In an effort to stimulate their thoughts about the nature of God, I invited a group of teenagers to join me in watching the movie, Oh, God! In the course of the movie, God, in the person of George Burns, has prevailed on Jerry, the assistant manager of a supermarket, played by John Denver, to carry God's message to the world. Toward the end of the film, Jerry is lamenting to God that nobody seems to be listening to the message. He tells God that he thinks that they have failed. But God doesn't see it that way. "Oh, I don't think so," God says. "You never know; a seed here, a seed there, something will catch hold and grow."
This is the message of the Gospel passage we are looking at. Jesus has been talking about the Kingdom of God, the time when God's reign will be manifest upon the earth, and people will live in conformity to God's will. It was apparent that it wasn't happening then. It would be even more difficult at the conclusion of Jesus' ministry for his disciples to believe that the Kingdom of God had come any closer to being a reality. They would be a small, discouraged group of fugitives without a leader. Now was the time to provide them with a message that would give them hope in times of discouragement and sustain them in the face of future persecution. His words have a message, not only for his original disciples, but for us as well.
The first thing these words of Jesus do is to remind us that we are called to do something. He spoke of seed to be scattered. If the Kingdom of God is to become a reality, we who are aware of God's grace have seeds to sow. The seeds may be seeds of witness.
In a restaurant, a family of five bowed their heads in prayer before beginning to eat. One of the children, a girl of about ten, expressed thanks for the entire family in a hushed voice, her head bobbing expressively. A few moments later a couple, on their way to pay their check, paused at the family's table. "It's been a long time since we've seen anyone do that," said the man, extending his hand to the father. The father smiled and replied, "It was strange at first, but we always express thanks at home before we eat. The children continued it when we went to restaurants, so we just went along with it, and now it's our way." The woman who had come up to the table patted the little girl on the shoulder and, obviously touched, looked at the mother and said, "Don't ever stop. It means a lot to those around you." It seems like such a little thing, but it was a witness. The seeds of the kingdom are little, and we are called to scatter them.
The seeds may be little acts of kindness which take root and bear fruit. Oscar Wilde tells of an incident that had profound meaning for his life. He was being brought down from his prison to the Court of Bankruptcy, between two policemen, when he saw an old acquaintance waiting in the crowd. "He performed an action so sweet and simple that it has remained with me ever since," wrote Wilde. "He simply raised his hat to me and gave me the kindest smile that I have ever received as I passed by, handcuffed and with bowed head. Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that. It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love, that the saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss the leper on the cheek. I have never said one single word to him about what he did ... I store it in the treasure-house of my heart ... That small bit of kindness brought me out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony with the wounded, broken, and great heart of the world." We plant the littlest of seeds and it helps the Kingdom to grow.
The second thing these words of Jesus do is to remind us that while we are called to do something, we are not called to do everything. We scatter the seed, but the growth is up to God. As a child during World War II, I contributed to the war effort by planting a victory garden in the backyard of our home. It was a good experience for a child to be involved in. I had to prepare the ground, plant the seed, water the rows, and eventually, attend to the harvest. The hardest part was the waiting. At the first sign of sprouting, I felt that I had to pull up a few radish and carrot plants to see how things were going below the surface. Naturally, that was the end of those plants. As scatterers of seeds, we have some responsibilities, but the maturing process has its own timetable, and we are not in charge.
Certainly, we see that in the development of human beings. A number of years ago Family Weekly carried a story about a couple who were called to the office of the principal of the high school their son was attending. "I know how disappointing it is for you to hear these things about your son," said the principal, "but I've talked with his teachers, and we think you should let him drop out of school." The parents, both successful in their fields, were not surprised. For years they had been despairing over their son's poor report cards. "In other words," the father said sorrowfully, "you're telling us he'll never amount to anything."
On a June afternoon, nineteen years later, they sat in the gymnasium of a large university watching as their son received an honorary degree. Today, at the age of 42, his statements are frequently quoted in newspapers, and his income is six figures.
How did this come about? One evening he came home from his job as a gas station attendant and announced that he was going to finish high school and go to college. From then on he amazed everyone by the turnabout of his attitude and accomplishments. He explained the change by saying, "Somehow, while I was washing a blue two-door sedan, all the bits and parts fell into place, and I was grown up."
People grow and mature at different rates. Thomas Edison's teacher said he could never amount to anything and advised his mother to take him out of school. Winston Churchill was admitted to school in the lowest level classes and never moved out of the lowest group in all the years he attended Harrow. Albert Einstein seemed so slow and dull that his parents feared that he was mentally deficient. One observer has said, "Great minds and high talent, in most cases, cannot be hurried and, like healthy plants, grow slowly."
It is so with God's Kingdom. We scatter the seed, but we are not ultimately responsible for its growth. We cannot make things happen. The process by which the kingdom of this world becomes the Kingdom of God proceeds very slowly, and it exasperates us. But, at the same time, if we have faithfully scattered the seed, we are not to blame for its failure to appear in its fullness. We are being cautioned, in these words of Jesus, to be patient.
A third thing these words of Jesus do is to call us to hope. We are ignorant of the process, but the word of Jesus is that growth is taking place. "The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed," he said, "which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth: yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs...." The seed is becoming a bush. God's Kingdom is growing in its own way, from seemingly inconsequential beginnings. All the great music in our culture begins with eight notes. The great literature of our language begins with 26 letters.
Whatever God's Kingdom may one day become, it starts out as the smallest of things. The great advances of the race have often started without any trumpets sounding or anybody being aware that anything exceptional was taking place. On the one hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, John McCutcheon drew a famous cartoon. He showed two Kentucky backwoodsmen standing at the edge of a wood in the winter. One asks the other, "Anything new?" The other man replies, "Nothing much. Oh, there's a new baby over at Tom Lincoln's. But you know, nothing significant ever happens around here."
Centuries before that someone might have asked in Bethlehem, "Anything new?" And the answer might have been, "No, nothing new. Oh, they say a woman named Mary had a baby in a stable last night. But nothing significant ever happens around here." And when that child grew up and taught, he taught about little things: a cup of cold water, a person with one talent, a widow's offering, a lost coin, kindness done for "one of the least of these." So many of the greatest happenings begin in just such a fashion. They are no more than the planting of a mustard seed. Yet, in God's good time, the seed becomes a plant and puts forth its branches for the benefit of all.
Bishop Bevel Jones tells a story about an experience of Andrew Young, former ambassador to the United Nations, when Young visited South Africa at the invitation of Nelson Mandela several years ago. For years Mandela was a leading opponent of apartheid in South Africa. In 1964, the white establishment locked him up for life. But as his legend grew, there was international pressure to set him free. He was released in 1990, and in 1994 he was elected president of South Africa.
Thirteen months later, Mandela invited Andy Young to be his guest when South Africa hosted the Rugby World Cup Tournament. Rugby was a white man's game, and the South African team was all white, though South Africa is about eighty percent black. Even though the world championship was being played in Johannesburg, there was deliberate absence of support for the team.
As the tournament approached, there was controversy over the South African team symbol -- a leaping gazelle called a springbok. Most of the white Afrikaners said, "The springbok has been a symbol of every rugby team we've ever had." Most black South Africans said, "Exactly! It reminds us of South Africa's racist history, and we want it changed." It was an explosive situation.
A few days before the opening game, Mandela visited the team and then called a press conference, at which he wore a team jersey and athletic cap with the team mascot, a springbok, on it. He said that until the elections, he and most other black people in South Africa had always supported whoever was playing against the Springboks. "But regardless of the past," he said, "these are our boys now. They may all be white, but they're our boys, and we must get behind them and support them in this tournament."
The next day, instead of holding a practice, the Springbok's coach took his team out to Robben Island, to the prison where Nelson Mandela had spent nearly three decades of his life behind bars. The coach and every player on the team walked into Mandela's cell. As they stood there, the coach said, "This is the cell where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. He was kept here for 27 years by the racist policies of our government. We Afrikaners tolerated his imprisonment for all those years, and yet he has backed us publicly. We can't let him down."
The tournament opened, and the Springboks outdid themselves. To everyone's surprise, they won their first game. In fact, they made it into the final game against New Zealand, a rugby powerhouse. At the end of regulation, the game was tied. President Mandela was in the stands, wearing a Springbok jersey. During the timeout, he brought a South African children's choir out of the stands. They sang an old African miners' song which to them is like "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" was to the slaves in America. Within minutes, 65,000 people in the stadium were standing and singing this black African miners' song. Andy Young said, "I don't know anything about rugby, and I don't understand the words of the song, but I was in tears."1
When the Springboks took the field, they were unstoppable. They won the World Rugby Championship. And for the next 24 hours, whites danced with blacks in the streets of South Africa. One of the most divided nations on the planet was united by something some people might consider insignificant -- a rugby match. But God used it to heal a nation.
We are not to lose hope when the Kingdom tarries. The seeds have been scattered. Small as they may appear to be to us, the Lord of the harvest will bring them to flower.
1. Taken from Homiletics, Volume 9, Number 2, p. 48.