There once was someone who said such amazing things, and did such wonderful things, that people began to follow him. And as they followed him, they heard him talk about the Kingdom of God, and they wondered what that was. So they asked him, what is this kingdom of God you talk about? And in answer he told them stories. The kingdom of God is a seed. A person sows the seed, but they cannot make it grow. No matter how well they treat the seed, no matter how carefully they weed, no matter how diligently they water, they cannot make the seed grow. The seed grows of its own accord, and it its own way, sometimes, it seems, even in spite of the sower’s neglect. And the sower sleeps and rises, night and day, and the seeds grow, as naturally as a child breathes in her sleep. And suddenly that seed, perhaps that seed was a mustard seed, the smallest of the small, suddenly that seed has become a bush, producing its own seeds, scattering them, spreading, spreading, spreading, and the birds come, and the small animals, and they shelter in its shade, and make nests in its branches, and they bring the new seeds to new ground, and the shrub spreads even more. Life. Spreading out, growing so that all are held together, sheltered in the boughs.
After Jesus died, he was with his disciples in a new way, a new life, resurrection life. And then he was no longer with them in that way. And in his absence, they go to Jerusalem, when suddenly, the wind and the fire come upon them, and the rush of power that is Pentecost, and they begin to spread the good news of Jesus, the Christ, of the Kingdom of God. And in the course of time a man named Paul becomes a follower, and he too spreads the good news to communities throughout Asia Minor, Greece, even as far west as Rome. And wherever he is, he writes, constantly, that the communities of believers he has left behind might not forget the Way, might not forget what following the Christ means. And as he writes to them, he finds himself trying to answer their question, “what does living this way mean?” What does it mean to live in the Kingdom of God, to live as the Kingdom of God? And he sits at the table, his quill in hand, at a loss for words. How do you describe the indescribable? Life in Christ, is, is…new life. And with that, the words begin to flow, and he writes to the beloved community in Corinth of their true identity, of their life that finds its deepest source and home “in the Lord.” He writes to them of this life, that, he wants to say, that we do not control, that grows within us like the seed in the earth, sprouting, bearing fruit in ways we cannot predict, revealing our deepest nature to us, transforming us to such an extent, that, sitting in that room, Paul writes, the words coming faster and faster as he sees the vision clearly in his mind’s eye, “If anyone is in Christ – new creation!” The words burst from his heart, an explosion of joy, a moment of recognition of the truth that is always there. New creation!
In the life and death and resurrection of Christ, God has acted to remake the world to such a degree than even the images of reformation, of transformation, of transfiguration, do not go far enough. This divine remaking is nothing less than a new Creation, and I hope you can hear the capital ‘C.’ A doing again of that which God did at the inception of the cosmos, breathing life into that which was, before, merely the waters of chaos. And this new creation, like the first Creation, this new creation is not of our own doing, anymore than the mustard plant arises from our own efforts. This new life in love is ours, given to us not for what we do, or for what we can accomplish, but for being who we are!
Paul weaves in another theme as well. Our deepest life is new creation, Paul says, grounded in the reality that we are most truly at home in Christ, but, and this is where life gets complicated, this does not mean that nothing we do today matters. We are not removed from our everyday world by our deep life in God. Life in the Kingdom of God, life in Christ, finds expression in the here and now, in everything we do “in the body.” In our connections to each other, in our reaching out to the world. Here is New Creation. In the interwoven branches of the mustard plant, or the relationship between the birds, the plant, the seeds, and the life that is sheltered, held together within. Here is the Kingdom of God.
The hard part, for many of us, is to maintain, to persevere, day in and day out, in living in a way that is contrary to what we see around us each day. Because when we fail, as we all do, or when we see the failure of others who believe as we do, we are tempted to abandon the whole proposition. I think to myself, “if following the way of Jesus doesn’t make me perfect, then it must be too hard, or I am too evil, or something else is wrong,” and so I give up. I may never make an active decision to abandon my tradition, but my identity as a Christian devolves into a social obligation, or something that I evaluate solely in terms of my emotional state when I enter and leave the church building, or even something that I avoid because I feel vaguely guilty for not “doing better.”
But what Paul calls new creation and Jesus calls the Kingdom of God is not like that. New creation is neither trying harder with the old models, the myth that places me at the center of the universe, requiring my perfection to force things to be successful, nor is it giving up entirely when sheer effort eventually fails, as it always does at some point, to hold things together. New creation is new life. Life that comes like the seed, like the mustard seed, growing within us at its own pace, unforced, not coerced, impossible to manipulate toward our own desires. Life that fosters relationship, that reaches out toward the other and gives them life, like the bush that shelters. Life that is held together within and sheltered by the divine Life, the Love of God.
I was reading this week, and I ran across a translation of part of the Paul’s letter today. In what we heard, Paul writes that the love of Christ urges us on, and that’s absolutely true, in the sense of encouragement, of caring, of growth. But another way to translate the word synechei (συνεχω) is “hold together, encompass, embrace.” (1) You see all of us live our live within Christ. In Paul’s words, the love of Christ urges us on, while at the same time the love of Christ holds us together. Holds us all together even when we fail, within the ocean of love that is Christ, that is the Spirit, that is our God. And when we are held together, when we know that we are held and loved and cared for, we begin to grow, the seed within us begins to deepen, to grow.
There’s a book called A Wind in the Door, which was written by spiritual writer (and Episcopalian) Madeleine L’Engle and published in 1973, that was one of my favorites growing up. The book is labeled a children’s fantasy novel, although rereading the book has taught me much even as an adult. In the book there is a remarkable young boy named Charles Wallace, who becomes seriously ill, and his sister Meg and her friend Calvin, a singular cherubim named Proginoskes, and several others are taken on a journey within the molecules of Charles Wallace’s body to, in some way, heal his mitochondria (which are an actual piece of our molecular makeup). But in L’Engle’s world, and as best I can tell this is where her incredibly fertile imagination kicks in, each mitochondria is sustained by even tinier beings, called farandolae. These creatures are, L’Engle writes, “as much smaller than you as the galaxy is larger than you,” and through the magic of the novel, the humans get to meet a farandolae, named Sporos. Now, farandolae have a two-part life cycle. They begin life as some kind of mouse-like creature, and eventually “Deepen” becoming something closer to a sentient tree, with senses that reach far beyond the immediate surroundings, beyond their own mitochondrion, even beyond their own human. Their work is to sing together, and their song sustains the mitochondrion, and therefore, ultimately, the human being. The trouble is that many of the farandolae, including the one named Sporos, have been persuaded by the voices of negation, the Echthroi, to refuse to Deepen, to grow up, out of fear of the loss of their physical mobility, their individual independence, out of a desire to remain at the center of their own small universe, rather than taking their place in the great creation. As a result, the mitochondria, without their farandolae, are dying, and with them Charles Wallace.
The shift comes when Sporos and the other farandolae see the self-sacrifice, the act of love by a seemingly unlovable human being, giving of his own life to sustain not only another human but also one of the adult farandolae against those forces of negation. It is his example that leads them to Deepen, to enter into the growth, the life that is theirs. They accept the loss of some of their individual freedoms, and welcome, in return their expanded connection with the universe, their deepened participation in the life of their own world. They join the song of their world, and in so doing, give life to the world, to the child whose body, in the book, is their galaxy, their cosmos.
The song is love, though, in a way, there’s almost nothing romantic about it. The song is life supporting life, the pragmatism that long-lasting love always has as one aspect of its identity. The song is life together, life in community, life in Christ, life in the love that holds us all together, life that grows from the seed so small it’s almost invisible, maybe even as small as the farandolae. We are called to a radically different life one that is possible, long-term, because we are held together, in the love of Christ, because we are joined to each other, because as L’Engle writes, “we all need each other. Every atom in the universe is dependent on every other.” (2) Because we hold each other up over and over again. Because Christ holds each one of us, and all of us together. Our life comes through Christ and in Christ, and yet, at the same time, we are called to live in this world. But in Christ we are new creation! We are people of love, people whose calling is to reach out to the world, in the many and varied ways that grow up in our hearts. To join the song. To allow our relationships to grow up, to grow out, to grow down so that we can sustain love, so that we can persevere in love even when we fail, or our partners fail. To remember than we are held together, not by our own grim determination, but by the love of Christ.
We are not L’Engle’s farandolae. But nonetheless, when we give up, when we refuse to reach out to others, when we hold ourselves locked in fear, when we put ourselves at the center of our private universe, then, like them, we cannot grow, we cannot deepen, and we cannot give life.
The miracle then, is that in Christ God names us as New Creation. God empowers us to let go of our fear, and reach out in love. And when we love, when we participate in the song, we become, together, the mustard bush, the seed grown beyond all expectation, the one that gives life, not just to itself, but to the world as well.
Amen.
1. An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, founded upon the Seventh Edition of Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 775
2. L’Engle, Madeleine. A Wind in the Door. New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc. 1973, p. 187