First Reading: Ezekiel 17:22-24
22Thus says the Lord God: “I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and will set it out. I will break off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. 23On the mountain height of Israel will I plant it, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar. And under it will dwell every kind of bird; in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest. 24And all the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord; I bring low the high tree, and make high the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish. I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it.”
Psalm 1
1Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor lingered in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seats of the scornful! 2Their delight is in the law of the Lord, and they meditate on his law day and night. 3They are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; everything they do shall prosper. 4It is not so with the wicked; they are like chaff which the wind blows away. 5Therefore the wicked shall not stand upright when judgment comes, nor the sinner in the council of the righteous. 6For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked is doomed.
Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:1-17
1For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. 4For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened — not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. 6So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. 10For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. 11Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. 12We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. 13For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. 16From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Gospel: Mark 4:26-34
26{Jesus} said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. 27He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. 28The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” 30And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? 31It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, 32yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” 33With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. 34He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.
Sowing Good Seed
Today, in addition to this being the 4th Sunday after Pentecost, it’s also a day set aside to honor our fathers, and those who serve in a fathering role. And without sounding self-serving, this is good. Just 5 weeks ago, we took time to honor our moms, and since I wasn’t here to talk about our moms, I’d like to simply address all parents and all those who care for and nurture our children. Today it seems, parents, in general, don’t seem to get enough respect. That said, let me pick on dads for a moment.
A doting father used to sing his young children to sleep each night. He learned several lullabies to add some variety to the task. He liked to do this because this was something he could do at night to help out his wife. He was faithful in this task until one night he overheard his four-year-old give her younger sibling this advice, “If you pretend you’re asleep, he stops.” That was the end of the lullabies.
Garrison Keillor, on his “Writer’s Almanac” on National Public Radio said that Father’s Day goes back “to a Sunday morning in May of 1909, when a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd was sitting in church in Spokane, Washington, listening to a Mother’s Day sermon. She thought of her father who had raised her, and her siblings, after her mother died in childbirth, and she thought that fathers should get recognition as well. So, she asked the minister of the church if he would deliver a sermon honoring fathers on her father’s birthday, which was coming up in June; the minister did. And the tradition of Father’s Day slowly caught on. Mother’s Day became an official holiday in 1914; Father’s Day, didn’t until 1972.
Mother’s Day is still the busiest day of the year for florists, restaurants, and phone carriers. Until the proliferation of cell phones, Father’s Day was the day on which the most collect phone calls were made. It was Strindberg who said, “That is the thankless position of the father in the family, the provider for all and the enemy of all.” Charles Wadsworth said, “By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.”
In our lesson from St. Mark’s gospel, Jesus is describing the kingdom of God: “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 . . .” Now Jesus isn’t talking specifically about parenthood in this passage, but isn’t this one of the ways in which we participate in the coming of God’s kingdom to earth, in the raising of our children?
Now before I go any further, our passage concludes with an interesting statement: “He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to His own disciples He explained them” (Mark 4:34). Have you ever stopped to consider this verse? One reason Jesus chose to use this communication tool is that the people could relate to the story and in doing so gain the meaning of the message Jesus was trying to convey. So anytime you read a parable, taking things in context of course, let your mind go and see where the Holy Spirit leads you. In this parable, anyone who farms or plants a garden can readily relate to what Jesus is saying here. But I want to take this story in a different direction today and compare what Jesus is saying to parenthood.
One could easily make the comparison that raising good children is like scattering seed upon the ground. As author Ken Canfield notes, there are no guarantees in either raising kids or planting seed. A farmer can do all the right things and still lose a crop. The same is true with parents. The farmer can till the ground at the right time, put in the right seed, and irrigate and fertilize according to the textbook. But that doesn’t guarantee a good crop. But, if we’ve done the best we can, taking the time needed to prepare the soil, care and nurture the seed, which are our children, being careful to set a good example, and living a godly life, God will reward us with children we can be proud of. That said, let’s begin here by simply saying that parents are important.
One of the first things Jesus alludes to in this parable is time. Time can be applied to planting as well as parenting. In verse 27 Jesus says, “He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how.” How many of us are guilty of saying, “where has the time gone.” Time is a tool, we can use it wisely or we can waste it, the one thing we cannot do is control it. Time is set: there are only 7 days in a week. When you break this down, you have 168 hours per week, or 10,080 minutes, or 604,800 seconds. There are no more nor are there any less. When you consider that each day you sleep an average of 7 hours, work an average of 9, you reduce the time available by 2/3.
When you factor in the time it takes to prepare meals, eat, time for personal grooming and then a little time to relax, how much time is left for God and for the family? Next consider that most children are in bed between 8:00 and 9:00 each night, how much time is left for them each evening? Question two concerning time. How much time do our children spend with someone else that has influence over them? How much time is spent by our children with electronics, TV and video games? Compare this with the amount of time we actively spend with them, engaging them in conversation or in teaching them spiritual and worldly things?
Question 3, what is the motivations of the other people or things that have influence over our children? Now I’m not going to get into a long argument about whether or not there are political agendas imbedded into our education system or not. You know how much I support our teachers and how much respect I have for them. But the question must be asked by all parents. Who has influence, and what is that influence?
A second thing parents need to consider when it comes to the electronics that our children spend time with, what is their motivation. I can make this easy, all of these forms of electronic media have a common goal, money. They want to addict the uses so they will buy more. (I know that’s a harsh statement, but it’s true.) They make their living by the user either buying more from them, or their sponsors. Let me leave the subject of time by saying this, parenting isn’t like a fast-food drive-in, you cannot get what you want in 2 minutes or less. Parenting takes time to achieve the desired results.
When it comes to gardening, or in raising children, we must accept that there are things within our control and things that are out of our control. We can control the time we spend with our children; we cannot always control the influences that the world has on them. All we can do is take the time and effort to prepare them to meet the challenges they will face. This brings me to the next thing Jesus brings to the mind of the gardener, achieving a good result from the time we take requires preparation.
Something that is of vital importance is the need to prepare, not only ourselves, but our children as well. A major part of preparation is setting the example for our children. William Raspberry, a syndicated writer with the Washington Post, wrote this in a recent column: Some years ago, South Africa’s game managers had to figure out what to do about the elephant herd at Kruger National Park. The herd was growing well beyond the ability of the park to sustain it. So they decided to transport some of the herd to a nearby game park.
A dozen years later, however, several of the young male elephants (now teenagers), that had been transported to the game park, began attacking the park’s herd of white rhinos, an endangered species. They used their trunks to throw sticks at the rhinos, chased them over long hours and great distances and stomped to death a tenth of the herd all for no discernible reason. Park managers decided they had no choice but to kill some of the worst juvenile offenders. They had killed five of the teenage elephants when someone came up with another solution.
Someone suggested that they bring in some of the mature male elephants still residing in the Kruger Park, hoping the bigger, stronger males could bring the adolescents under control. To the delight of the park officials, it worked. The big bulls quickly established the natural hierarchy and reduced the violent behavior of the younger bulls. “The new discipline, it turned out, wasn’t just a matter of size intimidation,” says Raspberry. “The young bulls actually started following the Big Daddies around, yielding to their authority and learning from them proper elephant conduct. The assaults on the white rhinos ended abruptly.”
Raspberry’s point was that children, especially teenagers, human or animals, need positive, and I will add godly, role models. Conscientious parents, and I’ll add, conscientious church members as well, can do wonders in the lives of our children. We must accept the responsibility to be a positive influence on the children in our care, or on the children we come in contact with. Remember, even when we don’t think our children are paying attention, they not only see what we’re doing, they hear what we’re saying.
My father was fond of reminding us boys, “out of the mouth of babes comes everything we should have never said in the first place.” We prepare our children for adulthood by spending time with them, teaching them, and preparing them to meet the challenges to come. The crop we harvest, or the children we raise, are directly impacted by the time, preparation, and nurture we put into the venture. Yes, there are those who break the cycle, those who choose not to act, or react, like their parents.
This statement can be made in both a good way and bad. Children can, through their decisions, follow a different path than that of the parents. Our first reaction is to think of the children who, despite the efforts and teachings of the parents, go rogue as it were, and take to a life of substance abuse, violence, or abusive behavior. We lament and pray for those children who choose to turn their backs on their family. And we can certainly find examples of children who, despite their home environment, decide to act differently than their parents, and turn out to be wonderful parents and role models. For these children we give thanks to God, and we celebrate the breaking of the cycle. However, for the majority, the behaviors of how to be a good person and parent starts with the mom and dad.
My parents were ones who believed the proverb, “Train up a child in the way that they should go, and they will not depart from it” (Proverbs 2:6). Even before my brothers were born, mom and dad began by preparing the field. They attended church, read their Bibles and prayed for God’s guidance in raising us. Mom and dad looked to their parents for advice, and they looked to other godly examples of how to be good role models for us. Then they worked each day to provide us with that positive example of what it means to live a godly life. They made sure that what us boys heard, and saw, was that their words and deeds matched. The next thing that parenting and farming have in common is tending.
Everyone who has a garden knows that there’s so much more to enjoying a bountiful harvest than just throwing down a few seeds and then sitting down to a good meal with the produce. Once you’ve done all the work of preparing the soil and planting the seed, next is the back breaking work of weeding, thinning, watering, harvesting and canning. With children, this tending is the many years of patient teaching, modeling, admonishing, and affirming. There is encouragement in this.
As any gardener will tell you, all along the way there will be early fruits that can be enjoyed. These are the little things we celebrate along the way as our children grow and mature. These are the events that give us encouragement as parents. Yes, there will be a few weeds we’ll need to pull, but these early joys help to make the whole adventure worth the effort.
As our children mature and begin to venture out on their own, we must continue the hard work in the harvest. This tending requires us to reinforce all the lessons we taught our children along the way. Even as we age, we’re called to continue to model good and godly behavior and separate the good from the bad. However, when we see our children reaping the benefits of all our labor and we see the results in their lives and in the lives of our grandchildren, we can then enjoy the years of effort and frustration, as we see the results. This is when we know we’ve done the job well. Preparing, tending, harvesting and canning, it’s all hard work. But in the end, it’s worth every blister.
In 1985 Tim Burke saw his boyhood dream come true the day he was signed to pitch for the Montreal Expos. After four years in the minors, he was finally given a chance to play in the big leagues. He quickly proved to be worth his salt setting a record for the most relief appearances by a rookie player. Along the way, however, Tim and his wife, Christine, adopted four children with very special needs, two daughters from South Korea, a handicapped son from Guatemala, and another son from Vietnam. All of the children were born with serious illnesses or defects.
Neither Tim nor Christine was prepared for the tremendous demands such a family would bring. And with the grueling schedule of major-league baseball, Tim was seldom around to help. So, in 1993, only three months after signing a $600,000 contract with the Cincinnati Reds, Tim Burke decided to retire from baseball. When pressed by reporters to explain this decision, he simply said, “Baseball is going to do just fine without me. But I’m the only father my children have.” Of course, you don’t have to be a sports hero to be a great parent. There are men and women all over this world who are seeking to model what it means to be Christian parents.
Great parents can have that kind of influence. When a conscientious men and woman plants a seed and takes the time to nurture that seed, wonderful things can occur. Of course, the love of any parent is but a pale reflection of the love of God. God is the ultimate sower of good seed in our world. We wouldn’t even know how to love, if God had not first loved us.
Both parents and godly role models are important. No, we cannot control the temptations of this world our children will face. However, we can do what’s needed to prepare them for these challenges. A conscientious parent, grandparent, family member and faithful church members all can have an amazing impact on our children. But no matter how much our parents love us, there’s someone who loves us more. Someone who gave His only Son in our behalf. Even as we honor our fathers today, let us also give thanks for all who willingly accept the responsibility for setting a godly example for our children, for parents, grandparents, teachers, family, and faithful church members. But even more, let us give thanks to our Heavenly Father, who is the example of what it means to be a good parent and the source of all life and love.
Amen