Sunday Readings: Ezekiel 17.22-24; 2 Corinthians 5.6-10; Mark 4.26-34
Jesus spoke to the crowd in parables. “This is how it is with the reign of God. A farmer scatters seed on the ground, goes to bed, and gets up day after day. Through it all the seed sprouts and grows without the farmer knowing how it happens. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, finally the farmer wields the sickle, for the time is ripe for the harvest.” – Mark 4.26-30
The seed that grows while the farmer sleeps is not magic but organic. In the 13.8 billion years of evolution seeds have learned to do this. They sprout, grow stalks, head out, and ripen because the sun warms them, rain waters them, and earth nourishes them. They inherit the power of the first bacteria that learned to fuel life, divide, and reproduce, bacteria that still function in our mitochondrial DNA to convert oxygen to energy.
We live in a long history of God’s love unfolding in our evolving cosmos. Some four billion years ago simple cells appeared; two billion years ago cells with nuclei appeared. A farmer in Jesus’ time and all of us who grow plants today inherit the leap from the ocean to land that early cellular life made. We can ready the field, sow the seed, and sleep until harvest time. We depend on the miracle of life in seeds to grow and become food for us.
We live in a dynamic world in which all that is has the capacity to become more, to self-organize into new wholes. Like seed Jesus’ teachings take root and grow in us. The person of faith realizes our lives of eating, sleeping, working, and playing are more than meets the eye. God is present in our lives in every here and now. God is the dynamic love energy out of which the cosmos evolves.
What do you contribute to creating wholeness in our world?