Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 15:34- 16:13
Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-17
Mark 4: 26-34
Sunday 16 June 2024
Reading the book of creation ©Suzanne Grimmett
Have you ever gone looking for God? One of the most significant spiritual experiences in my life was when I was 21 and decided that maybe I should seek out God. For a number of years I had rejected, rebelled against and ignored the God I had met in childhood but now I acknowledged that God was probably there after all and I should see if I could make contact. I remember feeling some kinship with C.S Lewis declaring himself ‘the most dejected and reluctant convert’. There followed a period of fairly fruitless attempts to “reach out”, visualizing God as someone ‘out there’ who if I asked the right way, or with the right feelings, would break through to me. It was in such a moment of asking for contact from whatever remote heaven I visualized God as inhabiting, that I was shocked by an unmistakeable awareness that I was looking in the wrong place. God had made contact, but in a far closer and more intimate way then I expected. Rather than being ‘out there’ God was already with me, as close as each breath I took, and had never been absent. I had a realization that I was known, and this was both confronting and comforting.
In the thirty years that have passed, this remains a powerfully tangible experience in my memory and an ongoing truth in my spiritual life. It remains an important experience, because I believe where we think God is to be found changes everything. If God is to only be found above us somewhere in heaven, remote and powerful, and speaking only in the words of scripture, then our view of creation and of humanity will naturally be lower. Our embodied lives here are only a preparation for the next life where we hope we will have done enough to earn a heavenly reward. Yet this is not the God of Christianity. This is the not the God who honours and redeems all creation in the incarnation. This is not the God revealed in Christ whom St Paul states “…died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves.” Paul points in this reading to a transformative road of all who would follow the way of Christ. It appears to involve not some mystical removal from the everyday physical world, but rather the centre of a life in the here and now in the company of others, motivated and guided by the immanent presence of the Spirit. While looking with hope to a life in closer intimacy with Christ after death, Paul very clearly plants his feet on the earth, pointing to the new creation that has begun in Christ’s death and resurrection. A new creation which is being daily made more real through our lives- so much so that we need to look at one another, says Paul, with new eyes;
“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians 5:16-17)
Far from a distant God in the heavens, this is a description of a God who is very near to us, waiting to be discovered within us, bringing to life that which we may not yet even be able to envision for ourselves. I think this resonates with the parables of growth in the Gospel reading; from small, hidden and perhaps interior beginnings, life emerges in ways greater than we can think or imagine. And there is no image that better illustrates this kind of phenomenon than creation itself.
It is truly said that there are two sacred books that own the same divine author; the ‘book’ of creation and the book of scripture. That Jesus so frequently draws on images and metaphors from the natural world and connects them to the promises of scripture, shows that he was committed to reading both books. So today we are given two images to work with, and we should remember that these are distinctly different to one another and to other parables Jesus speaks of sowing and of mustard seeds. The first parable describes the scattered seed growing, we know not how, with the earth itself producing the work, even as the farmer actively attends and prepares for the harvest. The second parable helps us envision God’s kingdom as being like the smallest of seeds- indeed a tiny seed of a native growing weed- that grows into a great and spreading shrub that provides shelter for many birds.
What are we to make of so many different natural images used to describe what this new creation, this new kingdom of God is like? Well perhaps it may bring us to recognize that God’s new creation needs more than one metaphor to help us to see and multiple perspectives before we begin to understand. Given that human beings are to be agents of this new creation, then it appears that variety and complexity are the order of the day. If we take seriously what Paul says about being a new creation in Christ, then we might expect that the unfolding kingdom emerges from the gifts of everyone.
But is it our work, or God’s, this mysterious growing of seeds to trees creating sustenance and shelter for others? I know I always want to give a great sigh of relief when I hear of seeds that ‘sprout and grow, we know not how’. Sometimes we can lose our way thinking that it is all down to us. At the same time the farmer in this parable seems not to be passive, but actively attentive to the germinating and growth of the harvest, even though the way it grows is a mystery. Of course, today we have much more knowledge of exactly how seeds grow- of processes of photosynthesis, respiration, and even of communication between plant life! However, having that scientific understanding need not rob us of astonishment at this incredible thing that is life. Nor should it prevent us from seeing the presence of God revealed in these natural processes. And what is revealed? That life is created through interdependence and synergy between living things. That far from being a power from above, there is a sense of energy being passed between forms, and the power of life dependent on the power of relationship. If that is true of seeds and shrubs and birds, how much more true is it of the creation of a kingdom of love, peace and justice? And how much more might we encounter God not by reaching beyond ourselves, but within our own being; in this very life we have been given and in the relationships that enable us to grow?
It also appears creation gives us clues about what might get in the way of God’s kingdom being known on earth. We are not only to put our trust in the great or powerful- after all, a small shepherd boy can be anointed as the king of Israel, and a tiny mustard seed can grow into the most vigorous of shrubs that provides a nesting place for more life. We also might notice that this life emerges not through hierarchical power or accumulation of resources but is free, can begin from almost nothing and has a power that cannot be contained. Reading the book of creation alongside the Bible might have prevented the church from embracing contemporary culture and allowing individualism, possession and domination to thrive in the church and become almost enshrined as religious values. How many times, for instance, instead of a relational universe of mutual self-giving and interdependence, has a quote like “God helps those who help themselves” been expressed as if it were biblical truth? (It’s not!)
If the new creation were all down to us, we would all be in trouble. Who amongst us could stand if there were no mistakes allowed and we needed to be thoroughly good or entirely effective to be invited into the work of God’s good creation? If there were no divine forgiving grace in the ecosystem of the kingdom, then we would be left trying to keep up appearances for God, the distant judge.
But if God is as close as our breath, and relentlessly on our side, then we can allow our defenses to drop, and invite the work of the Spirit to gather up the broken fragments of our lives, rebuilding them into something utterly new.
We can recognize our need of one another if this work is to be accomplished- that we are all the less whenever one child of God is excluded, demeaned or silenced.
We can relax in our own belonging and lose our fear of separation.
Perhaps if we allow ourselves to recover our childlike wonder at life itself, we might find ourselves at home in creation and part of a kingdom project where what we are part of creating is far greater than anything we could think or imagine.
+Amen