“Rise, Shine, You People!
“Rise,Shine, You People!”
Mark 4.26-34
Mark 4.26-34
In the name of the Living God and the risen Christ. Amen.
In 1879, Botanist William Beal buried twenty glass pint bottles filled with wet sand, each containing fifty various seeds. He buried them deep in a secret location on Michigan State University’s campus, a spot still unknown to the public to this day. His idea was to unearth individual jars at set time periods to see if those seeds, dormant and buried underground for years, would still germinate—if they somehow still contained the power of life.
He started with increments of five years and discovered the seeds could still be planted, germinate, and grow. His colleagues after his death increased the increments to every ten years, and some seeds would still germinate. In 1980 they began to dig up the jars of seeds every twenty years and still some seeds had life in them and could grow. Most recently, in 2021, MSU agricultural researchers dug up the 16th bottle of dormant seeds—some 142 years later. They planted and watered them in the lab and after a week of watching and waiting, sure enough, a little sprout popped out as if to say, “Hello, it’s been a while.” 142 years!
This Beal Seed Experiment—named after the original Botanist William Beal—is the longest of its type in the country, and certainly will result in great insight and new knowledge for plant biologists. But I was struck by the mystery which still remains. One of the current curators of the century and half old experiment put it this way:
“[Some seeds] can hang out in the soil for incredibly long periods of time, seemingly dead and then suddenly germinate. We’re [still] trying to understand why and for how long this phenomenon happens.”[1]
There remains at the foundation of life, a mystery. We still don’t really know how life works. I think of this when Elga Heinzen comes and waters the beautiful plants in the church courtyard, right outside my office window. Elga’s an intelligent person, but she doesn’t fully understand why, when she waters those plants on Wednesday mornings, they grow and sprout and bring forth beauty.
The guy in the parable Jesus tells from Mark 4, sows seeds some two millennia before us, and I wonder how much more we really know of the mystery than he did. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter see on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow…” And here, the original Greek is quite dramatic: “how not knows he.” (Mark 3.27)
Jesus’ parable is filled with the language and imagery of seeds and growth. And it’s beautiful timing that we read his words during our own time of ploughing, planting, waiting, and wondering—in our gardens and our fields and our patios. The Lord uses the technical agricultural language of his day to describe his kingdom. Seed/ Spors sowed in the earth; tiny sprouts blasting forth and growing green; abundance being produced, first a little stalk sticking up, then a head forming, then the fullness of the grain. But all of this remains a mystery for the one who plants. He sleeps, he rises, works, harvests, but still takes a moment to wonder at the mystery of it all.
There is a mystery in the seeds of life, and so also there’s a mystery in the seeds of our faith. We really don’t know how this works. Our Lutheran teaching is clear that God works through the means of Grace—God’s word and sacraments—to give us the gospel, cause us to believe, and bring forth the fruits of faith and love and service to others. But our confessions also make it clear that “The Spirit works where and when he pleases” (AC V). As we sow the seeds of God’s word, we can’t predict or manipulate or control what God does with his seeds we plant. Sometimes a person or family we fully expect to come and grow and get involved—we never see or hear from again. On the other hand, there might be a person we least expect to receive the gospel and produce forth the fruits of the gospel, but here they are. Still with us. Can hardly get rid of them, right? There’s a mystery to how this all works.
There is both a comforting message to this mystery, as well as an urgent mandate—both a message and a mandate. This message of comfort is that God will indeed give growth for his church. It might not be as we expect, or when we expect, but like the jars unearthed in a secret site on MSU campus, sprouts of life will pop forth—maybe even in times and places and people that we least expect. No matter how dark or dead things seem to be; no matter how long that seed might be buried, growth will come. It is the most sure thing that we have in this life—more sure than the seeds we plant in the soil. God’s word endures forever, and the life of Christ cannot be kept down.
This message is for you and me. The seed planted in our hearts in baptism, will flourish in abundance, welling up even unto eternal life. Though that seed of faith is mired and marred in sin and mortality, often in pain and suffering in this world, yet the fruit and flower will come—even if we sometimes have to wait until heaven to fully see its growth.
Christ our Lord himself, described his own death as like a seed planted in the earth. “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” (John 12.24). St. Paul casts the Lord’s resurrection as like the first fruit of the harvest, with all the others soon to follow (1 Cor. 15.10). Know the comfort of the message of this mystery. You have that seed implanted in you through baptism, it is fed and watered here through the word and sacrament, and God will give it the growth—even unto eternal life.
There’s a comforting message, but also an urgent mandate in the mystery of the seeds. We are called to sow and plant. The man in the parable doesn’t get to decide to stop sowing, just because “how not knows he.” If he waited until he fully understood how it worked, he’d never sow any seed.
We also will never fully understand the mystery of faith—how it works and when and in whom. But we are called to keep sowing. We are to keep sharing God’s word, inviting people to church, showing forth God’s love, serving others in his name. We sleep, we rise, we work, we wait but hopefully take a moment to wonder at the mystery of it all, knowing that God will give the growth.
William Beal started his little experiment with seeds in 1879. A small group of Lutheran Christians began our “little experiment” here in Chicago thirty-three years before him, in 1846. We are still seeing the fruit of their work, as they planted God’s word on the North Side. And we must, we are going to continue their work, some 178 years later.
Keep working, keep sowing. Be comforted in its amazing, miraculous work in your own heart. But take a moment this morning to wonder at its mystery. The power of life remains in the word of Christ.
Come soon Lord Jesus. Amen.
[1] I follow MSU Today for the story and quotes. https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2021/unearthing-a-scientific-mystery