Bigger Than Our Grasp

Bigger Than Our Grasp--February 28, 2018

He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.  The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.  But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” [Mark 4:26-29]

You absolutely do not have to understand interplanetary physics or astronomy in order to stand in awe at the beauty of a sunrise.  Nor do you have to understand the chemical composition of water as hydrogen and oxygen to take utter delight in the smell after the rain.

Sure, it might deepen your wonder or your appreciation for the sun and the rain if you understood the astrophysics or chemistry of those two events, but you do not need a degree to realize what beautiful and precious things these are.  You simply get to witness and celebrate with joy the extravagant show creation puts on every day, even just in the sunrise or an afternoon shower. 

In fact, really the only way you can “mess up” a sunrise or the sweet scent of the rain, other than missing out on them altogether because you are too busy at work or online shopping to notice them, is to delude yourself into thinking that you made the sunrise or the rainstorm happen.  If you think you have earned a sunrise, or that humankind can master creation into duplicating the self-giving power of the rain, you’re going to miss the awesome beauty on display out your window every morning.  It was the same with our ancient ancestors:  primitive tribes were convinced they could only guarantee the return of the sun with the right blood sacrifice, or ensure a plentiful rain for the harvest by building temples to the right gods and goddesses. And with that, they lost the beauty of these gifts of sun and rain.  And instead, these things became burdens, things to worry about, things to learn the right techniques in order to secure. 

In other words, you can either stand in awe of the morning’s sunrise, realizing you are witnessing something beyond yourself that you are blessed and graced to get to be a part of… or you can foolishly make yourself belief that it is up to you to do your part to make the sunrise happen, and in the process, you will work yourself up into a frightful fuss worrying over whether you have done enough to earn a sunrise.  You can either be blessedly clueless, fully aware that you are being given a moment beyond your grasp and control to share in something of utter beauty and divine artistry, or you can be a damn fool, convinced you are doing something to make the sun come up again.

Jesus recommends the first:  being blessedly clueless.  In fact, he says, that is the only posture you can take if are to receive the Kingdom of God.  You’re going to have to be like a farmer, who tosses seed on the ground without knowing how, precisely, dead-looking grains become living plants.  You’re going to have to be like a farmer, Jesus says, because at least the farmer is wise enough to know what he doesn’t know, and wise enough to acknowledge he doesn’t have to understand the science of it in order for the plants to grow.  He just scatters the seed and lets the earth do what the earth is made to do, and he gets to witness the miracle.  The earth does not ask his permission, nor consult him for guidance, nor check to see if he has offered the right sacrifices, in order to produce a harvest. The whole process, from sprouting of seeds to harvesting the crop, is a gift. The farmer is wise enough to know it, to receive it without insisting he can master it, and to realize he is blessed and graced simply to be a part of the harvest.

This is what it’s like to participate in the Reign of God:  it begins by paying attention, of course, rather than burying ourselves in the pursuit of more money or missing the miracles outside the window while shopping for more stuff. But beyond that, living the Kingdom life calls for us to be blessedly clueless and to quit pretending that we are making God’s Kingdom come by our efforts.  Plenty of people—politicians, tv preachers, and the like—are convinced that they know what God is up to at every moment, and that God’s Kingdom will come only if they can get the right bill passed or petition signed or number of their books sold.  They are living under the illusion that they can make the Kingdom come by their own achievements, like some ancient pagan convinced he has made the sun rise again because he offered his required goat to the sun god.  Jesus strips us of that illusion—the illusion of damn fools—and instead lets us see that we don’t know all of the inner workings of God’s design. We know signs of it when we see them—justice and mercy and grace and peace—but we cannot predict how God is making them happen, and we are wise enough to know that the Kingdom will come without our knowing how it works. 

Following the way of Jesus allows us to do our part without having to know how everything else is connected to the larger whole. My job isn't to fix the whole world--my job is to follow the way of Jesus, in all of its enemy-loving, sinner-welcoming, truth-telling, hypocrisy-naming, table-sharing, self-giving weirdness... and then to let God be the one to figure out how your and my lives will be woven into the fabric that mends all of creation.  Not to get all nerdy, but like they say in the most recent Star Wars movie, maybe our job is simply to be "the spark that lights the fire" that brings the change of God's coming Kingdom, rather than thinking we have to be the whole bonfire alone. But we can leave it to God to know how my actions, your words, and our witness will be gathered up into something bigger than we dared imagine, and used for the sake of goodness in ways we could not conceive.

The way of Jesus, then, includes the ability to let God's grace be bigger... bigger than we can understand, bigger than we can grasp or master, bigger than we can put in a diagram or a chart or a sermon.  The way of Jesus dares us to see our choices and actions are always set within the wider and more wonderful  vision of the Reign of God, which we cannot control or predict, and around which we cannot build a wall or dig a moat.  The way of Jesus calls us, from the get-go to concede that God's ways are always pushing wider than we would permit, more gracious than our stingy hearts would allow, and more beautiful than we have the capacity to understand... and to let God's ways be as big as God pleases, rather than requiring the divine to shrink within the boundaries of what we can handle or hold.

Jesus would have us be wise enough to be blessedly clueless:  wise enough to see that the opportunities you and I have to live in God’s reign are God’s gifts to us.  The chances you will have in this day to do right by someone when no one else is looking, to speak up for those who need a voice, to practice mercy for someone who can never pay you back, to receive your daily bread without your earning it, and to forgive as you have been forgiven, these chances are all gifts of grace that we have not earned.  We don’t make the Kingdom come by doing these various good deeds.  God’s Kingdom comes and we get to witness it in those kinds of actions.  It’s like watching the sun come up and knowing it is a gracious gift of God that you were given the moment to see it.  It’s like smelling the air after the rain and knowing it didn’t have to be this way, but you were blessed with a world where the rain smells sweet and you get to share in that beauty.  If that is our posture with God’s Reign in our lives, too, everything is different—we will be able to recognize the sheer miracles we get to witness today, and we will have our hands and eyes ready to participate in what God has given us.

Lord God, open our eyes to the privilege we have of witnessing how your Kingdom is coming already.