“The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground” (Mk. 4:26).
Most of us have lives that are pretty distant from the land; and most of us are probably unfamiliar with the way in which agriculture was carried out in ancient Palestine. People in Jesus’ day were dependent upon the barley and wheat harvests, in particular: the barley coming in first in the spring, followed by the wheat. The origin of the feast of Passover was, in part, agricultural, as was Pentecost; also the feast of Tabernacles in the fall. Passover: the barley harvest; Pentecost: the first fruits of the wheat harvest (Ex. 34:22); Tabernacles: the final ingathering, particularly of figs, olives, and grapes.
What I realized the other day was that the barley and wheat harvests were only possible because the seeds were planted in the fall. Palestine has a temperate climate, so no need for a special kind of grain that can resist extreme cold: i.e. no need for winter wheat. The rainy season follows, and that’s conducive to eventual growth. Still, the seeds are planted after the harvest is concluded, and when the prospect of the next one seems distant. In ancient Israel, they sowed just at the point that things were wrapping up, as the winter was coming on, and not in the full flush of spring.
Jesus in our Gospel reading suggests that we in the Church are in the seed-planting business. “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground” (Mk. 4:26), as we heard Jesus say. Like the coming of the kingdom of God, the one who plants does not know how the seed that is sown will fulfill its promise: “the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how” (Mk. 4:27), according to Jesus. No one knows how the kingdom comes.
In our reading, the one who sows the Gospel seed doesn’t seem to have much to do with the final result. “The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head” (Mk. 4:28), as it says. The sower can’t take much credit. There’s also a sense of urgency, because the harvest is coming. “But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come” (Mk. 4:29). There’s more than an inkling here that the one who will gather the harvest is the Lord of the harvest himself.
If the Church is in the seed-planting business, then the ministry we are engaged in will resemble the work of the sower. Our job is simply to plant the seed. How God works through us is largely invisible to us; we don’t know how God works his will in the world using our human efforts. Nor are we clear that our efforts actually do anything, as it seems that after all the kingdom comes because God wills it, not because we are so skilled at bringing it to fruition. After all, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” as we pray in the Lord’s prayer. Finally, as we survey the seed-planting business of the Church, the presence of God who heads up the harvest seems to be the determinative factor in the success of our enterprise.
We are in the seed-planting business, but we plant as they did in ancient Palestine, just as the winter comes on. In other words, we undertake our ministries when the context around us seems inauspicious, not a natural time for us to be thinking ahead about the spring harvest. It might seem counterintuitive for us to be planting Gospel seeds when it is metaphorically cold, rainy, and wet; but of course we know from experience that this is exactly the time to be planting! It seems to me that’s our context now: the end of the cycle. There will be a rich harvest, even if it is hard for us to discern how or when it will be reaped.
Our gathering today falls on the feast of St. David, the patron saint of Wales, and that is significant. As a Christian and a leader in the Church, St. David was in the seed-planting business just as surely as we are. He lived and carried out his ministry under the constraints of foreign invasion, which had pushed the British tribes and with them Christianity itself into a corner of the island, the part now known as Wales. In the face of crisis, the best response that David could think of was the counterintuitive one of founding monasteries, twelve of them by legend, places of prayer and education that could carry forward the Christian mission in the new circumstances in which the Church found itself.
It was a seed-planting ministry that only bore fruit much later, as the Church recovered and began to evangelize the invaders. The Gospel proclamation rang out once again. Yet, for us, how the seed sown will flourish and when are matters best left up to God. David’s role then, and our ministries as leaders in the Church gathered here today, is simply to plant the seed, and to be ready (if we can) for the harvest.