Christopher Thomas
Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, Year B – 6/13/21
1 Samuel 15:34 – 16:13
Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-10, [11-13], 14-17
Mark 4:26-34
The Scandalous Journey of Grace
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
was blind, but now I see!”
– John Newton, 1772
If ever there were a seed planter’s hymn, it must have been “Amazing Grace,” for what could possibly get seed up out of the dirt of earth but the sheer Grace of something outside of, beyond, me, or we, any of the best that the world might have to offer. Seed-work is hard, and toilsome, and backbreaking.
Clear a field. Plow some dirt. Dig a hole. Drop some seed.
Ah! That seed! The miracle of life. Where did it come from? What will it be? Who knows? Who cares? It gets to be, it came to me, through Grace!
Drop that seed, plant, and water, and wait.
And weed.
And wait.
And water.
And wait.
And weed, and water, and weed, and water.
And wait.
Stand back. Stay back. Away. God, and Grace, and I are doing something holy, planting.
For it is all of those things, grace, that space for holy things to happen, that God gives to us so freely, so willingly, so awe-fully, whether we expect it, and when we least.
Grace. The Grace that taught my heart to love. The Grace so freely given.
My Grandmother Johny Frank, the one with the queer name, knew seed-planting, for she planted the seed of my soul in life, to be whom and what God wanted and would need for me to be. And so, she steered me early on away from words like “wretch,” because she knew that words of judgment like “wretch” applied to me would become a weed in her gardening of me, and so this hymn was not a regular part of her watering.
Grace reverberated through her bones; she knew every “old, old story” but refused to be bound by some worn out glory, rather set free by the ancientness, the ever-flowing, life-giving presence of God’s Grace. And she would have nothing less for any seed that God had entrusted to her planting prowess.
I find myself wondering for that seed-planter, her hopes, her dreams, her fears, her expectations, for what might come of the seed. For, in truth (because, unfortunately, Grace never releases us from the realities of truth), all the weeding, all the watering, all the cultivating, all the patience, only serve to give the seed-planter some illusion of control.
The great oxymoron – we are not in control, and yet we are; we are not the Creator, and yet we co-create; we have this thing called free will that is always and forever interlaced with “the world.”
Could Grace be the social lubrication that allows the gardener’s hoe to slip through the gardener’s hand and yet simultaneously grip it, hold on tight to it, controlling when necessary, releasing when needed?
Samuel ruminates hoeing over and across the ash-heap of Saul’s wretched failure of a kingship.
God’s people, the seed of Israel, beg for a king, in the style of the world, mighty in battle and greatness and authority, and so, God relents, “if a king is what you want, here is Saul.” Oh, he looks like the world, and smells like the world, and acts like the world, and for all intents and purposes, Saul is the world. Royalty. The seed gets what the seed asks for – the world.
Every now and then (ok, maybe more than every now and then), the seed, or the seed-planter, or maybe even the Creator of all these things, of everything, metamelomai, deeply, remorsefully, “life-changingly” regret. Turn around.
There is something in that regret, that turning, that makes the space for Grace, but the regret is not, in fact, Grace itself. For God’s regret could very well frighten us, beyond existence, as it once did, were it not for the ever-blessed gift of the rainbow. The rainbow that says, “I will never again destroy every living creature as I have done in the past (and most certainly could do again). As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, none of these shall cease.” Life will go on, because of Grace, the Grace that flies under the banner of a rainbow flag.
It bears remembering that it doesn’t feel that way, like life will go on, when you’re sitting in regret, which is a necessary place to sit, stirring around, digging through the ash-heap of failure. You know what I’m talking about. Because you can’t see Grace, feel Grace, know Grace, unless you’ve cleared out the worldly idols and positioned yourself toward Grace. There is simply no space or room for Grace within the strictures and the structures of “the world.”
And then it’s time to get up and move on, for seed will not plant, and water, and weed, and grow, and nurture, and stir itself into the fullness of harvest. It simply will not.
“How long are you going to grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel.” “What I have really rejected is YOUR imagination of king!” “Gird up your loins and let’s move on!” “This time we’re going to try another type of leader, a different kind, the kind that I, God, have in mind.”
The last time we went in search of a king, the king of expectation was royalty, with all the attendant trappings, and that king turned out to be an abysmal failure, a wretch. What if we looked toward the edges, just over the horizon, to something, or someone beyond our expectation, of what royalty, of what leadership, of what “the kingdom,” God’s kingdom, might look like? What if we looked to the eighth son of Jesse, studiously seed-planting sheep, way out in a far-flung field, somewhere?
The rainbow flag that is David’s lineage should give each and every one of us hope that Grace, God’s Grace, is alive, and well, and thriving, and flourishing! For David’s blood runs thick with every margin-bound, margin-borne, immigrant, and adulterer, and prostitute, and carpenter, and criminal you can possibly conjure up, wretches of every single shape and size, maybe even you and me! David’s family tree has them all! Can you imagine the family crest?
Grace, from sinners, from adulterers, from prostitutes, from carpenters, from criminals, from immigrants, from all those poor wretches who do not look, or smell, or touch, or taste, or feel, like me, Grace, from them? Seriously?
The kingdom of God is as crazy as someone throwing seed on the ground and going to sleep and the next day having a harvest.
The kingdom of God is as crazy as the smallest seed on earth bringing forth the greatest of shrubs, creating haven and shade for all creation.
The kingdom of God is as crazy as kings becoming wretches and wretches becoming kings.
The kingdom of God is as crazy as Grace, God’s unmitigated, unbounded, undeserved, unlimited, unrelenting, never-ending Grace.
For after all, I am just one seedling sinner saved by your Grace.
Amen.
