Episode Transcript
CONSECRATE
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
HEAR
Mark 4:26–29 ESV
And he said, “The kingdom of God 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 earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
CONSIDER
I think about seeds—a lot—and the miracle they are.
Do you remember the last time you looked at a seed? It's something so common we scarcely pay any attention to it at all. How could something so small hold so much potential?
When Jesus reaches for a way to teach us about the kingdom of God, he reaches for a seed. He could reach for the tree or the fruit that grows on the tree, but instead he chooses the seed to make his point.
Consider a single apple seed. This seed contains all the compounded possibilities of the entire tree. Every branch and leaf and future apple is contained in the one tiny singular seed. Residing in this one seed are all the trees that will come in the future from the seeds produced by this one seed. I once heard this African proverb, "Anyone can tell you how many seeds are in an apple, but only God knows how many apples are in a seed."
Maybe I'm stating the obvious, and perhaps that's the point. It's so easy to miss the mystery because it is obscured by the ordinary. Maybe this is why Jesus is constantly calling forth eyes that see and ears that hear. The truth is shining like a candle on a lampstand yet somehow we can miss seeing it entirely. The kingdom is not meant to be hidden but revealed, yet it takes a certain kind of seeing to perceive it. This is why Jesus teaches in parables.
What could be more humble than a tiny seed, yet what could be more grand than the tallest tree? This is what God's kingdom is like; on earth yet from heaven. In fact, this is what Jesus is like; full of humanity and full of the Holy Spirit.
“This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.” (NIV)
In that spirit, I wrote this short verse of a poem.
Seed
And shoot,
Leaves and Roots,
Flowers and Fruits,
And Seeds . . .
That is how God's kingdom grows on earth as it is in heaven—by the seed of his Word—from seed to seeds and more seeds until every field of every life is flourishing with the goodness of God.
But did you notice how the text says we have one job? Scatter the seed. The seed will do everything but plant itself.
PRAY
Lord Jesus, thank you for becoming the Seed, and calling us to be the same. Thank you for sowing our lives like so many seeds. Open my heart and mind to the sheer possibility of what you can do with a single life yielded to your purposes. Make my life a seed sown, filled with your purposes for the glory of your name, Jesus. Amen.
