2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17 and Mark 4:26-34
May I speak in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
We gather in a season of transitions for many in our midst.
Over the past week the Cathedral has hosted Leavers’ Services for children in Year 6 as they prepare to leave primary school and move into secondary education. In a fortnight’s time we will host the ordination services for those who are to become deacons and priests. And then thousands of university students will visit the Cathedral for their Congregation ceremony, known to many of you as Graduation.
Each of these events mark an ending and a beginning – and invites the inevitable reflection on how people have grown and developed over the intervening years.
Parents of primary and secondary school leavers look back in astonishment at photos of their child on their first day in that place, remembering how small or nervous they were, remarking on how much they have grown and matured and begun to find their own identity and character.
University students rejoicing in all they have achieved during their time in Durham, will reflect on how these past few years have changed them, honed their sense of who they are, prepared them for the next step into a world still to be explored and discovered.
Looking back on their lives, they will begin to notice what is different to their lives a year ago, two years ago, perhaps several years ago. They will have changed. They will see the world and indeed themselves through different eyes. Growth will have taken place and it’s always fascinating to look back and notice the seeds which germinated and took root.
And whilst this season of reflection may be particularly apt for those approaching transitions at this time, it’s actually just as relevant to each and every one of us here.
Because if you pause for a moment and look back over the past few years you too will be able to identify ways in which you have changed as a person, in your engagement with the world around you, in your self understanding, in your relationship with God.
And it’s that dynamism about our lives – the spirit moving within us - which Jesus is describing in the parable of the seed that we heard in the gospel reading just a few moments ago. We are not static people, we are always in transition, growing and changing.
Everyone one of us has been seeded and something of God is shaping within us. Sometimes we don’t notice it. Sometimes we wait years looking for it, and then we see the first green shoot emerge. Other times we are suddenly surprised by a change which has so quietly grown within us it has astonished us by coming to light. God is at work within us.
And that’s why the parable we heard this morning is not about gardening or farming as we might presume at first glance. Jesus is using images from these ways of life to illustrate something important about your life and about my life. His parable is a metaphor – something to offer insight, encouragement and hope.
Our lives are like a garden that has been generously planted with seeds. And you know how that works – the seeds take time to grow. Sometimes the growth happens hidden within the soil of our lives before it begins to break through to the surface. We are a work in progress, a pilgrim people on a journey who haven’t yet arrived, we are living into our completion – into that ‘new creation’ Paul spoke about so compellingly in our first reading.
“It is”, Jesus says, “as if someone would scatter seed on the ground”. I wonder who have been those seed scatterers in your life? The people who have given encouragement, offered wisdom, spoke difficult truths to gift new life? I wonder who in your pilgrimage of life and faith has opened your eyes to see the world and others and yourself differently? Who has inspired you and called forth from you more than you thought you had?
And I wonder if you’ve ever thought of yourself as one called to scatter seeds in the lives of others? To gift reconciliation by asking for forgiveness; to encourage, reach out in compassion? To speak out at injustice, to be simply present in someone’s time of darkness and despair.
I wonder what barren ground is waiting to be seeded and planted with your life. I wonder what is sprouting and growing at this very moment. I wonder what is flourishing and blossoming. I wonder where weeds have taken over. If there is soil that needs turning and attention.
Well, I’ve asked you a lot more questions that I’ve given you answers. And that, I think, is the way of parables. They are not there to provide easy answers, but to enable us to ask better questions. They give us work to do – a different lens through which to see ourselves, others and the world.
And maybe seeing differently is the beginning of being different. Of welcoming growth and change and risking the pilgrim way of faith that will shape and form us in ways we cannot even yet imagine. In ways that shine with the light of God’s new creation, infused with hope and with joy.
Meister Eckhart, a 14th
century German monk, says this about the seeds we have been pondering this morning:
The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature.
Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and a God seed into God.
May our lives be fertile ground for the kingdom to grow in us and through us.
Amen.