The Heart of the Matter

Scriptures: 1 Samuel 15:34 - 16:13, Mark 4:26-34

My next-door neighbor has a very large, very old maple tree in her back yard. It is all tangled up with the different phone and electrical wires on the corner, so every so often some repairman or other will come through and trim it back. But every trimming seems to cause more shoots to grow up. And every shoot seems to produce more little helicopter seeds, so when the time comes for the seeds to drop in the spring, our back yard, just a few yards from the old maple, gets hundreds and hundreds of seeds. Sometimes I think it’s more seeds in the spring than leaves in the fall.

The seeds mostly fall on concrete or into the grass, and we gather them up and put them with the rest of the yard waste. But some seeds sneak through, and get into my lettuce beds, or the tomato pot, or the other, unused pots that sometimes sit around with nice soft potting soil in them. The ones we collect from the parking pad always seem to be dried out and beaten up in the process, but somehow those ones that sneak through into the good spots turn green and grow like crazy. It makes me wish there were space in the yard for a maple tree. The shade in the summer would be great. But that’s how it goes, I guess.

In 2005, archeologists found some ancient date palm seeds, estimated to be about 2,000 years old, based on carbon dating. They decided to try to grow the seeds, and after carefully soaking and fertilizing them, a botanist was able to coax a new date palm to sprout. At first its leaves were a little unhealthy, but over the next few months, the palm grew and thrived, all from a seed that had lain dormant for centuries.

What is odd to me about seeds is that if you split them open – for example, if you split open a peanut – there are two smooth halves, and a little square nut binding them together. But where is the life? Where is the part of the seed that shows that this little thing could be planted in the ground and then grow? The scientists had to plant the seed to see if it would grow. It must be, then, something only God can see.

In our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophet Samuel is dealing with possibilities that only God can see. The first king of Israel, Saul, looked like a good prospect to start with – strong and tall, with plenty of courage – but as his reign wears on, the people discover the limits of his abilities. He’s impulsive, paranoid, and jealous of his power for its own sake. Eventually, God decides to intervene, and he sends Samuel to anoint a new king.

Now on the surface, Samuel taking a trip to Bethlehem to find a new king looks like treachery. Saul is the king – the established authority – and he has been put in place there by the will of the Israelite tribes, and a careful selection process. And yet, at the heart of it, Samuel’s motivation is a risky act of faithfulness. He has to go against the established human authority in faithfulness to God’s call.

So Samuel sets out, with an animal offering on hand as cover for the mission, and when he arrives, he calls all the village people together. They’re a little nervous – the country folk aren’t used to a prophet from the city. And a holy man doesn’t always bring good news. But they do as Samuel asks – they prepare for a ritual sacrifice – and as they gather, Samuel feels drawn to the local farmer Jesse. His sons are tall, strong, handsome. They look like natural leaders. He sees the oldest. “Surely it’s this one,” he thinks. But God has other ideas. He sees the next oldest – “Okay, it’s got to be him.” The answer: no. And so on, all the way to the youngest one there. On the outside, on the surface, each son could be a future king, but at the heart of the matter, God is the one who knows. Finally, out of options, Samuel asks Jesse, “Got any more sons?”

Jesse answers, “Well, there is one more, but he’s off tending sheep.”

“We’ll wait until he gets here, then,” says Samuel.

When David arrives, Samuel knows he has found the next king. “This is the one,” God confirms, “I’ve looked at his heart, and he’s the one I’ve chosen.” Samuel rises up and anoints David as the new king.

And yet, what happens next might not be what you’d expect. Instead of charging up to Jerusalem to take his rightful place as king by force, David stays where he is, and goes on with the thankless task of shepherding his father’s sheep. Samuel makes the promised sacrifice and returns to his work as prophet in the big city. And yet, something has changed. A seed has been planted.

When Jesus talks about the kingdom of God in our gospel lesson from this morning, in some ways he is describing the mystery of how God works in our lives. God’s realm doesn’t come about as a storm front so must as a tiny, pungent seed furrowing its roots into the ground and stretching its leaves into the sky. How does a seed 2,000 years old sprout and become a date plant? What is it in a young boy’s heart that makes him a king? When does a hard heart turn from stubborn anger to forgiving grace?

The heart of the matter is that God is the one who knows, and is the one who works these miracles. As followers of Jesus, it may seem sometimes like life is something that can be controlled, that we are the ones who will decide what is good and what is bad. But what Samuel shows us is that the first task of a faithful person is to look beyond the surface and listen carefully for God’s voice. As a community, we can choose to walk by sight, as Paul puts it. We can hold fast to logic, to tradition, to what appears right and authoritative on the surface. Or, we can choose to walk by faith – to step out in risky faithfulness, as Samuel did, always with our ears open, listening for God’s voice.

The good news for us today is that the seeds of God’s kingdom are springing up all around us, and learning to walk by faith is as much learning to see the sprouting seeds as it is learning to hear God’s sometimes subtle voice. Where do you see glimpses of God’s dream for the world coming true? Where is strong love helping people let go of addictions? Where is the stranger given a welcome? Where are hungry people given something to eat? Where are prisoners visited, attended to, and treated with dignity? Where do the poor have good news preached to them? At the heart of the matter, it is God’s will we seek to do on earth. May the seeds of the kingdom abound! Thanks be to God, Amen.

Born into the Kingdom

Scripture: John 3:1-17, Romans 8:12-17

Our Gospel lesson for this morning pivots on a single word, which in the Greek has two meanings. The Greek word is anothen, which means both “from above,” and “again.” It’s like the word bow in English, which could mean “take a bow,” or “the bow of a ship” at the same time. It’s the context that helps you know what it means. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

Our story starts with Nicodemus, an important man – a teacher, a leader, an all-round well-respected guy, coming to Jesus at night, when people are less likely to notice. It’s not totally clear what he’s hoping for with this meeting – maybe to pick up a few tips on self-improvement, maybe to report back to his people about Jesus’ particular philosophical positions. He starts the conversation respectfully – Teacher, he says, we know you are the real thing – we can tell by the miracles you perform.

What Nicodemus gets, of course, (you know how Jesus is!) is something more than an intellection to-and-fro dialogue, or a set of five points for maximizing his personal potential. Instead, Jesus takes it way outside the realm of what Nicodemus was expecting. “Believe me, because it’s true,” he says, “No-one can see the kingdom of God without being born….” And here’s that word, “anothen.” When Jesus says anothen he means it both ways – being born again, AND being born from above. The new birth is from above – from God.

Nicodemus doesn’t get the pun Jesus is making though. And to be fair, who can blame him? So far, in the gospel of John’s telling of Jesus’ ministry, this idea of new birth or new life has not come up. In fact, the idea of the kingdom of God hasn’t come up in the gospel yet. The readers are learning about this for the first time, along with Nicodemus. So far, we’ve seen Jesus’ baptism, we’ve seen his miraculous changing of water into wine, and we’ve seen him clean out the temple of all its commercial activities. It’s clear from what he’s done so far that he’s a pretty important person to listen to, but it might not be totally clear just yet why he is important, or what his message is.

The kingdom of God is the message, but the way into it is a very strange and counter-intuitive one, especially for someone like Nicodemus who has some position, some power, some influence. Because the way into the kingdom for Nicodemus is, in a way, to humble himself, to become a child again, to start over, to be born all over again from above. Of course, if you’re already in the position of being humble and broken down, it’s a little easier to hear Jesus’ message of a new life, started over.

There’s something interesting to think about with the word “born,” too, which is that it’s not something we do for ourselves. Someone else bears us into the world – we are borne by our mothers. In the same way, entering the kingdom of God is something that God does. As Jesus puts it – you have to be born by water (that is, the regular way) and by the Spirit, to see the kingdom of God.

What does it mean to see the kingdom of God? Well, one traditional way of talking about the kingdom of God is as somewhere you go after you die. It’s God’s holy city, complete with clouds, St. Peter, angels and harps. That’s the picture you see in cartoons anyway. But Jesus was teaching about a kingdom of God that starts in this world. This new realm is spiritual, yes, but it’s also social – things like who we spend time with and eat with, it’s also political – how our leaders are expected to behave, and how each person is committed to service for one another’s’ good, and it’s also economic – what we receive belongs to God, and is due back to God as part of our way of life. In fact, to say the kingdom of God, in one way, is to say a way of life. It’s the way of life that as Christians we’ve been trying to live out – with varying degrees of success for about two thousand years now.

But Christ’s vision is still very much with us, and Jesus asks: what would the world be like if everyone lived according to God’s vision of peace and mutual care? But his vision is also one about seeing what is already there: Jesus asks: what would the world be like if everyone saw what God is already doing to bring about a reality of peace, beauty and love?

There’s another important way that we can talk about the kingdom of God, which is as the family of God. Just as in regular life, each of us is born into a family of some kind, being born again from above by the Spirit means being born into the family of God, with God as our adoptive parent. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, shares about the freedom and the beauty of living life as the children of God, born by God’s Spirit. He says, “you did not receive a spirit of slavery, to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father! It is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”

I realize that the phrase “children of God,” or “child of God,” can sometimes be used so many times that it starts to lose its meaning. But really it is a very radical statement. The word, “Abba,” which is closer to “Dad,” or “Papa” than “Father,” in English, shows a sense of familiarity and closeness between parent and child. If God is our parent, and adopts us into a new life, then we would hope to see the family resemblances as we grow up under God’s care and discipline. And really, it’s probably good to remember again that there are other ways an all-powerful being could treat its creations – as slaves, or playthings, or robots. But God regards us as beloved children.

Finally, the most important part of this metaphor about our relationship with God is the deep love it conveys. Sometimes you’ll hear parents say about their children, “It’s like my heart is on the outside of my body, walking around in the world.” If human beings feel this way, how much more does God, whose capacity for love is so much greater and purer than any human’s! As the gospel lesson puts it, “For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life.”

Finally, as children of God, one of our joyful tasks is to invite new friends into the family, to encourage new birth into the kingdom of God. How is this done? Through love.

There is a story about two men riding on a train many years ago. At first, one of the men is very slow to talk about himself, but it’s a long train ride, so after many hours, he tells the other man his story. This young man has been away from home for many years, and has gotten into some trouble with the law. He hasn’t had the chance to write home very much, and he doesn’t know how his family will feel about his homecoming, so he tells them in a letter to make a sign for him that he can see from the train. If they want him to come home, they should tie a white ribbon around the apple tree in front of the house, and he’ll get off the train and come home. But if they are ashamed, and rather he stay away, they should just leave the tree empty, and he’ll know to stay on the train and find somewhere else to make a life.

As they get close to where the family home is, the young man is so nervous that he asks his new friend to look for him. They round the corner, one man looking out for the other whose eyes are closed in fear and hopefulness. “It’s all right,” the older man says, “you can look.” The young man opens his eyes in relief, but relief turns to joy when he sees not just one ribbon in the apple tree, but the whole tree, white with ribbons, fluttering in the wind and welcoming him home.

May our welcome on God’s behalf be as warm and as strong. Thanks be to God, Amen.