A Scattered Kingdom, A Growing People

January 27, 2007 (Matthew 13:1-31)

Commissioning of Leaders at Hillcrest Mennonite Church

Our lives are marked profoundly and formatively by a handful of experiences that

likely 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 my

roommates 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 and

found him beside the front door sitting in a chair with a baseball bat. I could not

understand 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 talking

to them about it how he was acting. I found out that when he was young he experienced

a 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 in

his life through early formative story.

Johnny Cash’s life and music is known for its solidarity with those struggling to

make end’s meet. His expression is known for the presence of struggle and isolation in

life. This can certainly be traced back to his own upbringing in a family of poor cotton

1
pickers in the south. However, there was an event that punctuated this in his life. When

he 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 dodge
all 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 little
reward and even less hope in their lives, just dreams and fantasies, and that puts
me 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 in

the world around him.

It is often difficult recognize the images and stories that have governed our own

lives. Certainly growing up on the farm was a formative experience for myself. With a

sprawling farmyard and two older sisters and no neighbourhood kids I learned about

solitude and adventure. Add to these experiences a herd of one-ton animals that roamed

around my playground and showed up at unexpected times. The cattle that roamed and

grazed in my backyard were not quite wild and not quite tame. They showed me that

there are unpredictable and seemingly chaotic aspects of life. I realized there were things

in life that were out of my control. However, I also learned that my own presence and

reaction to these animals affected how they acted around me. If I stayed calm, they

would likely stay calm. If I started running away from them they would like start running

2
towards 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, in

reflecting on our scripture passage for this morning I am beginning to see that the image

of seeds being planting seems to come close to the type of formative and foundational

image for Jesus that many of us experience. This basic image shaped his message of the

Kingdom of God. Second, we as a church have adopted similar image. Gathered to

Grow . . . Scattered to Serve. How is it that we can, on the one hand, recognize that we

all come with different images and stories that guide our lives but the on the other hand

also adopt and live in to the image and story of our church? As we are commissioning a

new group of leaders for the various ministries of our church life it would helpful for all

of 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 passages

speak of God’s rule over nations and God’s ability to overthrow earthly powers. There

are prophecies that speak of God coming as a warrior, as a king in charge the army that

will 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 in

Luke’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

3
hearing the stories Jesus must also have been actively watching the world around him.

He watched the farmers around him and marvelled that some of the biggest and most

beautiful plants could come from such small seeds. He noticed that the possible life of

the seed depended greatly on where it fell, not all conditions were favourable for growth.

He noticed that it was not always possible to separate the weeds from the plants without

harming the plants. Then perhaps as his thinking formed he began to notice that some

people, like the farmer’s field, received the plan of God’s kingdom with joy and were

zealous to follow it but when things didn’t work out like they planned they quickly

withered away. Others that received it allowed the concerns of life overtake them like

weeds and their faith began to be choked out. Maybe he noticed that some of the most

meaningful and impacting events in God’s kingdom came in the most unlikely places.

They were like small seeds that were easily overlooked until they grew to provide shelter

and protection. He saw that a woman giving what she could out of her poverty

contributed more greatly to the kingdom than a rich man giving out of his wealth. And so

this image, with no pun intended, took root in his mind and began to form his emerging

ministry. The kingdom of God was no longer about waiting for the return of the king to

run the enemy out of town. The kingdom now grew in our midst organically from good

soil.

As Jesus’ ministry wore on he came to recognize to a greater extent the

implications of this guiding image on his life in his prophetic words unless a kernel of

wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces

many seeds. He understood that embedded in the Kingdom of God was the tremendous

and necessary possibility and potential of a life given over wholly to God.

4
 How has our own image guided us here at Hillcrest? How significant does this

inform not only the ministries here at church but also our life at home and work? How

does Jesus’ guiding image shape our own vision statement? I want to start thinking about

this by exploring one of Jesus’ sayings in light of our own vision statement. Let’s look at

the parable of weeds among the wheat beginning in Matthew 13 verse 24. It begins by

saying that the kingdom is like a farmer who went out to sow his seed. Immediately we

can ask if perhaps we have our statement backwards. Perhaps it should begin with being

scattered. The kingdom does not begin with a gathered community sent out to serve but

with a people already scattered, spread throughout the world. We often talk about our

Sunday mornings being a time of equipping so that we might serve in the week to come.

How much different would our service look if a greater part of our time was spent

reporting on service from the week. This would make our gathering the culmination of

our serving rather than the other way around.

When I was volunteering in California with Mennonite Disaster Service we

stayed at a house attached to a Salvation Army church. When I attended a service on

Sunday morning the preacher asked who had a testimony from the past week.

Space was given to gather the stories of witnessing to God’s kingdom in the scattered

lives of the past week. Perhaps we are scattered to serve before we are gathered to grow

just as much as we are the other way around.

Jesus goes on to say that the farmer sowed good seed. Jesus later identifies

himself as the farmer and the seed are the children of the kingdom. This is an image of

grace to the church. Those who are scattered by the Son of God are equipped to grow in

precisely the way God desires. We do not need to be anxious or self-conscious about our

5
ability. Our gifts are embedded in who we are. We do need to be careful here that this

does not become a statement of moral superiority. This is rather a statement recognizing

that the kingdom grows by faith and acceptance. Earlier in Matthew Jesus rejects a group

that he also calls the children of the kingdom but this group claims their place in the

kingdom through their heritage, religious background and good works. The kingdom

does not belong to those who claim it through their status and actions but to those who

are gathered up as seeds by the good farmer in faith and acceptance.

Then the parable tells us that in the night the enemy came and mixed weeds in

among the wheat. This happened before the wheat even sprouted and so the next

morning the field looked no different. Commentators say that the type of weed that is

referred to here is one that looks almost exactly like wheat throughout their various

growth stages and so the servants would not have noticed the weeds and perhaps even

thought the yield looked better than expected. This is why in the next verse it says that

only after the wheat formed its head that the weeds also appeared.

And so right in our midst, perhaps even in our own hearts, there emerges the

presence of death and destruction, the presence of evil. In the parable the servants’ first

response is much like our own. It is to question the one who sowed the seed. They ask,

“Didn’t you sow good seed in your field?” God, if you are good and you are with us,

why is all this happening? The farmer says flatly that this is the work of an enemy. Evil

and death, which is the work of weeds is not part of the vision of God’s Kingdom but it

is, however, a part of our present reality. Recognizing the presence of opposition, of a

possible threat to their existence the servants ask then if the weeds should be pulled. This

is a dangerous posture to take. The servants likely feel angered by being sabotaged and

6
perhaps scared of the potential loss. They feel like they have now identified the evil and

think only of tearing out this evil presence by the roots.

Since the attacks in the U.S. on 9/11 George W. Bush has consistently used the

language of evil in referring to those who would threaten the American way of life. That

good and evil are present in the world is hardly beyond question and certainly types of

action need to be taken in response to injustice. However, to declare decisively and

finally just what and who is evil and then to take steps to exterminate it is beyond our

ability.

After the servants ask to uproot the weeds the farmer reminds them that the truth

of the present situation lies beneath the surface. The farmer tells them that if they were to

uproot the weeds the wheat also be uprooted. It is said that the root system of this

particular weed grows deeper than that of wheat and so uprooting the weed would pull

out the root system of the wheat as well. In either case plants growing together would

develop an intertwined root system. We are all connected in the evils that we see around

us. There is no “us” and “them” when it comes responding to evil. Injustice must be

addressed but it cannot be in the form of demonizing a group or nation as evil.

It is a little frightening to look back and read President Bush’s State of the Union

Address in 2002 after 9/11. At that time they had already gone to war in Afghanistan and

were beginning to mount a case for war in Iraq. He spoke of Iraq as an axis of evil

gathering weapons of mass destruction and threatening the peace of the world. He said

that he would not wait while this threat was growing. He also praised their military

saying that terrorists from Afghanistan were now in prison in Guantanamo Bay. Since

those statements the U.S. invaded Iraq under the false premise of weapons of mass

7
destruction and U.S. soldiers have been charged with numerous accounts of abuse at the

prison in Guantanamo Bay. Good and evil are not on opposing sides in this war, it

intermingled in both.

In his most recent State of the Union Address President Bush expands his fight

against evil making the all encompassing commitment to “guard America against all

evil.” Not only is this an impossible task it is also a fundamentally wrong statement. The

statement assumes that evil exists outside of America, that evil and the America way of

life are fundamentally separate.

Jesus’ parable then is pointing to the faithful and bold witness of Christ’s

forgiveness and the community of healing that can be formed around him. We are not

equipped to carry out the final judgment on evil. We are called to be present in the midst

of the evil of the world and to be present in the midst of the evil in ourselves.

And so the farmer says let both the wheat and the weeds grow together until harvest. Our

lives cannot be marked by thinking we can be isolated from evil. It cannot be marked by

thinking that we can objectify evil, isolate it and attack it. Evil remains in us, around us

and among us but most importantly it does not overcome us.

This parable offers one image for us as a community. We are a people scattered

in the world acknowledging that evil continues to grow in our midst but we are pointing

also to a harvest time when all evil will be decisively and finally overcome. And our

gathering on Sunday is a small window of that final vision. The Lent season that we are

soon approaching includes forty days from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. This time

is often used for forms of fasting and sombre reflection. The Sundays of Lent, however,

are not included in those forty days because each Sunday is a celebration of life with the

8
resurrected Jesus. It is to be a glimpse of what God intended for the world. It is a day

where there is the possibility of rest, peace and fellowship.

As I was writing this sermon a song started running through my mind. The main

line in the chorus is let your glory fall in this place / let it go forth from here to the

nations. I could not get it out of my head and so I decided to go into the sanctuary I

prayed these lines over this space. I prayed that God’s glory would come on us here so

that we would go out into the world. Later that day I was in town running some errands

and that song came into my head again and realized that I should just as appropriately

pray, Let you glory fall in this place.

I suspect we think that gathering to grow and scattering to serve are two separate

actions that occupy separate spaces. It is like we are talking about two separate

personalities; that we are either wanderers being scattered abroad or that we are

homebodies growing where we are planted. We are, however, called to both. We are

called to grow wherever life scatters us, we are never too far from being nourished by

God or to call on God’s glory. But we are also called to scatter in our growth. We need

to open to be moved and transformed in our community. Like our image of the dandelion

we need to be able to let the wind of God’s Spirit move us to new places and to new life.

Gathered to Grow . . . Scattered to Serve. Have we prayed to God for the image

of seeds scattered and growing over countryside to become our formative story as much

or more than the stories that shaped our own childhood? Will we pray that this story will

transform our own unique images and stories and turn them into parables of the

kingdom?

We commission our leaders and call each other to that end. Amen.