Sermon: Planting Seeds of Faith

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Planting Seeds of Faith

By Rev. Julie Yarborough

September 2, 2007

1 Corinthians 3: 5-9 & Mark 4: 2-9, 13-20

[ Audio (mp3, 4.2Mb) ]

aunt and uncle are gardeners extraordinaire. They have won awards for their horticultural acumen. They grow flowers of every size, shape and color, vegetables and fruits. Every day, weather permitting, they are outside working in the dirt, pulling weeds, rearranging plants, tending to the compost pile, spraying for insects, and harvesting the fruits of their labors. Their garden is prolific and they share their produce liberally, plying their neighbors and friends with strawberries, cucumbers, the best tomatoes you’ve ever tasted, melons, summer squash, zucchini, zucchini and more zucchini. (Zucchini is known for being an extremely prolific plant. You may have heard the joke, often told in rural areas: Why does everyone start locking their car doors in July? So the neighbors won’t be able to leave zucchini in the back seat! ) My aunt and uncle are getting older now, and my uncle’s health is declining. They’ve talked about moving into a retirement community of some sort, but they just can’t bring themselves to leave their yard, and their gardens.

You might say that gardening defines their very existence. They have planted many seeds in their lifetime, and not all of them have been in dirt. Many of the seeds they have sowed have been seeds of faith, planted in the lives of the people around them. I know, because they planted some of those seeds in me! I have fond memories of childhood car trips and kitchen table conversations about issues of faith. My aunt and uncle weren’t afraid or embarrassed to talk about what they believed. On the contrary, they were evangelists in the best sense of the word: spreaders of the good news. The seeds that had been planted in them had come to fruition in them, “producing a harvest,” as Eugene Peterson says, “beyond their wildest dreams,” and they couldn’t help but share it with their friends and neighbors.

Now, I didn’t (and still don’t,) always see eye to eye with my aunt and uncle theologically, but their enthusiasm for the Gospel was contagious. How I wanted to have faith like theirs, faith that was so important to me, so much a part of me, that I couldn’t help but share it.

There are others who planted seeds in me, and watered and nurtured me along the way. I remember Cindy Rusek, a young woman who was confined to a wheel chair with MS, but taught fourth grade Sunday school. We couldn’t always understand what she was saying to us, but we knew that she loved Jesus and she loved us and that was what was most important. As Alice Walker says in her poem about Sunday school, (read earlier in worship) it’s the leaning that I salvage when I remember Cindy.[1]

I remember Martha Jo Glazner, a woman in my church who wrote curriculum for the Baptist Sunday School Board. Martha Jo had never married and she didn’t have children of her own. The year I was in the fourth grade, the children in our church were paired up with mentors, and she and I became partners. She encouraged me in my faith journey, and our friendship lasted well beyond that year. We went to plays and concerts together, she would often take me out to dinner, and I visited her when I came home from college and Divinity school.

I remember Eric Dudley, a student at Vanderbilt Divinity School, who worked as an intern at my church as the youth minister when I was in high school. We had many theological discussions – one, late at night on a youth retreat, that helped me to see that God was much larger and more inclusive than I had ever imagined.

These are just a few of the many people who nurtured my faith life and encouraged me along the path of my spiritual journey. Their faithfulness and care planted seeds in me and watered them so that they could come to fruition. They are no longer in my life, but I remember them, and that of God in them with fondness and thanksgiving.

In today’s second scripture reading, Paul is writing to the church in Corinth. They have gotten into another squabble – the Corinthians are infamous for their infighting and immature behavior - this time it’s about who they follow more closely Paul or Apollos. You can almost hear Paul taking a deep breath and breathing an audible sigh as he begins his response to them. He points out that they aren’t following him or Apollos – the Corinthians are following God, and Paul and Apollos are merely the messengers, or the servants. They are the ones who planted and watered the seeds of faith in this Christian community, but, as Paul is quick to point out, it is God who gives the growth.

In fact, God provides the seed as well. After telling the parable of the sower and the seed, Jesus explains to his disciples (who are a little thick at times, especially in the Gospel of Mark) that the seed the farmer plants is the Word – or in Greek, Logos - which has a double meaning: word, with a small w, or scripture; as well as Word with a capital W, meaning Jesus himself. As we hear in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God and all things came into being through him…”

Growth patterns are circular. When seeds of faith, like scripture and the presence of Christ himself, take root in us and grow, they produce fruit and flowers, which produce more seeds, which we can then share with others. The growth that takes place in us is dependent upon our providing good soil. We provide the soil, by opening our hearts and minds and letting those seeds be planted and watered and nurtured.

Did you know that soil is made up of living microorganisms? It isn’t just dirt! Garden soil is comprised of a complex mixture of mineral particles, air, water, organic matter and living creatures.[2] Any serious organic gardener knows that caring for the soil is one of the most important elements of gardening. The richer the soil is, the more hearty the plants that grow in it. Spreading composted materials, working rich dark humus into the soil, helps the plants in a garden to grow strong and beautiful, making fruits and vegetables more nutritious and better tasting.

As Paul and Jesus both tell us, once the seeds are planted in good soil and nurtured, they will grow. By tending to our own soil, and enriching it, we provide fertile ground, which is the best place for real healthy growth to take place.

We can enrich the soil in our spiritual lives in a myriad of ways: by reading – reading spiritual writings, the Bible, even good fiction that can help us to think about matters of the heart and soul; by praying and spending time in silence and meditation, by having spiritual discussions with friends and family, by participating in small groups with others in the church; by coming to worship; by mentoring confirmands or teaching Sunday school (both of which work to enrich our own soil, and to plant seed in others at the same time!)

You may feel like you don’t have much to give, that you aren’t able to plant seeds in others because you don’t know much about the Bible, or you haven’t grown up in the church, or you wouldn’t know where to start. The seeds that we plant don’t need to be large. Did you know that the seeds for a rhododendron plant are so tiny that that five million of them are needed to weigh one pound?[3] More than once in the Gospels, Jesus used the image of a mustard seed, comparing it to the faith that one needs to move mountains, or the Kingdom of God, which is planted within us. The mustard seed is very small, but once planted grows like a weed. His hearers would have been very familiar with the plant, which was very common in his time and place. Unless you like to cook and eat Indian food, you may not be so familiar with mustard seeds – they’re about the size of a poppy seed – tiny! Jesus used this image on purpose, to say that it doesn’t take much seed, because it is God who provides the growth! If the soil is ready to accept the seed, the growth will take place. If we plant the seeds, no matter how small they are, God will take care of the rest.

The seeds of faith that are planted in us are guaranteed to grow with God’s help, and if we take every opportunity to enrich the soil in which they are growing, they will produce a harvest beyond even our wildest dreams - so much so that we won’t be able to help but share the bounty with others, spreading seeds of faith along the way. May it be so.

Amen.

[1] Alice Walker, "Sunday School Circa 1950," in Revolutionary Petunias & Other Poems, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1970, p. 11.

[2] The Experts Book of Garden Hints, Edited by Fern Marshall Bradley, Rodale Press, Emmaus, PA, 1993, p. 89.

[3] Foolproof Planting, by Anne Moyer Halpin and the Editors of Rodale Press, Rodale Press, Emmaus, PA, 1990, p. 12.