19.04 | Seeds Over Scale
Mark 4:26-41
‘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.’
Mark 4:26-27
What will you plant today?
I turn forty this year. I’m essentially entering the territory of the mid-life crisis—a time usually characterised by needing to process that, around halfway through life, your achievements and character have not reached what you’d anticipated. The difference between 20 and 40 is like this, with the idealism and strength and energy of our teens and twenties giving way to the knocks and bumps of life, that make us realise that it was harder than we thought it would be and those things we thought would work out well didn’t always do so. When you’re nearing 40, you can look back, feeling your past achievements to be relatively small and your life to be, therefore, less valuable.
In a way this makes sense. We live in a world that measures significance by scale, and so we assume that a more significant life is one of greater numbers. The mid-life crisis brings this narrative of scale into critical interaction with our achievements thus far.
Jesus has words for His disciples today, that may just be some of the most important you ever hear into this narrative of achievement.
Again, it’s about seeds. He’s just told His disciples that ‘seeds’ means ‘the word’—the lived and spoken truths of the Kingdom of God. It’s reasonable to assume He’s tracking with the same metaphor here.1
And then He gives them two parables.
The first has to do with fruitfulness. The sower sows the seed, but has no real control or understanding of the ensuing growth. He or she cannot germinate the seed, tug roots out of it, or coax it into sprouting and growth. The sower can merely keep dropping those seeds in the ground, and sprinkling them with some water. The role of the gardener is not to grow it; it is to sow it.2
The second has to do with scale. The sower plants a mustard seed. It doesn’t look impressive. It is tiny—a small brown granule in the hand. A light breeze would blow it away. And yet the act of planting it triggers something into being that is so greatly beyond the sower, that, in time, what was planted has become trunk and branches and leaves, sturdy enough to give shade to the ground and nesting space for the birds.
This is a different vision of impact. It measures our value not by the contents of our resumé or attainments. Rather, it measures impact by what we have planted. It stops forcing us into the anxious counting and insecurity of a life in constant self-analysis against the impossible demands of scale, and instead invites us into the simple, humble, consistent work of planting those good seeds of the Kingdom. Here every word of truth spoken, every encouragement, every prayer prayed and act of simple kindness done, every story read to your kids and every penny given in generosity, every moment when we moved towards justice or took that risk in faith—every single one of these becomes a seed in the hand of the Lord, planted rather than withheld. Such little seeds, planted in faith and kindness and hope, become an act of extraordinary potential in the soil of His power.
Change the question. Stop counting your past achievements. Rather, ask this day, and every day,
What might I plant today?
Reflect:
What if I assessed my life less by my visible achievements, and more by what I had planted?
What seeds of the Kingdom could I plant today?
Pray:
Father,
As I reflect on all this,
I realise that all this concern of mine—
For significance and impact and scale—
Actually brings me a lot of anxiety.
It is noise and pressure and exhaustion,
Like wind and waves upon the sea.
And so I change the prayer.
Help me not to bother myself so much with the contents of my resumé;
Rather, teach me to be a steady planter of seeds—
Seeds of truth and beauty and goodness and kindness and care—
For here there is the peace that can sleep through the storm,
And here I entrust my every humble act and word,
To the exponential multiplication of your hand.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Judges 12:8-14:20 | Proverbs 13:1-6
As a side note, this theory doesn’t always play out with Jesus. He also quite readily switches metaphors, and sometimes inverts the meaning of a metaphor (e.g. He describes the ‘yeast’—teaching—of the Pharisees as destructive, and the ‘yeast’ of the Kingdom of God bringing life. In this instance, however, the narrative flow of Mark’s arrangement suggests continuation of the same theme.
Paul talks about this in his first letter to the Corinthians: ‘I planted … but God gave the growth.’ (1 Corinthians 3:6)