Proper 6 (B) + Rooted, we rise! + 6.17.18

Melissa Campbell-Langdell

All Santos, Oxnard

(1 Samuel 15:34–16:13; Ps 20; 2 Corinthians 5:6–10, (11–13), 14–17; St Mark 4:26–34)

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” (Mark 4:26-29)

In the Kingdom of God, we are participants and wonderers too. We are like the farmer depicted in Wendell Berry’s “The Man Born to Farming” described here:

The grower of trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,

…

His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.

What miraculous seed has he swallowed

that the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth

like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water

descending in the dark?[1]

What miraculous seed have you swallowed?
What big things in your life have you worked for, and what part of those happenings has been due to God working behind the scenes? And how do we even know the difference sometimes?

We as human beings hunger. We hunger for activity, action, to produce.

We hunger to respond to the injustice of our own world. And these are good hungers. Good seeds for sprouting.

But let us also return to the wild things. To Sabbath time. To times of rest. To listening to God. For this reason, it is good for us to be here.

Let us look to the example of brave and wise Samuel, older now, entering alien territory to anoint a king, almost by stealth. And he has to listen to God. Several sons presented, one by one, like a long fertile furrow with healthy plants, but no, where is the one- out in the fields, and here he comes, David.

God says to Samuel, don’t look at the surface (although David is easy on the eyes!) Don’t see the outside only. See what God is nurturing within the breast of a young man. The seed planted years ago.
Do not grieve over Saul, the king you thought was the one. Do not get stuck there.

How often do I, today, get stuck in the miasma of the news, the grief and the emotional sludge of the daily news cycle?
We must not only grieve over stories of children separated from their parents, torn from their roots as if they were bad weeds and not healthy, life-giving plants.

But God says, no, do not sink into the dirt of grief only, but dig into the soil of your life. Get rooted. Literally and spiritually. This is why it is good to dig your hands in the dirt – whether it be of your own garden, the community garden, or someone else’s. This is why it is good to support the Abundant Table and other local farmers. We get rooted.

And then we do something. Spread our branches and act.

Our Youth Minister Jade showed me a story on Friday of a woman who took a stand. Tiana Smalls was on a bus at the border of California and Nevada and the bus driver informed everyone that immigration and customs enforcement was going to board the bus and that the passengers would be required to show documentation. Smalls, knowing that the ICE agents had no authority to do so more than 100 miles North of the national border and in a privately owned bus, stated that no one had to show the agents anything, except perhaps the bus driver. She then used Google Translate to translate her message so that the Spanish speakers on the bus would know that they did not need to comply. She was rooted in her rights and used her sense of her rights to take a stand. The border agents waved the bus on, saving who knows how many people on the bus from fear of deportation. Small is a US citizen and could easily have complied, pulling out her own ID, but since she vocally refused, she helped others know their rights.[2]

This may not be your style. We each need to follow Samuel’s example, with the ease of the person in the parable, sleeping and rising, listening to where God is nudging us to go, act or do. But if we listen, God will tell us when it is harvest time. And you never know where God might take you and have you act when that small mustard seed grows in you into big faith, allowing you to do so much more than you can ask for or imagine.

When you branch out, who knows what will happen?

In Christ, we are new creation. We are freshly rooted in God’s creation, and newly free to move and act in God’s amazing love.

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[1] https://onbeing.org/blog/the-man-born-to-farming/.

[2] Mitra Ebadolahi, “One Woman Who Knew Her Rights Forced Border Patrol Off a Greyhound Bus,” June 13, 2018, https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/ice-and-border-patrol-abuses/one-woman-who-knew-her-rights-forced-border.