

Given all that we have experienced in these long couple of years, this Advent feel more Advent-y than usual. All the messy and broken stories of God’s people that we hear in Advent follow along side our story these days more than feels comfortable.

Stories and images of burning chaff speak less to farm hands separating wheat on the threshing room floor and more to the struggles of our communities trying to get a handle on public health measures, about believing science over misinformation, about putting the well being of all ahead of our own personal perceptions of inconvenience. 

Stories about King Herod’s willingness to kill infant boys to protect his own power and the violent world of occupied Israel of Jesus’ day reminds us all too much violence that has become a constant refrain in our world. Murder trials, hate crimes, and school shootings encouraged by delinquent parents.  

Stories about the innkeepers who turned away the holy family remind us too much of people fleeing floods and atmospheric rivers, essential supplies stuck in shipping containers in ports and warehouses, warnings that something must be done now to protect our planet’s future. 

Stories like the possible stoning that Mary could have endured had Joseph chosen to dismiss her sound too much like violence against women simply because they are women reminds us of the anniversary of Ecole Polytechnic and the violence against women still taking place today. 

Advent stories are coming at us in the news and daily life as often as they are coming from the bible.

Advent is our reality. Waiting for Messiah is what we are doing this year.

As John the Baptist declares, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” We are living out Advent in real time.

We are the ones standing on the riverbanks hoping that this wild hermit preacher named John can give us some hope. And all he seems to be talking about is wrath. Axes waiting to cut down trees. Warnings to start living better lives. Threats of burning with the chaff unless we get it together. 

At least that is what John seems to be talking about.

John describes the Messiah standing on a threshing room floor, the place where grain is brought in once it is harvested from the land. And the Messiah has his mighty winnowing fork in hand. A winnowing fork is used to separate a wheat stock from the grain itself. As the fork lifts the grain from the pile, the heavy grain falls to the floor, and the lighter useless chaff is blown into the fire to be burned away.

John’s message today sounds harsh but fitting for our world.

As Advent-y as things seem this year, as full of strife and struggle our world seems to be… maybe throwing us all into the chaff isn’t what John is getting at.

Because a pitchfork is not what Messiah is holding, for a fork would be a useless tool to clear a threshing room floor. And nor is the word fork used in the original greek of this text. No, the tool that the messiah is holding is more of a winnowing spoon… or more precisely a shovel. The winnowing shovel is not a tool of separating but a tool for gathering. 

Maybe just maybe, Messiah is gathering us up. Gathering us all up. Gathering up our broken and suffering and dying world so that we can finally begin to see the light. 

Maybe that is how God is reminding us that the Good News isn’t just reserved for Christmas.

As bad as the world seems to be, Messiah is already a work around us. Messiah has his winnowing shovel and is gathering. Messiah’s is bringing light to our Advent world.

Messiah is gathering us up as children and seniors roll up their sleeves to be vaccinated, adding more layers of protection to this pandemic weary world. As healthcare workers, education staff, businesses and community leaders, neighbours and families keep the inconvenient but essential public health measures day after day, week after week. 

Messiah is pulling us together in the many hands working tirelessly to rebuild and repair water logged homes, washed out roads and bridges, caring for now homeless flooding victims.  

Messiah is scooping us up off the floor as we recommit again to the work of social justice and caring for community, welcoming the stranger, providing for those in need. Just as our SLAW youth did in dropping a tremendous haul of Christmas supplies to the Urban this week. 

And Messiah is building us up as National church committed to the work of ending domestic violence against women with the Thursday in Black campaign. 

And Messiah is scooping us up off the threshing room floor here at Sherwood Park as we find new ways to gather for worship, to meet as small groups, to safely make music together, to reconnect with families and households, to find new ways of being the same body of christ that we have long been. 

Messiah is gathering us up, all the mess and all the struggle of our real life Advent so that we can see that God is really coming to us in incarnation, God in flesh among us.

So sure, John the Baptist may sound a little harsh today. Advent might feel extra Advent-y this year. But the promised Messiah is gathering us up today, scooping us off the threshing room floor with his winnowing spoon, making us ready for the in-breaking of light and hope among us. 

Stir up your power Lord Christ and come.

Pastor Thoughts

Thoughts for Advent 3 – Perspective Shift

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When my grandfather’s family immigrated from Norway, my understanding is that they landed first in Minnesota, where a lot of Scandinavian immigrants settled. But before long, many of these immigrants were longing for home, particularly for the Fjords of Norway. So a group of them decided to pick up and move to a place that reminded them of home the most. From Minnesota they moved to the coast of BC, to a place called Bella Coola. A tiny community nestled in the Fjords of BC. A community on the water but also among the mountains. A place where  sometime in late fall the sun would fall behind the mountains, not to be seen again until the end of winter. 

I always thought this was a strange decision and I wondered why my ancestors made it. 

Then I moved to the Red River Valley myself. Most Manitobans probably don’t think about this much, but there are virtually no hills here, no variation to the topography. If you know where to look you can find a hill, but they are not common. And no, driving over the Disraeli bridge does not count as a hill. 

The uncommon hills here are nothing compared to the hills and valleys found around Edmonton where I grew up, or the rolling prairie to the east, or mountains to the west. 

There are times when I long for a hill or two. And certainly there is strong sense of belonging whenever I am in the mountains – I think it is my Nordic blood. 

A few years ago, on one of our trips to see family out west, we were coming into the mountains just outside of Calgary when our daughter Maeve started complaining that she couldn’t see. We thought she meant she couldn’t see because of a pillow or blanket blocking her window, but we quickly sorted out that it was in fact the mountains themselves that were blocking her view of the sky (I think we are raising a real Manitoban…). 

Maeve is not the first prairie person to get panicky driving a mountain highway. I also know a few folks from BC who find the open skies of the prairies unnerving. 

As we navigate our way through the mountains, valleys, and flat places of Advent, I think there is something to the way God is working in and through our different perspectives. 

Flattened mountains and filled in valleys and straight paths don’t particularly excite me, but they might be a relief for some. 

The short days and long nights of winter might be something to be endured for some, but a sun that falls behind the mountains might feel like home for others. 

Advent is all about shifting our perspective. The stories we tell demand that we re-think the way we see the world. 

The End becomes the Beginning. 

John the Baptist’s bombastic preaching to wilderness crowds points us to a baby born in quiet and out-of-the-way manger. 

A young teenager, getting pregnant out of wedlock becomes the one in whom God is birthed into the world. 

The Messiah joins in with the life of creation in order to overcome death on the cross, and show us to new life. 

And finally, when we are tired, achy, slowing down, feeling as though we might be dying… when our lives, when the church, when the world feels as though things are falling apart… it might actually be something else. 

We just might be pregnant with new possibilities, soon to be entering into our world, changing our perspective on just what God is doing with us. 

covid-19, Sermon, Theology & Culture

Jesus is not talking about divorce in the way we think

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GOSPEL: Mark 10:2-16
Some Pharisees came, and to test [Jesus] they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” 5But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 6But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

When I was 7 or 8 years old, I remember the first one of my friends telling us that his parents were getting a divorce. It was a strange and complicated situation. Over the following weeks and months, he began living one week with his mom and the next week with his dad. And while there were two birthday parties, two thanksgivings, two Christmases, I could tell that having parents who didn’t live with each other anymore and having to move your whole life back and forth every Saturday was not something I would ever want. 

Fast forward to one day when I was 19 and working as a camp counsellor, we got a panicked call from the camp director during our hour off. We were needed to come and settle a group of unruly campers. The old pastor who was doing bible study with the group of high school aged campers, had gotten into a heated discussion with one teenaged girl over whether or not it was a good thing for her parents to divorce. He was insisting it was a sin. She was insisting that the fighting, and anger and frustration that was tearing apart her family had finally gone away once her parents separated and that this was a good thing. 

Despite being relatively common and something that many couples experience these days, divorce is still a word that carries stigma and shame. The wounds of divorce can be deep and slow to heal. 

So, when we hear Jesus offer some pretty strong words about divorce, it can sound like condemnation. “Because of the hardness of your heart.” he says… and yet ask anyone going through a divorce what their heart feels like and they will probably tell you the story of a heart being ripped to shreds, a wounded and broken heart. Not a hard one. 

So what is the deal? Doesn’t Jesus get how messy and complicated this is? Doesn’t God have compassion and mercy for two flawed people who don’t know how to find their way back to each other? Can’t Jesus see that sometimes a marriage needs to die for the individuals in it to live?

We can’t forget which Gospel we are reading today. This is the Jesus who has just called the Syrophoenician woman a dog, who has called Peter Satan, who has told John that it would be better if he were thrown into the ocean than get in the way of Jesus’ mission. 

Jesus in Mark’s gospel does not suffer fools and he doesn’t have time for people who don’t get it. 

So what are we not getting?

For a long time the church has used this passage to clobber anyone considering divorce. Pastors have told abused women that it would be a sin to leave their husband. We have told incompatible couples that they must continue to suffer together. The church has forbid divorce on any grounds, just like Jesus seems to be doing here. 

So again, what we are not getting that Jesus gets? The clue is in the in the question. “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

Not is it lawful for a couple to get divorced, but for a MAN to do the divorcing. 

The Pharisees and Jesus are not talking about marriage as we know it. This is not about two people who enter into a loving covenant to share a life of love together. 

This is about the contract between a man and a woman’s father. This is about men buying women just like they would buy a cow or a sack of grain or a piece of land. 

In the world of the Pharisees, women were not people. They were property. Property whose function was to serve and provide pleasure for the man, and ultimately provide a male heir. And if these things were not provided whenever the man wanted them, this was grounds for divorce. In fact, pretty much any dissatisfaction was grounds for divorce.

All man had to do was say, “I divorce you.” and his wife was cast out of the marriage and onto the street, where her only two options were prostitution or begging for survival. 

So when Jesus calls the Pharisees hard of heart, he is speaking of a power imbalance in a contractual and economic relationship. Not hardness of heart between a modern husband and wife. 

Jesus is calling out the Pharisees for being selective in their reading of the law of Moses. They say that the legal procedure of divorce is simple. But they know that the law of Moses is full of concern for widows and destitute women. It was the duty of a widower’s brother to marry a widow. It was the duty of a widower’s kin to provide a widow with children if she didn’t have any. And if re-marrying was not possible for a widow, it was the duty of the community to care for her. The men harvesting fields were to leave a portion of the harvest behind to be gleaned and collected by the widows. It was a law that a portion of the offering collected in the synagogues and temple be given to the widows and poor. 

For a set of laws to be so concerned with the care of husbandless women in a community to make it so easy for a man to divorce his wife doesn’t make any sense… it is a deliberate misreading of the rules. 

And Jesus knows it. The Pharisees know it. The disciples know it. Mark knows it. 

It is why the passage about people bringing children to Jesus is tacked onto this passage about divorce. 

Jesus is calling the people around him to care for the weak and vulnerable among them. He is telling men that it is wrong to dump their wives onto the community to care for. He is telling those in power that they don’t get to abdicate their responsibility to care for the powerless. Jesus is calling out and condemning those who would tell the weak and vulnerable to pull themselves up by their own boot straps. He is telling those in authority that their power comes with the obligation to use it for good. 

If Jesus were to have this conversation with us today, it would not be about divorce at all. 

If Jesus were talking about our hardness of heart he would be calling us out for very different reasons. 

Jesus would say, because of your hardness of heart it took the discovery of unmarked graves for your nation to wake up to the tragedy that is Indian Residential Schools in Canada. 

Let those are who have been lost and forgotten by too many for too long come to me, because the Kingdom of God belongs to them. 

Jesus would say, because of your hardness of heart many are persecuting and causing violence to the healthcare workers, doctors and nurses and other medical staff who are simply caring for those that need it.

Let these tired and exhausted and depleted caregivers come to me, for there is rest and comfort and peace in the Kingdom of God. 

Jesus would say, because of your hardness of heart you are afraid of those who are different, those from other countries, who worship and pray differently, whose skin is differently coloured. 

Let those who are marginalized for the way they worship, for the colour of their skin, for the language they speak come to me for the Kingdom of God belongs to them. 

Jesus would say, because of your hardness of heart you have told married couples on the ropes that their need to divorce is a sin. 

Let those who dying to separate in order to live come to me. 

Yeah… it is hard to hear Jesus challenge the hard places in our hearts. 

Yeah… it has been rough to listen to Jesus call us out week after week. 

Yeah… this might not feel like good news. 

And just when it feels like Jesus has just come to stomp all over us for having hard hearts, Jesus reminds us that we easily forget who we are, and we easily forget what Jesus is doing for us, to us. 

As we gather around the Word, as we remember being washed and joined to the Body of Christ in the waters at the font, and as we are given bread and wine from the table of the Lord… Jesus is blessing us. For ours is the Kingdom. 

Jesus is reimagining our world. Jesus re-humanizing all those are pushed down to the bottom. Those who are marginalized by those in power, those who wind up the victims of hardened hearts. Those whom the disciples would try to send away but Jesus would welcome and bless. 

Jesus is restoring humanity and dignity to all. Lifting up those on the bottom by bringing them back into relationship with their community, but also by bringing down the high and mighty by bringing them back too into relationship with their communities. 

Yes, we have hard hearts. No we have not lived up to the power and responsibility we have been entrusted with. 

Jesus names that and it is hard to hear.

But Jesus also names our humanity and dignity, restoring us to community – wether we are the privileged on top or the marginalized on the bottom. 

Despite our hard hearts. Despite what we have failed to do for the weak and vulnerable, Jesus says, come to me. All of you. Because you too are all the weak and vulnerable in some way. And because I have named you my children, the Kingdom of God belongs to you.

covid-19, Sermon, Theology & Culture

Who is this greatest? There are only sinners, like us.

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GOSPEL: Mark 9:30-37
35He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” 36Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, 37“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Sermon

As we round into the final weeks of this long season of green, on our way to the end of the Church year and Advent, we continue to hear Jesus interact with his disciples. Last week, Jesus asked them who they thought he was. It was a moment of revelation followed by rebuke. Peter declared that Jesus was the Messiah but then turned around and lost the plot, getting upset with Jesus for following the path set out for the Messiah, the path of suffering and death. 

This week, following this key revelation, as they are traveling between towns, the disciples begin to bicker about who among them is the greatest. It sounds childish considering who they are following and the teaching about what it means to take up their cross that Jesus had just given. Arguing about who is the greatest feels like it is something that belongs on the playground, a conversation for children….

And yet, it is an argument that drives so much of our world these days. Only about a month ago three billionaires raced to see who could be the first private citizen to fly to space. As we speak, Canada is in the midst of a Federal election with the leaders’ debate was last week, where every question was a nuanced version of ‘who is the greatest?” And of course, our society is full of controversy over COVID-19 public health measures, including vaccine requirements. My home province of Alberta tried to win the race to be the greatest in declaring the pandemic over in July, only to now be looking at a total healthcare system collapse over increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases. 

So this argument that the disciples are having might seem immature, but it is certainly not an unusual one. Maybe it is worth considering just what is really going on. 

As Jesus continues to preach and teach, he has been speaking more and more about what is the come for the Messiah – more and more about his impending suffering and death. And the disciples have started to put it all in the context of understanding Jesus to be the Messiah – just as Peter confessed last week. 

Yet, the disciples still don’t understand what this all means for them. Before, when they were fishermen and tax collectors, they know their place in the world and their place in their communities. In their extremely ordered Hebrew society, they knew their rank and station.

Yet now, as Jesus has called them out of those known places and into this unknown position of being his followers, followers of the prophesied Messiah, they are struggling to know who they are and where they fit. The place of the Messiah in the world comes predicted and described, but where Messiah’s number 2 through 12 followers fit might not be clear. 

So they do what human beings so naturally do, they try to sort out where they fit and who they are, within the context of their community. They try the best they can to answer that deep question within all of us that asks who we are and how to we fit into the world around us. 

But also like us, they go about it in toxic and self-destructive ways. They try to order their community by rank, putting themselves on top and those around them below. It comes from the same place that the question that the serpent posed to Eve came from, the question about knowing her place in the garden. 

This question is one that continues to plague us today, this desire to know where we fit and who we are. And even though it can feel like the kind of question that children ask or argue about – think “my dad is stronger than your dad” – it is is one what drives so much of our world. 

It is a question subtly asked in car commercials, suggesting that a new car would improve our station in life. It is one baked into the marketplace and corporate world, constantly demanding more productivity, more profit, more loyalty. It is part and parcel with every political move and decision, and at the heart of every political campaign. It often shows up in churches when we look at and wonder about the neighbour congregation down the street and how they are doing. 

And in the midst of crisis, as we are now, it shows up as we try to figure out what to do and how to proceed. And when opinions differ, especially when agreeing to disagree isn’t possible but instead decisions have life and death consequences, we can be guilty of posturing according to our position rather than searching for the course of action that it is best for all. 

Trying to sort this all out, trying to understand where we fit – or more specifically “Where do I fit?” is something deeply imbedded in how we understand ourselves. We need to know where we stand and where we fit into the world around us, no matter how destructive the search for the answer can become. 

When Jesus hears the childish argument of his disciples, we might expect the grumpy Jesus who called the needy but persistent Syrophoenician woman a dog two weeks ago or the angry Jesus who rebuked Peter. 

But instead Jesus stops and calls his disciples to gather around and asks “What were you arguing about on the way?”. When none of them has an answer, Jesus has them sit down with him. You can imagine that Jesus sees beyond the childish argument, and instead sees disciples who are struggling to understand their place in the world. Disciples who need reassurance rather than competition, disciples who need to be reminded that they belong. 

“Whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all.” he declares.

Then Jesus brings in a little child and puts it among them. But not just any child, but greek suggests that Jesus has brought an infant into their midst. Children in this world were considered to be blessings but also people for whom you didn’t get too strongly attached, lest they didn’t survive childhood. Children’ weren’t considered full persons until grown. 

So with this baby in his arms, Jesus holds one who is considered to be the least of all in that world. And Jesus says that whomever welcomes this one, who is the least and lowest in world, welcomes him. 

Jesus is chipping away at the disciples need to establish an order, their need to know where they fit by creating ranks and status among themselves. Jesus is using the tangible example of this baby as the means of showing his disciples what it means to belong to the Kingdom of God. There is no rank, first and last have no meaning. Belonging is what matters. God welcomes them, they belong to the Kingdom. They are children of God, servants to one another, members of the Body of Christ. 

The question about who is the greatest doesn’t apply here, instead who do you belong to is what matters. And with God, all belong in the Kingdom. 

It is a message that almost does’t compute in our hyper competitive world. Defining ourselves by who is on the top feels like the only way to understand ourselves. But God gives us a different understanding, an understanding based on belonging and not on rank. 

It is a part of our understanding of who we are that has been challenged by this pandemic. Our sense of “we” or community has been shaken. We have had for more opportunity than we really need as individuals to contemplate our individual identity.

Yet, God reminds us again and again, there is no greatest among us. 

There are only sinners to whom God gives grace, mercy and absolution. 

There are only suffering people for whom God promises healing and reconciliation

There are only the lost, least and forgotten, whom God welcomes into the Body of Christ. 

There are only the unwashed, whom God makes clean in the waters of Baptism. 

There are only the hungry and starving, whom God feeds at the table of the Lord. 

There are only disciples, whom God sends out to heal a world in need. 

In confession, in the Word, in praise and prayer, in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, God reminds us again and again of not who, but whose we are – we belong to God. There is no greatest and there is not least, but instead there is a place for all in the Body of Christ – all belong to God. 

covid-19, Sermon, Theology & Culture

The Kingdom is not in us. We are in the Kingdom.

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Mark 4:26-34
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. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

Today, our journey into Mark’s gospel continues. Last week, we started this long season of green by hearing how Jesus’ family thought he was crazy. But we also heard that in the middle of all the human chaos, and the divided messy nature of human relationships, Jesus stays the course of bringing new life to us and to the world. 

Today, we return to more familiar parables: Parables of the Kingdom. And while this teaching may be familiar for us, it wasn’t for those to whom Jesus was teaching and preaching. When Jesus tells parables of the Kingdom, lessons that often begin, “The Kingdom of God is like…” we hear them with 2000 years of Christian tradition that has made us ready to hear them. But to the people of 1st century Israel, their understanding of the Kingdom of God was very different from ours. Before unpacking what Jesus said, it is important to know what the people would have expected. 

The Kingdom of God for the people of ancient Israel had a very specific form. As we are reminded each Advent, the Israelites were waiting for the Messiah, the Saviour King who would free them from foreign oppressors like the Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, and Romans. And this Messiah King would establish an earthly Kingdom with divine approval – a powerful kingdom with powerful armies – maybe even powerful enough to do some oppressing itself. A wealthy kingdom with abundance – maybe with enough abundance that other nations would come begging to it. This Kingdom would keep Israel from ever again being ruled over by foreigners. This Kingdom would find favour with God, and would therefore be a holy and righteous Kingdom. This Kingdom would be centered in Jerusalem, with the temple, God’s dwelling place, as its symbol of power. The Kingdom of God was long hoped for but also had to live up to very specific criteria. 

Into this expectant time Jesus showed up. And he started telling parables about the Kingdom of God being like unknown seeds scattered in a field, with the sower having no clue how they would grow. Jesus told parables of how the Kingdom of God was like the humble mustard seed, the 

smallest of seeds that would grow into the most unruly of garden weeds. 

These parables would not have described a Kingdom like that which the crowds would have expected. This was not the Kingdom of God they were looking for. 

Even though we have heard all the Kingdom parables, we too can have a pretty narrow definition of what the Kingdom of God should look like. We too often want a Kingdom of power, security and predictability. We expect that God will fit into our narrow vision of what the Kingdom should look like. 

These days, just like those first century followers of Jesus, we too are in a moment of expectation. The world is waiting for things to get back to normal, for our pandemic misery to end, for all our pent-up desires for our favourite outings and gatherings to finally happen. 

But we are also reeling. Reeling from the discovery at Kamloops Residential school two weeks ago. Reeling from the next tragedy and reminder that we are a broken and divided house in Canada.  Reeling from the terror attack on a Muslim family in London, Ontario. Reeling from day after day of multiple COVID deaths in our province, including the death of a teenager this week. 

And this experience of tragedy pushes us to ask for, to demand, to expect something of our leaders, of those in charge. To demand and expect a response from God. 

Our hopes for the future, our hopes for the present can look a lot like the hopes and expectations of the crowds listening to Jesus today, wanting some very specific things because of our world in need, because of the cries for justice from the oppressed, grieving, and marginalized. 

Yet, today, we know that this parable of Jesus’ is about defying expectations, about doing the unexpected. God is asking us, in the middle of the chaos, to step back and consider just what the Kingdom of God might look like. 

So let me ask a question. And it is for the gardeners among us, in particular. 

Does anyone know of a seed that looks like the plant it produces?

I can’t think of any. 

You might never guess what plant a seed turns into until you plant it. In fact, many seeds also look very similar to each other and it can be hard to tell them apart without labels. Planting seeds is a bit of a guessing game. And churches, like all human beings, don’t like facing the unknown. 

In the best of times, churches often prefer to know that the things they do, the ministries, outreaches, projects or programs that they start will be predictable, identifiable, manageable.

As human beings in this moment, most of us are longing to regain some predictability into our lives (every day might feel the same as the last, but our weeks and months feel impossible to plan for). We want to go back to a world that is predictable and safe. We long for a world that isn’t blindsiding us every week with another tragedy or another big news story or another thing to get all worked up about.

But the Kingdom of God is simply not that way. 

God is up to something that is not safe or predictable or manageable. Scattering seeds is not predictable, or safe. Scattering seeds is not easily managed. Scattering seeds is a bit of a guessing game. And sometimes God ends up planting mustard seeds in the middle of the field – mustard seeds that grow into wild, weed-like over-powering bushes. 

This is what Jesus says the Kingdom of God is like: A sower who scatters seeds, but who isn’t sure just what will grow or how it turns from seed into a living plant. 

And yet again, this is what Jesus says the Kingdom of God is like: A small unassuming mustard seed, planted in a garden and threatening to take over. 

As people of faith, as workers and tenders of God’s garden, we declare that the Kingdom of God is near to us. That it is here. But sometimes we imagine that it is only here. That the Kingdom is contained only within the Church. And then God has other ideas, seizing opportunities to throw us out of our comfort zones, to call us to find new and unexpected ways of being. God demands that we give up our narrow vision of the world, and instead embrace the wide-open, possibility-filled vision that God has for us. 

We forget that the Kingdom of God is not contained within our imagination and expectations. The Kingdom of God appears and grows in unexpected places from surprising seeds. 

The Kingdom is not in us. We are in the Kingdom.

To people who have a very narrow view of what the Kingdom of God looks like, to the Israelites of the 1st Century, and to Christians of the 21st century who often have equally narrow views, Jesus reminds us that the Kingdom of God is so much more than what we know.

Jesus tells of how the Kingdom of God is spread with seed that is scattered all over.

Jesus tells of how the Kingdom is sprouting in un-expected places.  

Jesus tells of how the Kingdom of God is growing into life that we would never have predicted from the seed. 

Jesus tells of how the Kingdom of God is teeming with life where we would have only imagined barrenness. 

The Kingdom of God is meeting us on our screens, in our social media pages, in the outpouring of righteous outrage and compassionate support for survivors of residential schools and Indigenous communities, for the family and community of victims of the London terror attack, and for Muslims across the country. 

And in the scattered seeds of the Kingdom, God is reminding us that there is more work for us to do in order to achieve reconciliation – the work of justice, education, and change is upon us. God is reminding us that there is a new and unknown way of being the Church and a community of faith ahead for us, even if we don’t know what that will look like. 

New plants growing from the most surprising of places.

So as we struggle in this moment to find a world that meets our expectations, that conforms to a controllable, manageable state… we are reminded that God is busy with other plans. 

God is scattering seeds of the Kingdom all over. God is growing plants that we would never have guessed from the seeds. And God’s Kingdom is showing up, taking over, filling the fields with life.