Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“He began to teach them many things in parables.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, January 21, 2024
by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: God calls us to be sowers.
This stretch of Mark, Chapter 4 is packed full of imagery that tries to capture the essence of the kingdom of God. The most detail—the most nuance—lies in Verses 1 through 20, as Jesus draws a parallel between a sower and God. Between seeds and God’s Word. What does this parallel mean for us, today? What can it tell us about the reign of God that we are seeking, in this time and this place?
In a life of faith our tendency is to define grace as a gift, and to name God as the giver of that gift. Together, we profess that God gives the gift of grace not because we deserve it, but because we need it—because God loves us and wants us to have it. This is a beautiful idea. But at the same time, it’s dangerous. It can cause us to think of ourselves as passive. It can trick us into believing that faith happens to us and not with us. Around us and not through us.
Interpreting grace as a gift and emphasizing God’s role as the active agent can make it tempting to read this passage wondering which seed category we fit into. How deep could our roots go? Are we finding fertile soil every time we need to? Will we be able to take what God gives us and nurture it into something beautiful? Or will we fall away? Dry up? Get carried off? Which fate are we destined for? Where will the chips—or in this case, the seeds—fall?
This morning, the Holy Spirit is reminding us to find balance in our thinking and our reflecting. This morning, God is calling us to celebrate the efficacy we have in a life of faith—in a relationship with the divine. We know that God invites us to participate in the spreading of God’s word and the building of God’s reign. Long story short, we need to think of ourselves as sowers just as much as we think about ourselves as seeds. God’s kingdom is the one place where both can be true! In God’s vision of shalom that ensures flourishing for every single one of us, we receive and we give. We lead and we follow. We exert and we rest; we talk and we listen; we instigate and we react; we get it and we miss it. In God’s vision of shalom where justice is a shared reality for all of creation, there is no way we, as God’s trusted stewards, can be passive.
Reading ourselves as the sower in this story can help us imagine what leaning into the active side of grace might look like. And most of it revolves around humility. If we know what it means to be a seed—if we know that we might not always bear good fruit because we don’t understand what Jesus is trying to tell us every single time—we will be patient and persistent sowers. We will not let the seeds that get lost discourage us. We will not stop spreading what we know can thrive when the conditions are right. If we know what it means to be a seed, we will extend love and show mercy to other people when they don’t understand what Jesus is telling them every single time. When they don’t understand what we’re telling them on behalf of Jesus every single time. When they don’t take what we give them and grow it.
Building the kingdom of God means building empathy. Building the kingdom of God means building resilience. Building the kingdom of God means working our hardest to make an impact where we can, using the very grace of God that we’ve convinced ourselves means we can’t make an impact on at all. Our good news this morning is that we have a lot to do in the kingdom of God. And we have a God who will remind us to keep doing it.