June 13, 2021 Text: Mark 4:26-34
Dear Friends in Christ,
Is ignorance bliss? Sometimes, not knowing what makes a thing great enhances its beauty.
Have you had this experience? You eat something that is delicious and then you find out it had some ingredients in it you don’t like? Mom makes a cake and you discover she put sour cream in it. Should something sour be put in with sweet? Sour cream helps make the cake moist but you still have a hard time reckoning your taste buds. Or you are given bread that looks like pumpkin and so you go ahead and eat it. Did you enjoy it? Why, yes I did. I can now tell you it was zucchini! What?
Sometimes a thing is good on its own, and to know too much about it might ruin our appreciation for the good that is in it – ignorance, as they say, is bliss. Such is the case in the parable of the growing seed that we hear from Jesus today.
“IGNORANCE IS BLISS?”
It is true sometimes that not knowing what makes a thing great enhances its beauty. Certainly for the growing seed, ignorance was bliss. The succinctness of this parable gives it such power: “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground.” (v. 26) The kingdom is scattered throughout the whole world. No distinction is made of the soil like in the parable of the sower. It is sown in every place.
The man then goes about his business day and night and the seed grows without his knowing how: “The earth produces by itself.” (v. 28) The Greek term here is “automatically” no further invention is needed or required. First the blade and then the ear and then the full grain. Good growth happens even if the man doesn’t know how. In time, a plentiful harvest will come.
As prideful, sinful people we are not content with something working without our effort to make it happen. When churches are dying we want to come up with some program to save them. When members of our family or friends are outside the Christian faith we ask what can I do to bring them around to the love of Jesus? How about our own faith life? We might even take credit there by letting everyone know that we go to worship and Bible study regularly and we pray harder.
But the truth behind all of these scenarios is not looking at what we can do, but what is done already. The cake was good the way the baker crafted it. The Kingdom of God is a beautiful gift because the Creator mysteriously causes it to grow into a glorious harvest.
The growth of the Kingdom of God is up to Him, not us. Jesus highlights that in the parable today. Man scatters the seed but God causes the growth. Christ’s death on the cross has redeemed the whole world, and the Kingdom of God is already sown everywhere that the Gospel is preached – in you and me, in the people of God in the Church, in your unbelieving loved one, in your atheist neighbor, when they have heard the Gospel.
The only growth that is going to happen will occur by God’s design, not by your effort, pressure, stress, or badgering. It is God who grants the growth automatically. If it were up to us to accomplish faith and church growth, we would have figured it out in two thousand years – growth would be happening by leaps and bounds. It happens in God’s time. Our Lord is more interested in freeing our guilty conscience in his forgiving grace and granting to us a holy and eternal joy.
The question still lingers – what can be done? Dr. Fred Craddock was a Professor of New Testament and Homiletics at Emory University. He had a father who was very critical of the church. Every now and then the minister would come to the Craddock home to speak with Fred’s dad. Mr. Craddock would complain they didn’t care about him only his pledge of money. This would embarrass Mrs. Craddock. But Mr. Craddock continued this talk for years.
There came a time he didn’t say it. He was in the Veteran’s Hospital. They had taken out his throat. He was down to 74 lbs. and radiation had badly burned him. He couldn’t speak. Around his room were flowers everywhere. Cards were attached from the Men’s Club and the Women’s Fellowship and the Youth Group. Every group in the church and many other parishioners had sent cards.
Fred’s dad could not speak but he wrote on the side of a Kleenex box a line from Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’: “In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story.” “Dad, what is your story?” He wrote, “I was wrong, I was wrong!”
There are a lot of desperate people in our world who are suffering emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually. God doesn’t ask us to be their critics. He directs us to sow seed. The Word will do what God wants it to do in spite of us. He just asks us to share the love of Jesus. Not to be obsessed with results – just do. Christ’s love. We’ve got it to share
Virginia Laren put it this way: “There is only one answer to man’s deepest needs, only one source of life. Therefore, if I know Christ and have studied the Gospels, that makes me either a missionary or a cop-out.” Where do you stand with this issue? God bless our trust in the power of the Word. God Bless our sowing. Amen.