Scriptures
• Ezekiel 47:9
Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish once these waters reach there. It will become fresh, and everything will live where the river goes.
• Ezekiel 47:12
On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.
• 2 Corinthians 5:17
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, everything has become new!
• Mark 4:26-34
26 Jesus also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground 27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle because the harvest has come."
30 He also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."
33 With many such parables Jesus spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it; 34 he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
Where are we now in the church's year of grace? One month ago we celebrated the Day of Pentecost, the fiftieth day of Easter. We recollected when a large group of Jesus' first followers gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish Pentecost. They remembered and affirmed God giving the Ten Words or Commandments through Moses, that way of obedience you could call the Working Papers for our lives together. And they celebrated the wheat harvest, God's gift from the ground that sustains our bodies every day.
Here in the church we recently started the six month long green and growing season of Pentecost; during this stretch of time we emphasize all creation as God's planting,. You know the story of God and God's people and the land from Genesis through Revelation.
Today's scriptures offer agricultural images. We hear from the prophet Ezekiel, and we hear two parables from Mark's gospel: scattered seeds and the famous mustard seed! The gospels of Luke and Matthew also include the mustard seed parable, so that may mean it's especially important.
A month ago we celebrated the Christian Day of Pentecost, or the fiftieth day of Easter. Christians have been celebrating Easter for two thousand years! Our formal theology tells us Jesus Christ's death and resurrection ended endless cycles of death, violence, and everything contrary to God's intention, but we look around and still see war, climate chaos, sorrow, sickness, death—none of that is over and done with yet.
Even though Jesus Christ has died, is risen from the grave, and ascended to reign from the right hand of God, even though we identify as Easter people… what's going on?
Jesus' original followers wondered, too.
After Jesus' resurrection and before his Ascension, in Luke's book of the Acts of the Apostles, his friends and followers asked if now he finally would "restore the kingdom" to the world. Jesus informed them the question was wrong. He told them to stay and wait right there in Jerusalem. and they would be his witnesses, they would testify to new life. In the power of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost, they would be Jesus' presence in the world.
In Romans 8:19-21 the Apostle Paul tells us all creation waits, hopes, and longs to discover us as God's authentic offspring, as people who embody, reflect, and act in God's image to help redeem all creation. Like Jesus!
The agricultural parables in the Good News of Jesus Christ, Son of God, according to Mark, align well with today's song, "God, Whose Farm Is All Creation." All creation. Not only prairie and heartland. But also crowded, overbuilt cities and suburbs. Remote rural wide spots in the road. Deserts. All creation is God's garden. God's land. God's farm.
God whose farm is all Creation,
take the gratitude we give,
take the finest of our harvest,
crops we grow that all may live.
Take our ploughing, seeding, reaping,
hopes and fears of sun and rain,
all our thinking, planning, waiting,
ripening into fruit and grain.
All our labor, all our watching,
all our calendar of care,
in these crops of your creation,
take, O God; they are our prayer.
Author: John Arlott
Romans reminds us creation hopes to discover that we'll treat oceans, wetlands, savannas, and cities in ways that help them heal. Creation watches us and waits for us to become good caretakers of waterways, trees, animals, insects. Of our own backyards and window boxes!
The new creation began 2000 years ago. That eighth day of the week, was the first day of a new reality. The new creation is not finished. The old creation still waits and hopes for us to be green people.
What's a biblical creation care model? We need to learn about plants, about seeds and soils, climates and seasons. It's also a great idea to act locally!
In the bible's promised land we see:
Crops watered by cascades down mountains into valleys and not by water shipped thousands of miles Gardens warmed by the great light of the sun and not by plugged in grids
Scripture shows us act locally. You know some of the ways:
• farmers markets
• street vendors
• community gardens
• backyard plots
• kitchen windowsill herb gardens
• composts
School and community gardens can help cancel food deserts
Besides, living local adds savor and flavor
Although we lose some long term keeper food
When that happens?!
Share the extras!
Trust the mystery!
In Ezekiel we hear about rivers flowing from the temple and healing everything the waters touch. Because everything those waters reach becomes healthy and well, the name of the city then becomes The Lord Is Here.
Today Jesus invites us to his table of grace. This eucharistic festival of thanksgiving is a taste, a token, a sign, a promise of creation completely redeemed.
Christ is raised and dies no more.
By water and the word
we share his death
his Eastered life
The new creation comes to life and grows
Everywhere we go!
Alleluia.
Amen!
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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