Explaining in Private, Living in Public


Sunday, June 18h, 2006
Pentecost 2
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Mark 4:26-34

26 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
30 He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; 34 he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

“My child arrived just the other day
He came to the world in the usual way
But there were planes to catch, and bills to pay,
He learned to walk while I was away
And he was talkin’ ‘fore I knew it, and as he grew,
He’d say I’m gonna be like you, Dad,
You know I’m gonna be like you.”

There are songs that just become part of you. The story that is woven in the combination of music and lyrics combine so powerfully that sometimes just hearing a few measures is all we need to have the entire song blossom in our mind.

Cat’s in the Cradle is one of those songs for me.

So is ‘Great is Thy Faithfulness’, for that matter.

I’m sure we all have songs that have had similar impact on our lives.

Harry Chapin’s words told us on a different level something we find in the passage this morning. We are all farmers. We just don’t necessarily know it. Whether we live surrounded by acres of fields, or acres of concrete, we are all in the business of sowing seeds and reaping harvests.

Our passage this morning has Jesus again presenting a picture of the Kingdom of God in a way that the people to whom he was speaking could easily grasp – the image was one with which they were intimately familiar, and in drawing the correlation between the Kingdom and something as ordinary as the act of sowing seeds and watching grain grow opened the eyes of his listeners to how often we find the Holy in the very routine of life.

It is with that in mind, then, that we acknowledge that today is the day we recognize the fathers in our midst, the fathers in our lives. It is sometimes with ease that I am able to speak of God in masculine terms. I do that mostly out of habit, since that was – and to a great degree continues to be – our tradition. There are times, however, when it is not so easy.

I received a call last night from a woman who was asking me to help communicate to the sheriff’s deputy whom she’d called that the reason she had called was that her husband had gotten off work earlier in the afternoon and again had gotten drunk, had driven their car into something and smashed it up, and was threatening to beat her and their 15 year-old son, the oldest of 9 children.

In those instances, I cringe when I hear God spoken of in purely masculine terms – terms that lock out half the attributes of God, terms that can lock in or lock out in someone’s mind the image of either a loving, compassionate God or a vengeful, wrathful, arbitrary God. Those chickens come home to roost all too often in my mind when I look at how I’ve been doing as a father on my own.

This parable sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It echoes the parable of the sower that’s found just a few verses before this passage, at the beginning of the chapter, in fact. Why do you think Jesus might have practically repeated himself so soon? The description of the Kingdom in THIS parable, although using essentially the same elements, isn’t quite the same as the earlier one – there’s no reference to the rocky, weedy, shallow, or fertile soil, but rather, a focus on the whole picture, including the sower himself – to the effect that highlights the fact that the sower has no control over the rate of the growth of the plants that come from the seed that is scattered.

We could stop here and think about how that might apply to our lives as fathers and parents, couldn’t we? Think about how what we say within range of little ears can sometimes come back and haunt us, to not say ‘bite us’?! Think about how whether or not we recognize it or not, what we do and say within sight of our children becomes for them a model for them to follow?

“When you comin' home dad?
I don't know when, but we'll get together then son
You know we'll have a good time then”

At the end of each chorus, the line repeats, and as the songs moves forward, you begin to realize that it’s not simply quoting the father, in a way, it’s an indictment.

Though it is the case that, as farmers, if we are dependent on the weather for crops to ripen, we are much more aware of the LACK of control we have on the eventual outcome of a seed planted, it is in some ways similar when we begin to talk about the seeds planted in the lives of those around us – particularly children – and most especially, our OWN children. We do not have as much control as we would like to have.

There is an element of blindness when we deal with our own children … sorry; this is an instance where I need to be speaking in the first person, not in the corporate plural. There is an element of blindness when I deal with my own children which make me deeply grateful to God for Leslie’s presence in my life, because what I don’t see she does, and she is not afraid to point out when I am standing behind a curtain, or when I am parading around making a spectacle of myself and the kids see right through me, or when … well, I suspect we can each fill in some instance of having done something less than admirable to or in front of our child or children, for which we might gladly welcome a time machine in which we could go back and change some word spoken, or some hand raised.

So the Kingdom is like a man who plants seeds, and leaves them, and comes back and watches to see if they are growing, and comes back again and again to his field, and finally, when the harvest is ready, he comes in with his sickle and gathers the harvest.

It’s a pretty scene, isn’t it? Nothing to do but sit back and watch the grain grow – the stalk comes up, then the head, then the full head of grain in the head…

But what if the seed we plant is discord, or rage, or disdain, or pride, or discontentment, selfishness, irresponsibility, or laziness?

My son turned ten just the other day
He said, "Thanks for the ball, Dad, come on let's play
Can you teach me to throw", I said "Not today
I got a lot to do", he said, "That's ok"
And he walked away but his smile never dimmed
And said, "I'm gonna be like him, yeah
You know I'm gonna be like him"

The song inexorably moves through the life of the boy. Each time the father is unable or unwilling to take the time to be a part of the boy’s life, the son seemingly shrugs it off, and goes on, moves on.

Well, he came home from college just the other day
So much like a man I just had to say
"Son, I'm proud of you, can you sit for a while?"
He shook his head and said with a smile
"What I'd really like, Dad, is to borrow the car keys
See you later, can I have them please?"

So we begin to see the outcome of the years missed, the opportunities squandered, the dates forgotten.
If there is one thing Jesus was telling both his disciples in private and the people of Palestine in public, it was ‘PAY ATTENTION!!’

How many times do we find ourselves looking BACK on a situation, only to realize too late that there was a golden opportunity for WHATEVER reason – missed in the passing of the moment, through distraction or inattention, never to be captured again? How are we supposed to begin to be aware of those holy moments that are sprinkled throughout our days in a way by which we can take advantage of them?

I've long since retired, my son's moved away
I called him up just the other day
I said, "I'd like to see you if you don't mind"
He said, "I'd love to, Dad, if I can find the time
You see my new job's a hassle and kids have the flu
But it's sure nice talking to you, Dad
It's been sure nice talking to you"

And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me
He'd grown up just like me
My boy was just like me

The regret that we live with as fathers who have missed those opportunities to influence our children for the GOOD is something that I do not look forward to living with. That is why it is so important to be a family to each other, as a community of faith, we are called to hold each other accountable to the call of God on our lives to be present, to be embracing, to be nurturing, faithful, loving, caring, to BE expressive of the love of the Father for his children.

Can we do that together? Are we willing to weave our lives together – in a healthy, caring, sustaining way, so that grace will abound? So that we can look back together and see how at those times in the lives of our young ones, where I dropped the ball, someone else was there and caught it and carried it, or vice-versa, where someone else skipped a beat, and the person following along beside or behind didn’t miss the beat, but kept right on going? There is something to be said for consistency in the way we live out our faith.

There is almost a tag at the end of today’s passage – “he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.” It is interesting to me that there are not more of those ‘explanations’ detailed in the Gospel record. We have a couple of instances where Jesus is explaining, but mostly what we read about is how he lived out those private explanations in public. There was no disconnect between what he lived in public and what he said in private. Can we say that for ourselves? Can we say that for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

We admit – we confess if you will – that we don’t always. It is a given of our existence – both as individuals and as a congregation – that our public and private lives do not always coincide. As you’ve heard me say before, it is, in a way, a function of our humanity. We are not perfect, though we are striving towards the perfection of life in Christ, we do not expect to attain it while here on earth. But we do not let that hold us back, we do not let that awareness or knowledge of incompleteness defeat us. We do not live under the law, as Paul said; we live in a state of grace. There is enough blame to go around, mostly from ourselves, if we are honest, but I’m sure from the eyes of our children and perhaps our spouses as well.

The question for Jerusalem Baptist Church today is this: are we willing to allow grace to suffuse our lives – to shine through – in such a way that THAT will be what people see in us, enough so as to overcome, if not eliminate those times when we are less than gracious? Can we operate, can we practice our faith, can we live out the Gospel in such a way as to make it OBVIOUS that we are children of God?

What are our challenges? Are they those that are outside of us or are they ones that we find hidden inside ourselves? Which are more damaging, more debilitating, and more hurtful to our spirit, more grievous to the Spirit of God? I would venture to say that those within us are the more dangerous to our efforts. Challenges we find outside ourselves are just that – OUTSIDE – visible, sometimes palpable, but always present in such a way as to be identifiable. It is when we are confronted with those demons we find inside that we are rendered near helpless – because we don’t always know how to rally against them.

Don’t ALWAYS know.

That’s where being a part of a family of faith comes in. Being a part of a community centered on Christ’s love gives us the incredible opportunity to take advantage of forming those bonds of friendship and love that allow us to walk beside each other and to support each other – through triumph and adversity, through joys and sorrows, through successes as well as failures. We cannot understate the richness and the value of being able to live lives that are not isolated from each other. God calls us to reflect the kingdom TOGETHER.

Let’s pray.