“Sowing Seeds for a New Creation” - A Sermon

Sermon by Hannah Shultz for Trinity Episcopal Church, Statesboro on May 14, 2023.

In 2014 I was a full-time volunteer with Brethren Volunteer Service working in the Church of the Brethren’s denominational offices in Elgin, IL. I lived in an intentional community house with five other full-time volunteers in the program. One of the best parts of the house was the flourishing garden in our backyard. When I moved into the house in mid-August the garden was overflowing with a late summer harvest. We spent the fall eating okra, peppers, tomatoes, and squash. This garden brought color to our dinner table and supplemented our otherwise simple meals. Since we lived outside of Chicago, winter brought multiple feet of snow and ice to our garden for a few months. Then, when the world began to thaw in the spring, I got to learn how to re-cultivate a garden for a new season. One of my housemates, an avid gardener, taught me how to grow vegetables from seed. This is a delicate process of planting tiny seeds in little pots, carefully tending to them for weeks with just the right amount of water and sunlight until they start to sprout. The spring was filled with hope and anticipation as we’d come home from work every day anxious to see which of our seeds had started to sprout. Of course, not all of the seeds survived, but we eventually had enough starters to plant a new crop of vegetables that would nourish and sustain us through the summer. We were a little bit like the farmer in this parable, scattering seed, tending the sprouts, and watching and waiting while the life sown in our little pots grew into a bountiful harvest.  

In Mark Chapter 4, Jesus uses a familiar analogy of planting, growing, and cultivating to talk to his disciples about the nature of the Kingdom of God. In Mark, this is the second of three “seed” parables that are used to help the disciples weave together an understanding of the nature of God’s reign. No one parable gives the full story, but Jesus uses this series of parables to give his disciples glimpses of God’s kingdom. In this particular parable, the farmer who is scattering seeds on the ground has no idea how the seeds sprout and grow. It is not by the sowers’ efforts that a bountiful harvest comes to fruition. This is how it is with the kingdom of God, Jesus says. The kingdom is inaugurated according to God’s will and purpose, and we cannot know when or how this will happen. 

Now, I don’t know about you, but this is a little bit of a hard message for me to hear. We live in a society that is largely measured by success. We like to know how things work and we want to feel confident that we will see the fruits of our labor. I can’t imagine planting the tiny seeds for our backyard garden without knowing that I had the ability, with the right amount of water, sunlight, and fertilizer, to help them grow into vegetable plants. This parable, however, challenges us to take a step back from our need for control and let go of our expectations. This is a story of reassurance of God’s sovereignty. It’s a story about trust, hope, and anticipation of what is to come. 

It's a story about God - about what God has promised for us – about what God has visioned for Creation and society. 

We do not need to know exactly how the story ends. In fact, the passage we heard from Romans this morning reminds us that “hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees?” When the whole of creation is groaning together, the hard work that we are called into is to have hope in a future that is promised to us, but remains unseen.

While modern society teaches us that we should be in control of our own destiny, the ancient church reminds us to turn to God in prayer in times of doubt.  The next couple of days that follow today are traditionally celebrated as Rogation Days. Traditionally these days are when Christians would fast, pray, and take part in processional litanies to bless the land. They would pray for the land and sea, for good weather, fruitful harvests, and protection from calamities like disease and famine. At the end of the service today we will participate in this ancient tradition and walk the grounds to 4 prayer stations as we consider our relationship with the land, the water, green spaces, and trash. 

Today, the Rogation days are a point in the liturgical calendar in which we remember God’s love for the earth and renew our commitment to care for Creation.

This parable and these Rogation days remind us to turn to God in hope and prayer but also suggest that this is not to be a time of passive waiting. Although we may not know the secrets of God’s kingdom or when and how the harvest will be ready, Jesus tells us that we are called to sow seeds and prepare for this harvest. 

We only need to be faithful attendants helping to set the groundwork for the kingdom that we trust God to achieve. Pastor and theologian Jon M. Walton says, “Is there not something to be said for being faithful in… sowing the seeds of the kingdom in places and at times when the promise of a great harvest seems unlikely and the fields thorny? Perhaps it is not ours to know the eventual outcome of the seeds we sow, ours is simply to sow.” 

Just as the disciples were called to sow the seeds of a new faith that was met with questioning and resistance, we too are called into the challenging task of sowing seeds for a kingdom that looks very different than the world we are living in now. It’s not hard to look around us and know that these are some pretty thorny fields we are planting in right now. A few times a week we wake up to news about another mass shooting, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe, the war in Ukraine continues, and the earth groans as plastics continue to pollute our oceans and greenhouse gas emissions add particulate matter to our air and drive global climate change.

This passage reminds us that we are critical players in making this earth a better place - a place where God’s love is known; a place where righteousness is restored for the earth and for the communities who suffer. Although we don’t know exactly what the harvest will look like, we are told at the end of the book of Revelation that the earth and everything in it are included in God’s plan for redemption. Creation does not pass away but is restored and renewed as part of the new heaven and the new earth of God’s kingdom. The original goodness given to us in Genesis is restored in Revelation. 

We have been commissioned with the task of preparing the ground for the world to come. 

Bringing restoration to the earth is a critical component of advancing God’s kingdom. From the very beginning of scripture, we are told that God loves the earth. 

Indeed in this first creation account, God spent way more time with the rest of Creation than God did with humanity. God created the light and the dark, the seas and the land, the birds of the air, the creatures that walk the earth, and flourishing vegetation, and every time God saw that it was good. God blessed the goodness of the earth 6 times before humanity ever even entered the scene. 

But, caring for and sustaining the earth has always been part of God’s vision for humanity as well. Made from the dust and dirt of the earth, filled with God’s breath of life, we were placed in the Garden of Eden and told to take care of it (Genesis 2:15). Helping the earth flourish was our first and only responsibility. But we have always done a poor job tending to the garden. We so quickly traded in our hedge clippers and garden trowels for bulldozers and machines until God’s creation has become unrecognizable. 

Our land is decimated by our exploitive and extractive practices. Not too far from here, they are trying to mine for titanium on the border of the okefenokee national wildlife refuge. This uniquely holy and sacred space, one of our most celebrated pieces of land in Georgia, could be irreversibly damaged. 

Our water is poisoned by pollution and toxins as leftover ash from burning coal for electricity sits in unlined ponds submerged in groundwater. 

Our green space is threatened by the biomass industry as our trees are cut down, turned into wood pellets, and burned for fuel.  And just recently, the public service commission stretched the definition of biomass to potentially allow facilities to add scrap tires to the mix they burn. You heard me right – we might start burning tires.  

Our trash is overflowing as we have produced way more than we do what to do with. We’ve contaminated the earth with our need for expansion, quicker and faster food, and our obsession with consumerism and single-use products. 

This is not how we were meant to live on the earth that God gifted to us. 

Our work of caring for creation has never just been about caring for the garden, either. In the Old Testament, obligations toward the land and others stand at the center of God’s covenant with Israel. Social and ecological justice are intertwined in such a way that, when the agreement to care for those in need is broken, both people and the land suffer. In the earliest mention of the sabbath year (Exodus 23:10-11), the Israelites are told to stop working on the land so that the poor and wild animals may glean from the fields. Sabbath is a time for social relations to be restored and for society’s outcasts to be given resources. It is an interruption from the hurried work of building, cultivating, and exploiting. 

Scattering seeds for a New Creation includes doing the work of establishing justice not just for the earth but also for the people on it. Low-income, minority, and vulnerable communities disproportionally bear the burden of the environmental and public health impacts caused by climate change. The same systems and structures of oppression that prioritize consumerism and production over sustainability also perpetuate economic, racial, and social injustices. 

And so here we are; standing in our thorny fields, looking at the world around us realizing that this is not the world as it should be. We need these parables today to learn something about God’s kingdom. To be reminded that this is not God’s vision for us or for Creation. To think about the world that was promised to us. And to realize that we must fight for that world – that there is no other choice. 

Take a deep breath and close your eyes; allow yourself to go back to the garden for just a minute so that you can remember that you are made from the earth itself and that you are, and always have been, called into the work of restoring God’s creation so all life may flourish. 

It is our job now to start scattering the seeds that will bring restoration to human relationships and our relationship with the earth. I think one of the biggest challenges of this work is knowing where to start. In the second part of this parable, Jesus continues his analogy by explaining that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all the seeds on earth. Yet, when it grows it becomes a large shrub providing shade and shelter for the birds. The parable of the mustard seed reassures us that we can start small  – good things come out of the tiniest seeds. 

We sow seeds of justice when we use our voices to advocate for policies that will protect the land for generations to come. 

We sow seeds of action when we participate in river clean-ups, removing trash and tires from our rivers and streams before they can make their way to our oceans. 

We sow seeds of hope when we help our green spaces flourish by planting trees and demonstration gardens like the one you have here. 

We sow seeds of change when we use our reusable grocery bags and start recycling our plastics to reduce the amount of trash polluting our land.

These small things that each one of us can do are important. These acts are a spiritual discipline – they are a daily rebellion against the corruption of this world and an illustration to those around us that there is a different way of living. They are a reminder that the world doesn’t have to be this way - - that God has a vision for something better and that we have a role to play in making this world possible.  

The seeds we’re planting now will help restore cleaner air, cleaner water, and cleaner energy so that we might turn our scorching earth, once again, into a hospitable home that provides rest and shade for its inhabitants. 

This parable challenges us not to be disappointed by the kingdom’s seemingly insignificant beginning. God is working in and through us to establish a kingdom defined by a New Creation. 

This “seed” parable reminds us that God calls us to be God’s co-laborers - preparing the ground and sowing the seeds that will support and sustain God’s kingdom. As we into this season of active hope – a season of working alongside God – may we remember that we can, that we must get to work. For the sake of ourselves and our planet. When the world is on fire around us there is no other way. May we remember that our work matters now, 100 years from now, and whenever the story ends and God inaugurates a new creation. And, may we remember that this day WILL come. We are assured a prosperous future - where life is abundant, where creation lives in harmony, where the land flourishes, the waters are overflowing, the trees bring forth fruit and provide shade, and justice reigns for ALL of God’s people.  This is God’s promise to us. When we are tired of standing in thorny fields and are compelled into action, we need to ask ourselves, what seeds are we called to sow?