Seeds

Lectionary Readings: Lamentations 1:1-6; Lam. 3:19-26;  2 Timothy 1:1-14;  Luke 17:5-10

How great is your faithfulness, O God! Amen.
Lord, increase our faith!
We don't know what we're doing. We need more people. We can't start yet - we're not ready. We need more information. We need more training, more experience, more money, more time...  Enough already!

That's what Jesus tells his disciples – you have enough already.
They say, "Give us more faith" – he says, "You've got all the faith you need – if you have this much, you've got more than enough" How much? The size of a mustard seed.

They're not very big, are they? Seeds themselves are not much to look at – small, nondescript, kind of dead-looking. You can't tell what a seed is going to grow into until you've had some experience. So unless you've seen that kind of seed before, you can't tell by looking at the outside what kind of plant it will become – and you can't tell by cutting it in half to look at the inside, either.

You have to put it in the ground and see what grows.

A lot of things are like seeds.

A baby is like a seed – I got to hold my little cousin Wyatt last week when he was only a few hours old. There's no way to know who he's going to grow up to be – you can't tell by looking; we'll have to wait till he starts growing to even begin to guess.

Faith is like a seed, too – in today's epistle, faith gets passed down in Timothy's family almost like DNA, from his grandmother to his mother to him. Faith gets planted in us at baptism and confirmation and all the sacraments – it's ready to germinate and grow when the conditions are right. Like it says in Timothy, "rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of… hands."

The words of scripture are like seed – sometimes called logos spermatikos – the implanted word. Every time somebody stands up here to read the Word of the Lord, you're peppered with little seeds. When and how they take root depends on lots of factors. If nothing is growing at all, you may need to condition your soil. The seed itself is good; when you create an environment conducive for it to take root, it will.

Experiences are seeds – even hard ones like pain and death. When the church was under so much persecution in the 300s and people were being killed left and right, Augustine wrote that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church – because that's what grew out of the deaths. The gospel also says that when a seed dies and falls to the ground, it grows up to produce 30, 60, a hundred fold return. What looks like the end of something is many times more of a beginning.So I think grief is closely connected to the growth of new and unexpected things. Grief sometimes involves digging up things that haven't been touched in a long while, pulling things out and turning the ground over and over and over, until it looks chewed up and bare – with bits of what used to be growing there poking out all over. This is what it sounds like in Lamentations – things look nothing like they used to

"How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become!"

I don't think grief itself is the seed; I think memories and experiences are. Relationships grow like flowers or trees, and when a person in your life dies, the blooms drop off, and you're left with stickers that poke you when you touch them or velcro things that grab onto you when you walk by, or delicate fluffy things that float away when you breathe on them. Your memories and experiences are like seeds. They're not what they were – but also, you have no idea what they might become.

A lot of things are like seeds.
On the outside, a seed looks dead. And basically, it is until it's put in the ground, but when conditions are right - the ground begins to warm, it receives water, suddenly the skin splits open, a root snakes out and a stem pushes up, unfolding a couple of green leaves

– and it turns out the inside of the seed is hundreds, thousands, millions of times bigger than the outside.

Even after all these centuries, it's still a process we can only describe, not really explain. You probably don't know what kinds of seeds you're carrying around – you can't tell by looking at them. And anyway, as seeds, they probably don't look very impressive, but what's inside is way more than you can guess. You need to put them in the ground. Ecclesiastes (11:6) says,Who plants a seed trusts God – maybe not even very much, but it doesn't take much. Do you still have the seed in your hand? Look at it. That's more than enough faith for God to work in you. Don't ask for more of this, more of that – the faith you have is enough; put something in the ground. You don't have to know what will grow from it, just start planting.

"in the morning sow your seed and at evening do not let your hands be idle; for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good."

I love the story of Gideon; God asks him to save Israel and he says 'Oh I can't, my tribe is the smallest, and my family is the most insignificant of the clan, and I'm the youngest… blah blah blah… I can't do it!' and God says to him, "Go in the strength you have… Am I not sending you?"(Judges 6:14-16) In other words – do you think I'm asking you to do this by yourself? I'm right here.

The writer of Lamentations says to God,

"You are my portion…therefore I hope in you. You are good to those who wait with patience, to every soul that seeks you."

 God is with us, he is more than enough for all we need; he is our portion. He feeds us with his own life. The Eucharist is also like a seed; when you come to receive it today, think of it this way: you are planting the life of Christ in yourself; now wait patiently for it to grow.

And while you're waiting, go in the strength you have, with the faith you have – it's already enough, and plant your own seeds in the world around you.

Amen.