The Mundane Kingdom

Scripture Reference:  Matthew 13: 1-9

I didn’t really listen when Kathy told me I was making the garden too big. The three beds were five by twelve feet, one foot high and set a foot apart; I built them with pressure treated lumber and lag screws; I staked the middle of each length so they wouldn’t bow. I ordered a load of topsoil and filled the beds.

Given the size of our yard, it was a big back yard, the raised garden beds looked about the right size. Again, Kathy warned me, “that is a lot of garden.” I don’t remember scoffing, but I am sure I did. I mean it’s a garden. You sow the seeds and let the sun and the rain do the rest. How can it be too big?

The garden beds were way too big, too much garden for an unexperienced, easily distractable, not very present person who can go a few weeks without ever really being home. Before I could this see, though, I distinctly remember the beauty of the raised rows neatly sown with all sorts of vegetable seeds. There were peppers and zucchini and lettuce and tomatoes, and eggplant and Brussel sprouts and I want to say there was a row of flower seeds, zinnias. The beds were lush with the rich soil, so easy to turnover.

When I checked back in a few weeks I figured it was too early to really see much. I was very wrong; there was a lot to see. There was the most amazing carpet of weeds. The weeds were so thick and of such variety that I could not tell what was weed and what was seedling. I did my best to weed out what I could.

When I returned a week later, it was as if the weeds had taken offence at my work and decided to double down. This fight persisted for much of the summer. Neglect, weeding, neglect, weeding. By the time I reached the end of August there were some plants that had survived to bring forth a crop, but on the whole, the beds were a humbling experience.

I gained a few lessons in my humility. The first is that if one must weed, and weed, weed again. Gardening is not an endeavor for the neglectful. This is a highly focused path of persistence. Second, covet the advice of gardeners. I took my wife’s direction as chiding, not the wisdom of an experienced gardener.

Perhaps my lack of skill is unique to me, but my ignorance is all too common today. In centuries to come, this time will be remembered for our agricultural amnesia—the loss of farming skill. What was the common experience of millennia was lost in a few generations?

I heard this quite often in my first congregation where I did many funerals for those born in the beginning the century; before automobiles, indoor plumbing; most did not have electricity. I can’t tell you how many times I gathered with families who lost a patriarch or matriarch; they wanted me to know what this meant. Not only did a loved one pass, but a whole world was passing.

One said to me near the end of life, if we didn’t plant it; if we didn’t raise it, we didn’t eat it. It was a wonderful gift to hear them discuss the exotic experience of going to a store to buy macaroni or how they stored things before refrigerators or got to work on a horse.

Ruth Essex was of these, 104 when she died. This was almost 30 years ago so she was born in the 1890s. Ruth lived on a farm outside of town and taught at the local elementary school; rode her horse to work each day. Do you remember the name of your horse I asked? She paused and said, “Jack.”

I say this because we may not see what Ruth would have seen clearly in the parable of Jesus. She would have known what Jesus was talking about, the sowing of seeds; she would have known how mundane was his example of the kingdom of God. Jesus compared the kingdom of God to what is so very basic.

Yet, to us, the sowing is a bit like macaroni was to Ruth; this is a bit exotic, a fantastic story. For who among us has sown a field? Here I was simply trying to sow three raised beds in a backyard and I failed, had no idea of what I was doing.

For the people of Galilee, the crowds following Jesus, sowing a field would have been the most common, down to earth, simple illustration imaginable. And the four parts: the hard, unamended soil; the rocky ground preventing roots; the weeds that choke and disallow fruition; and the prepared soil which yields a harvest, this was not a mysterious list of intriguing possibilities; this was life.

Before we venture into the parable, we must remember its most significant feature, its beauty, the kingdom of God is in the everyday, the mundane, the simple. With the parable of the sower Jesus invites us to see God in the basic toil of life.

The parable is about the work people do everyday. The kingdom of God is your day’s work, the prayer, our daily bread. I saw a garden as a fun thing to do. I was wrong. Three large garden beds are not born of relaxation. Breaking the hard ground is work.   Digging down to loosen the soil is work; removing the rocks that keep roots from spreading— this is work. Here is where I thought the work was done. Oh no. You need to continue to work, weed the rows again and again. And then, in the end, you must work to harvest.

The parable of the sower is four parables really. Each soil receives seeds and is compared to the kingdom of God. Each type of soil is a readiness or lack of readiness to receive a seed for planting. Through the centuries this parable has been abused, used to type cast people, to judge people. There are bad people; there are quitters; there are the less than able; and then there are good people. This is a terrible interpretation of the parable.

A better way of reading this is to see in each us various conditions of soil. In each of us there is hardness; there are places where our soul is thin; and we all are prone to distraction and neglect of what is important. And, the good news, in spite of all this, there is good soil in us too.

The parable of the sown seed is a kind of primer for all the parables. If you learn to read this one, learn how to listen, then the rest of the parables come rather easily. There is a reason Jesus explains this parable and talks to the crowd about speaking in parables before he proceeds. We will try to do the same.

Today I would like to keep to simplicity, the beauty to be found here, how it is of the earth, mundus, mundane. Keep to the earth is what Jesus says so often.

Paul and the early church like to speak of the cosmos; they focused much of their imaginations on heaven, speculating on the mind of God, the eternal will, the resurrection, the end of time, and the desire to see Christ as victorious and triumphant. For this reason much of our theology is based upon the speculation of unbridled metaphysics.   We lose sight of how Jesus is always talking about this life. The kingdom of God is in the everyday not the bye and bye. The forgiveness of God is not as important to him as our willingness to forgive each other; what life will be after death is not as important as how we live each day of this life.

The Reformed tradition seems so afraid of developing a works righteousness, the idea that we might earn grace, we were so afraid of indulgences we became deaf to Jesus calling us to work. The theology of Paul is focused on the unmerited, unearned, gift of grace, which it is, but in this focus we lose sight of how we are to toil in faith; we become blind to the work of breaking up the hard ground in us, to remove the stones, to weed the field. It is as if in the theology of the cross and the hope of the resurrection we leap over the toil to reach the banquet table, eternal life. We leap over the life we are supposed to live.

Today is world communion Sunday. I must confess I am not a big fan. I like communion, and I like the world, but it is the idea of everyone celebrating it together on the same day that bugs me. What bothers me is the history of the doctrine, the dogma of the sacrament. For no other part of our common Christian heritage divides us more than this one. So to celebrate our common communion falls a bit flat for me. It is as if we are leaping over the work far from done so to dine.

As far as I know I am still not welcome to receive the elements in a Roman Catholic church and as far as I know they still have good reason to withhold them as we are yet officially protesting them. Protestants protest the theology of the eucharist in the Mass of the Roman Catholic Church. We do. And the Orthodox are not big fans of the Latin church. In the 13^th century the Orthodox of Constantinople chose death as more acceptable than receiving the host as consecrated by Rome. And then there are the Huguenots who died because they were considered heretics at this table. And when we gained power in our own traditions we fenced this table in terrible ways.

I struggle with the image of celebrating as if this division is not there. It feels like theological amnesia; there is no work here. Such a leap falls so neatly into the abuse of the parable of the sower. With this table we have judged and continue to judge. There are the acceptable and unacceptable; there are orthodox and heretic; there are good people and bad people. From this table we have sown division for centuries. And these types are born of speculation about what happens to this bread and wine. Wars have been fought over who is worthy to speak over the bread and to offer the cup; many have been denied.

I do want to see a world communion Sunday. To achieve this oneness though we need to work, work to lay aside the theology that divides; we have to work, work to give up the type casting and the judgment. Mostly though we need to break through the hard ground of arrogance. If we do this work we can see the bread and cup for what they are. No cosmological transubstantiation. Didn’t work 500 years ago; doesn’t work today.   We can have a world communion Sunday if the bread is a simple symbol of toil, of work, the body we sacrifice so others may eat and live; we can have a world communion Sunday if the wine is simply a symbol of joy and rest, the joy that we all share at the end of the day, the end of the week.

We can have a world communion Sunday if we no longer ask who is worthy to partake; we can do this if we remember Judas was at the table, so we too are welcome. No fences, no examinations, no attestations, a meal of friends who seek to find the beauty of life in all its glory. But this is work.

Give us this day our daily bread. The Lord rested on the seventh day and so do we. Six days work, the bread, one day rest, the wine. I give this to you as my body and my blood, my toil and my joy.

We can all gather at that table, where a table is a table and nothing more. The kingdom of God comes to us in the simple life of work and rest, in the beauty of the everyday, the work of the everyday. Do we have eyes to see and ears to hear? Amen.