God Gives the Growth

In Nomine Iesu
St. Mark 4:26-34
June 17, 2018
Proper 6B

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

I’m always excited whenever I get the chance to preach on one of Jesus’ parables about seeds and soil. For one thing, it gives me a pretext to talk about how my garden is doing this year (thanks for asking, by the way!). I’m glad to report that my garden is doing great so far. I don’t think there was a single seed I planted that didn’t sprout. Zucchini and cucumbers, beets and beans, onions, eggplants,

peppers, tomatoes—it’s all looking good so far.

I wish I could take all the credit. After all, I knelt and squatted to plant all the seeds in just the right depth of soil (and then nursed sore muscles for a few days after that). I’ve watered and I’ve weeded. I’ve caged my tomatoes and deterred the bunnies with chicken wire. Is it just me or do my thumbs seem to be turning greener by the day? I wish that were the case.

But the first little parable we heard from Jesus today is a much-needed reminder that my green thumbs are irrelevant—that God gives the growth. “The kingdom of God,” says Jesus, “is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how.” The only thing the farmer does in this parable is plant the seeds and await the harvest. Everything else, for the most part, is out of his control. The seeds and the soil, the sun and the rain, these take over once the seed is scattered. The gardener doesn’t have the power to make the seeds sprout and grow. The growth comes from God.

As with those garden seeds, so it is with the Word of God—with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Word of God gets scattered—it gets preached and printed and proclaimed to the four corners of the earth. And the Word of God—scattered recklessly and randomly, here and there and everywhere—it grows and gets results. It is the power of God for the salvation of all who believe. Faith comes by the hearing of that Word. It eventually yields a harvest.

But here’s the point of the parable: Just like sprouting seeds don’t depend upon the skill of the gardener, so too does the Word of God take root in human hearts. And that Word—it doesn’t depend upon the personality and skill of the preacher. Nor does it depend upon the goodness or the intelligence of the hearer. The Word of God sprouts and produces faith in human hearts where and when it pleases God. God gives the growth. God gets results. God gets all the credit.

Of course, we chafe at that just a little bit. I mean, it makes us (pastors and laypeople) seem just a little irrelevant. And we don’t like that. By nature we all want to be important, needed, and necessary—indispensable cogs in the kingdom-building crusade, taking credit where credit is due. We all have an over-inflated sense of self-importance. We all just assume that without us and without our uniquely personal contribution everything will just fall to pieces.

We should all learn from Luther. Martin Luther had a profound sense of his own non-necessity. If ever there was a preacher who could lay claim to great results—if ever a preacher could claim that His preaching of the Word changed the world—it was Luther. Popes and powers and kings and councils could not undo what Luther had unleashed from his pen and his pulpit. But Luther was more circumspect. He claimed no credit. In fact, he once said, “While I drink my little glass of Wittenberg beer, the gospel runs its course.” While Luther was content to sit back and quaff a cold one, the gospel—the good news of God’s free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ—it was sprouting and growing and laying down roots all over Europe—quite apart from Luther’s own personal powers of persuasion.

There can be little doubt that in the church today—we’ve lost Luther’s confidence in the Word. We’ve forgotten that God gives the growth, perhaps because we don’t see much growth at all in the church today—at least not here in North America. The church today is in crisis—watching as her members walk away from the faith once delivered to the saints, turning from the Word and being swallowed up by our culture of death and depravity. It’s heart-breaking and sad to see. And the temptation is to stem the tide by any means possible—with slogans and gimmicks and programs and special effects and emotional appeals. But the decline in the church has made one thing clear: We don’t trust God. We don’t trust the simple power of His Word. We think it all depends on us.

Thank God it doesn’t. It doesn’t all depend on us. God promises that His Word will never return empty, but will always accomplish what He desires—that it will always achieve the purposes for which He sends it (Is. 55:10-11). We need to remember this in the church—that God gives the growth (and that the growth He gives sometimes appears to us as demolition and decline). Our efforts, our strength, and our smarts are not what keep this church growing and flourishing.

What about you? Do you believe that God’s Word and the Gospel is running its course in your life? Do you believe that His Word is enough—that it’s sufficient to carry you through whatever troubles you face? Sometimes we don’t believe it. When worry takes over—when the tyranny of anxiety robs our lives of joy and peace—when we start to think that we are bearing the weight of the whole world on our shoulders—we need to repent. We need to remember whose promises DO have the power to change our sinful situations.

Jesus Christ is the one. He carried the weight of the world’s sin—the weight of your sin—upon His shoulders. He suffered and died as your sacred substitute. You can cast your anxiety upon Him because He cares for you. He has claimed you as His own in the water of Holy Baptism. We walk by faith, not by sight. And by faith we know that God is working all things for the good of those who love Him. God is building His church in ways that we can’t always see with our eyes. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. The gospel always runs its course.

The gospel also leads us to live lives of faithfulness—faithfulness not fretfulness. God gives the growth. The growth doesn’t depend on us. But God does call us to faithfulness. To be faithful—that’s just doing and speaking the things that God has called us to do and speak. The faithful farmer scatters the seed. The faithful student studies. The faithful Christian gladly receives God’s gifts and responds with prayer and praise. The faithful father brings his family to the Divine Service and teaches them about Jesus. The faithful employee does her job to the best of her ability. But the faithful people of God also know this: the results of our work and our labor—the results are in God’s hands—not yours. Plant the seed and leave it alone. Let God give the growth. The results are in His hands.

God is already getting results in your life. In you that Gospel is giving growth and life and faith. The seed of the Word is growing in your heart, ripening ever so surely that you will be ready to depart this life in peace—to be a part of that great and grand harvest of humanity that will spend a blessed eternity with Christ—and with those we love who have already departed to be with Christ.

Let there be no doubt. The Lord Jesus laid down His life for you. His death on the cross was the payment for your forgiveness. He was delivered over to death for our trespasses and was raised again for our justification. Let there be no worry, for in the midst of all your troubles and struggles, God is at work. The faith and life He gives is growing and maturing and ripening through every earthly trouble. So let go and let God, as they say. Believe what you cannot see. For God always gives the growth.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.