A Scattered Kingdom, A Growing People

January 27, 2007 (Matthew 13:1-31)Commissioning of Leaders at Hillcrest Mennonite ChurchOur lives are marked profoundly and formatively by a handful of experiences thatlikely happened in our childhood or youth. This experiences form a certain image or story through which we interpret the world around us. It is by this story or image that we begin form our perceptions of other people, choose our life directions and articulate our beliefs.While I was living with some guys in Winnipeg we had our house broken into.The thief went through all our rooms and we all had various things stolen. I was upset but for whatever reason not too shaken up about the event. I noticed that one of myroommates was really disturbed by the event. At times he expressed anger and at other times fear. I didn’t think too much about it until one night when I came home late andfound him beside the front door sitting in a chair with a baseball bat. I could notunderstand why his reaction to this event was so extreme.A little while later his parents were over at the house to visit and I started talkingto them about it how he was acting. I found out that when he was young he experienceda very dramatic thunderstorm. His mom said that after that night his expression and presence had changed. My roommate carried with him an image of the world as being potentially volatile and dangerous, something to be feared, and so responded to events inhis life through early formative story.Johnny Cash’s life and music is known for its solidarity with those struggling tomake end’s meet. His expression is known for the presence of struggle and isolation inlife. This can certainly be traced back to his own upbringing in a family of poor cotton

2 pickers in the south. However, there was an event that punctuated this in his life. Whenhe was 12 years old his older brother Jack died from accident with mill saw. In his biography Johnny Cash writes this about the experience,

Losing Jack was terrible. It was awful at the time and it’s still a big, cold, sad place in my heart and soul. There’s no way around grief and loss: you can dodgeall you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and,hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left.Some things don’t change, though. I look around me [at my home in Jamaica] . .. at the poverty, the harshness of life for many people, their endless toil for littlereward and even less hope in their lives, just dreams and fantasies, and that putsme in mind of what still depresses me the most about Jack’s death: the fact that his funeral took place on [a] Sunday . . . and on the Monday morning . . . our whole family – everybody, including the mother who had just buried her son – was back in the fields chopping corn, working their ten-hour day.

This event punctuated for him the reality that economic status affects all aspects of your life, even your ability to grieve. This experience shaped how he understood and lived inthe world around him.It is often difficult recognize the images and stories that have governed our ownlives. Certainly growing up on the farm was a formative experience for myself. With asprawling farmyard and two older sisters and no neighbourhood kids I learned aboutsolitude and adventure. Add to these experiences a herd of one-ton animals that roamedaround my playground and showed up at unexpected times. The cattle that roamed andgrazed in my backyard were not quite wild and not quite tame. They showed me thatthere are unpredictable and seemingly chaotic aspects of life. I realized there were thingsin life that were out of my control. However, I also learned that my own presence andreaction to these animals affected how they acted around me. If I stayed calm, theywould likely stay calm. If I started running away from them they would like start running

3towards me. Only now am I starting to see how these experiences created an image or story of the world that has shaped my decision making and my relationships.There are two reasons why I am talking about all these different stories. First, inreflecting on our scripture passage for this morning I am beginning to see that the imageof seeds being planting seems to come close to the type of formative and foundationalimage for Jesus that many of us experience. This basic image shaped his message of theKingdom of God. Second, we as a church have adopted similar image.

Gathered toGrow . . . Scattered to Serve

. How is it that we can, on the one hand, recognize that weall come with different images and stories that guide our lives but the on the other handalso adopt and live in to the image and story of our church? As we are commissioning anew group of leaders for the various ministries of our church life it would helpful for allof us to reflect on how this founding image can affect our thinking and action as a church.In the Old Testament there were already well developed images of the kingdom or rule of God. Several passages speak of God as being established as king and ruler over the world. The Psalms speak of God establishing himself as king where other passagesspeak of God’s rule over nations and God’s ability to overthrow earthly powers. Thereare prophecies that speak of God coming as a warrior, as a king in charge the army thatwill overthrow the enemy. There is no doubt that Jesus knew these stories growing up. Northern Israel was known for its rebels who wanted to see God’s kingdom established by force. Even Jesus’ mother Mary likely continued to the sing her song that we find inLuke’s Gospel to her newborn baby.

God scatters the proud and brought rulers down from their thrones

. Jesus knew a particular story or image of God’s kingdom from birth.This image, however, did not shape his understanding of the kingdom. In addition to