4/23/50

Scripture: Mark 4: 21-33 (especially 26-29)

The calendar bristles with special emphases -- and it is a good thing, except that there are not enough days and weeks to go around. This week, for instance, is “Japan International Christian University Week” among many churches of many denominations. During the week, no small number, especially of the very young element, will be interested in May Day. And on May 4th, church women will note May Fellowship Day with their united gathering.

Today is noted among many churches as Rural Life Sunday. In a civilization that has taken an increasing proportion of the people from agriculture to industry and other pursuits, it is desirable to underline the recognition that agriculture is still basic to our existence. Whether one lives on a farm, or in a village, town or city; whether one plows corn, makes paper, or teaches history; each one still needs to eat, to be clothed, and to have at hand many of the products of the nation’s natural resources. And so we all have a vital interest in the life of those on farms, in villages and in small towns, where the stuff of physical life is produced for all.

Good agricultural methods, conservation and building up of resources, the education, philosophy and religious life of farmers -- these things are as important to everyone as is the general attitude and ability to buy, of all consumers, and the effective skills of those who handle and process raw materials into finished goods.

This year, the Wisconsin Congregational Conference will be held at Mineral Point, a community of less than 3000 population, in a church whose minister is an active member of the Conference commission on rural life.

It is not my purpose just now to substitute a study in rural sociology for a Sunday sermon. But some of the best sermons for Christian living have grown out of the realm of growth in nature. There are important lessons to be learned by all from the “faith of the farmer.” Jesus pointed out many such lessons. Many of his most searching lessons came from field, flock or vineyard; from planting to harvest; from weeds to heavy fruitage.

It was the Master’s custom to do much of his teaching in parables. A parable is a story with a point. There is such a parable preserved for us in the gospel of Mark alone. Mark is believed by competent scholars to have been the first of the gospels to be written, and the other gospels refer to much that is found in Mark. Luke refers to the parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep, the foolish rich man, the good Samaritan, the prodigal son. Matthew makes room for the Sermon on the Mount. Each also leaves out some of what he found in Mark’s writings. They usually kept all the words of Jesus which Mark recorded, for the words of Jesus were especially precious. But this little parable of the seed that grew of itself is found neither in Matthew nor in Luke. It appears only in Mark.

Various explanations are offered for this omission by Matthew and Luke. (1) Perhaps they thought that it looks too much like that other story of the seed that fell on different kinds of soil. (2) Or possibly they thought that there was not much encouragement to activity among early converts to say that nothing had to be done about the Kingdom of God except to plant the seed and let it grow. (3) It may be that the little parable just looked too simple to them. (4) Or perhaps it was mere coincidence or “happenstance” that both Matthew and Luke left it out. Anyway, they did. And it is one of the few things we should lose if we lost the whole Gospel of Mark. For Matthew and Luke, one or both, have just about everything else that he had.

Perhaps it looked too simple. For simple it certainly is -- just as simple as the way we plant a garden -- at least before we get around to the digging! You know how it is. All you have to do is get a few seeds and bulbs and stick them in the ground. And after a while you will have the most luscious vegetables for the table and the loveliest flowers for the mantle. -- At least you feel that way at the time you are glancing over the seed catalogue.

Well, the farmer sows his seed. Then he sleeps at night and rises by day and lets it grow. He cannot make it grow. He only knows that it does grow. No much use worrying about it. You can’t hurry it. Just watch it, cultivate it, and harvest it. “The Kingdom of God,” says Jesus, “is like that.” If it was worth while for Jesus to say so simple a thing, it is probably worth while for us to see what is involved in it.

1) First: Man builds everywhere on what he cannot understand, or only partially understands. An element of the unexplained is unavoidable. We explain one thing by referring to another, like looking up a big word in a dictionary only to have it defined by another word we have to look up, and then find that word defined by the first! The events happening in Germany go back to what happened during and before World War II. And those events go back to the Versailles Treaty; and that goes back to World War I. World War I had its origins partly in the policy of the Prussian state under Bismark -- and so on.

Now, we can follow this kind of reasoning back until we get to where we do not know what came before. We may have a chain the links of which are pretty good, but where the first link hangs on what we do not know. And we’re in the predicament expressed in the familiar old question, which came first -- the egg or the hen?

As it is in history, so it is in nature. We learn that molecules are made up of atoms; and atoms of electrons; and then we learn what electrons do, and we find out something about the tremendous energy latent in their structure. But scientific inquiry is always asking, “How do these things happen? How does one thing come out of another, or get changed into it?” And that thing, whatever it is, has to be explained by something else. And that something else by still another thing. So it goes.

In the ultimate sense, existence is not the kind of riddle for which there is a question and an answer to be found if you guess long enough. It is simply a fact. Inside of existence many things can be explained. But existence itself can not be. It has to be accepted, as one accepts an axiom. It is there. It is what we start reasoning and living with.

2) Second: This little parable of seed that grows of itself indicates the relationship between ultimate questions and practical needs. If the farmer spends all of his time figuring out how seed grows in the ground, he won’t get around to planting much of it. Farmers and gardeners can “gang up” on such a problem by taking care of the living of somebody who is interested in research to find out a little more of the “how” and who will report back his findings. But most farmers have to get out and plow and plant. Starting with a fact, a seed that experience says will germinate, and the knowledge that the earth brings forth things of itself, though he does not know how, he gives his time to plowing, sowing, cultivating, encouraging by fertilization, watering and other care, and finally (he hopes) to reaping.

Farmers have been known to have other worries too. It actually appears possible to raise more wheat than the world can buy -- even though multitudes are hungry. Back in the 20s some farmers may have wished that seed would not grow as well as it did -- especially the seed planted in other parts of the world. In 1927, our country had 12.5 million bushels of wheat we could neither use nor sell. So we kept it. Six years later, we had something like 350 million bushels, and it was worth about 30 cents a bushel.

From 1890 on, Russia had quadrupled her wheat crop, Canada had quadrupled hers, Australia tripled hers, and Argentina multiplied hers by 5. Farmers of the late 20s could actually look over splendid fields of ripening wheat and know that they were ruined. Some Canadian farmers one year advocated that no crops be grown the following spring. Australian and Argentine ranchers looked at their sheep and cattle and knew that the prices they could fetch would not pay for their raising. And vital questions cried for an answer --- The world has to be fed. Why couldn’t the men who feeds it make a living? It was a practical matter. Somebody had to be able to understand it.

Well, restrictions in planting and marketing, war’s scarcities, and demands and destruction -- all these have modified the problem. But some of the practical aspects must still be answered in the fields of production, of religious brotherhood and of politics.

We now have wheat, lots of it. India has millions of people on starvation diet, needing our surplus wheat to stay alive. Some of us think we should give India a lot of wheat. Others think not -- Congressmen among them. Meanwhile Russia says to India, “We can let you have some wheat.” Now, whose friendship will line up where?

There is beauty and nobility in abstract thought. Those who delight in mathematics for its order, logic and exactness, derive considerable satisfaction from its very precision. Pure mathematics may be quite remote from human passions. In its more advanced forms it is lofty, indeed. Few know how to climb that high, or would have no fun if they did! Most of us want to know where it is applied. Our big question is whether there is any arrangement by which all of us -- not just a few, but all of us -- can breather a little freer and with a little more assurance in the world where we do live.

Some questions are beyond us. But it does not follow that because we cannot understand everything we cannot understand anything. We must be able to understand some matters without which we cannot get along in this world. One of these things is the question of man on the land. A good deal of the combined intelligence of the world had better be set on that. If that can be straightened out, we can rest the explorations of the high realms of pure science with those who like to explore them. The things we really need to know are usually close to the grass.

3) Third: Jesus was impressed with the power of nature. And he drew from this a lesson for human comfort and the peace of the soul. “The ground,” he says, “brings forth fruit of itself.” [Mark 4: 28]. There is only so much that a man can do. There was only so much that he could do himself. He could sow the seed -- and he did. He could not make it grow. God and nature would have to do that.

Not everyone thought so. “Since the day of John the Baptist,” Jesus observed, “the Kingdom of God suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” [Matthew 11: 12]. He did not believe it could be so hard. It had to grow. What you could do, and must do, is to sow the seed. Having done that, you might as well have an easier mind about it; get some sleep at night, rise and work about your business in the day. Lying awake at night, or fretting yourself into a stew by day will not make it grow faster or better. This is not an encouragement to laziness or carelessness. You must sow seed, cultivate and tend the growing things, be ready for the harvest, great or small. In the meantime you must have a sublime confidence in the power of nature to bring forth what you believe to be inherent in the good seed.

The Kingdom of Heaven which Jesus wanted was not a place in some other ethereal space, but a kingdom of God here in His good earth. That kingdom, not even Jesus could create with some magic sweep. But in various ways he told his followers over and over, it has to grow. The seed of it is in certain attitudes, feelings, ideas sown in the hearts of people. If he could plant those ideas, and others would keep sowing after him, God’s nature would take care of the growth.

It’s the only sure way to get a better world. We need organization. But the fundamental idea is to get the right idea into the soil of the human heart. Woodrow Wilson once remarked, “It is not men that interest or disturb me primarily. It is ideas. Men die. Ideas live.” In the last analysis, it is ideas that have power.

The chief conflict in the world today is a conflict of ideas over political, economic and social control. In finance, it is the conflict between one idea of money and another. Get the ideas right, and then the growth will be right. Plant the wrong ideas, and the wrong thing is sure to grow.

“You cannot force the Kingdom of God,” said Jesus. If he was right, and I believe he was, then the notion that a forced, classless, godless, materialistic society can and should be quickly achieved will ultimately fail in destruction.

But you can sow the seeds of those ideas from which a good world naturally grows. The prophets of old preached the same theme: “You plowed wickedness,” said Hosea, “and are not your stomachs full of nauseous fruit?” “Ye have sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind,” said he. [Hosea 8:7]. “Sow to yourselves righteousness,” he advised, “and reap according to kindness. Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord till he come and rain righteousness upon you.” [Hosea 10: 12].

And so I believe it is.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 23, 1950.