Year B Proper 6
Mark 4:26-34
Preached on June 17, 2018 at Christ Church Christiana Hundred

Sunday Sermon – June 17, 2018 from Christ Church Christiana Hundred on Vimeo.

I’ve been at Christ Church for just over fifteen months now, but as many of you know, this isn’t my first time living in Delaware. I went to college just down the road at UD, so my first move to Delaware was when I was nineteen.What you probably don’t know is that it was a move I didn’t want to make. I enjoyed high school; I had it down. I was never super popular but I was involved in a variety of student groups and had a great circle of friends, many of whom I still consider my soul sisters. Also, I’ve always been close to my family and many of them lived nearby. I had a good thing going. Going off to college would mean a new chapter, a new beginning. Sometimes, now, when I’m driving south on turnpike I can still remember the day I moved into the dorm, riding in the backseat of my Dad’s silver suburban, with my one-third of a dorm room in back. I wanted that car ride to last forever.

(I imagine right now some of you are thinking “Why did this girl come back to Delaware?”)

How I felt about UD transformed in my time there because I transformed too. In college, I made new friends, lived into my passions, found a voice I didn’t know I had and discerned my vocation. I was like the sower in the first parable in today’s gospel lesson, sleeping and waking and going about my daily business…. But all around me seeds were sprouting and growing in ways I didn’t know or expect.

We get a lot of seed imagery today as Jesus tells us about the kingdom of God, because seeds are beginnings – awaiting growth and transformation. Today, Jesus teaches us that the kingdom of God gives us life when we’re surrounded by darkness, breaks us open to new possibility, and invites us into a new way of being full of endless opportunities for growth.

The mustard seed is so small when it starts out but like all other seeds, it has to be buried to grow. When a seed is planted to awaken its new beginning, it is surrounded by darkness under the earth. Riding in that backseat of my Dad’s suburban that day, all I could see awaiting me in this new beginning I’d chosen was the darkness of the unknown. Every time we move, start a new job or school, embark on a new relationship, we’re sowing ourselves into unknown territory. We’re planting ourselves like seeds and praying for new life. Sometimes, that darkness is not expected. Sometimes, it’s overwhelming. Often, it’s completely unpredictable and we have no idea how long it will last. But next time you have one of those days where you just want to stay in bed, pull the blankets over your head, and hide: remember how Jesus likens the Kingdom of God to a seed and the precursor to all of that transformation is total darkness. God is nurturing us in that darkness, even when we can’t see God there.

In order to get out of that dark place, a seed has to not only break open to the unknown but it has to sprout. It has to reach out overcoming any fear and temptation to stay in its safe and secure shell and pull its little mustard seed down comforter over its head. At the end of my first day of classes, I joined my first student group. I looked up where it met, walked across campus by myself, and entered a room filled with strangers, who would become some of my first and closest friends. It was one more strange new thing in a season of strange new things, but it was the beginning of what would become a weekly ritual that would shape my college career and help me discover my voice. Whether the darkness around us is heavy or light, isn’t it always those little moments of reaching out that lead us to something great – like the first time you shook your spouse’s hand or the first time you did the thing that became your greatest passion? All of those moments began with a seed, something impossibly small but that God was surrounding the whole time. All of these moments began with one brave decision to reach out into the unknown and have faith that God is there. The Holy Spirit is always waiting to surprise us.

Any seed brave enough to break open and sprout is always always going to find its way out of the darkness and reach the warmth of God’s life-giving light, where it will continue to transform, blooming into blossoms like the ones on our altar or growing tall like the magnolia tree on Buck Road or becoming the greatest of all shrubs like the mustard seed. In Christ, the possibilities for growth are endless. That place I went to on that very first night of classes – where I found some of my dearest friends and began my journey to finding my voice? It’s the same place where I met the people who connected me to Christ Church. By likening the Kingdom of God to a seed that springs life, Christ is reminding that the Kingdom of God is alive – alive and the source of all life and transformations, just like how Christ tells us that mustard seed that grows so big that it comforts the birds. We’re called to invite each other into God’s transformation.

Just like how every seed grows up differently, the Kingdom of God always has room for new possibility – and new transformation that continues throughout our lives. Over and over again, just as we pray that “Thy Kingdom come” over and over again in the Lord’s Prayer.

After I graduated from UD, I loaded the last of my dorm room into my beautiful Ford Taurus and as I drove across the Delaware Memorial Bridge towards the entrance to the New Jersey turnpike, I cried that that beautiful chapter of my life had come to an end, even though I knew I was just a summer away from my move to South Africa….and you know, when that time came, I remember wishing that plane ride would last forever.

We’ve always been told that we should have faith like a mustard seed – faith that grows bigger and bigger. But more than that, this gospel is calling us to be the mustard seed:
To have faith in God’s transformation spirit all around us when we are buried by dark unknown soil!
To break open and welcome God’s life-giving call, every time God presents Godself!
To grow in the life-giving light of God, fearless and ever-changing as we become what we cannot predict!
God’s transforming power is already in progress. Are you ready to be planted? b