As I write this it is Holy Saturday, the day in-between the cross and the resurrection, the day of waiting, the day of disillusionment, it is the day I find myself living in most of the time. Jesus tells a parable that gives us hope and encouragement to celebrate this living in-between. It is a parable that gives us great insight into how the Kingdom works without giving us any answers. This parable I call Ugly Sleeping is found only in Mark’s Gospel, 4:26-29:
“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. The earth produces by itself first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
Jesus had already spoken parables of the Kingdom being like sowing a seed, but in this parable, he gives us the secret knowledge of how it works. We love to understand how things work so we feel like we are more in control; we love the how to messages that fill in the blanks with the knowledge we need to be happy and a little holy. But in this parable Jesus explains how the Kingdom works when the seed is sown by telling us “the seeds sprouts, and grows though the sower does not know how.” You may say that is not an explanation, but a mystery–and you’d be right. How the Kingdom works is beyond our understanding, but it does work. Can you live with that? I am very cautious about anyone who is an expert about how God works. The longer I walk with Jesus the less certain I am. The more I learn about the Kingdom the less I really understand. This is ugly theology, but trust transforms it into beautiful childlike faith.
In essence, Jesus tells us that after we have done our part by sowing in faith, all we can do is to go to bed! The alternative, which I often select, is to stay up striving, worrying, fearing, and some faithless praying. One of the best examples in my life would be the teenage years of our three daughters (you can read more in The Power of Ugly, the chapter called Ugly Parenting). We sowed the seed over and over in our daughter’s hearts, singing over it, praying for it, crying about it, shouting at it to grow, but rarely did we just go to bed in perfect peace knowing that in the hiddenness and silence God was powerfully at work. It is a battle to believe that God’s seed is more powerful than a teenager’s rebellion.
Jesus goes on to describe the growth of the seed as producing “all by itself.” The word Mark uses, automato, is only found one other place: in Acts 12:10, where a huge iron gate that is locked “opens for them by itself,” so Peter is able to escape from prison. This word is of course where we get our word automatically. Jesus says that the seed needs no help from us, leaving us in a place of humbleness and helplessness. Once we have done our part, we must believe that God is faithful to do His. The miracle of resurrection is the basis of our faith for which we wait on Holy Saturday while the “seed is planted.” We will not know how, but we will know who is working. Is it enough for us to see no evidence, hear no noise of work going on, to stand helpless by knowing there is nothing God needs from us, and go to bed in peace?
