He also said, "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain - first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come." Again he said, "What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade." With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.
(Mark 4:26-34)
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I was talking with the children about champions, and how you become a champion. Winning a Stanley Cup helps, I guess. Actually, when you think about sports, winning game in and game out is how you measure success isn’t it. It’s all about the numbers. Whoever scores more goals or more points is the winner. It makes it all pretty simple. It’s all neat and tidy and very, very clear-cut.
We want it to be that way in the church. We want a worldly and therefore obvious yardstick for measuring the success (and, by extension, the failure) of the church. We want it to be as clear-cut as it is in the world of sports. You win or you lose. You’re a success or you’re a failure. It sounds pretty easy - like something we should be able to do. And yet, if we look at it that way we’re going to get pretty depressed pretty quickly. How do our "numbers" look? Attendance? Finances? Hmmm. And it’s not just us. Pretty much every church has to deal with troubles in attendance or finances. And there’s no magic solution either. If I could give one piece of advice as you look ahead at the next few months - you’re not going to call a new minister and magically solve those problems. It’s an issue with society, and it affects almost all churches. So, what do we do? Do we declare it hopeless, lock the doors, close the church and go about our daily lives? I’d say not. I think we need to figure out a new yardstick for measuring success. After all, this isn’t a hockey game, and there’s no Stanley Cup that’s going to be awarded. Visible signs of success aren’t the real measure of success for a church or a community of faith. In fact, we often wonder what the so-called "mega-churches" are doing right - as if they’re doing something right just because they’re mega-churches, and we seem to easily forget that the measure of success in the church isn’t the number of people in the pews or the amount of dollars in the plate. In fact, Jesus said that the wide gate - the one that most people choose - is not the one that leads to life. That in itself should caution us about looking at numbers as the measure of success. Even in today’s passage, Jesus speaks of the mystery involved in growth: "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how." We don’t really know how success comes about and it isn’t always obvious when it does. A lot of the growth of a plant takes place out of sight, under ground, as roots begin to spread out. We don’t see it, but buried under the soil are the signs of life.
God works that way. God doesn’t measure things - including people - in worldly terms. There are all sorts of examples of that. Moses said that he couldn’t speak well and couldn’t do God’s work, but God chose him. David was the youngest and smallest of Jesse’s sons, but God chose him. Jeremiah was only a child, but God chose him. Mary was a young, frightened girl, but God chose her. Paul imprisoned, persecuted and murdered Christians, but God chose him. Peter denied Jesus and ran away when the going got tough, but God chose him. God judges people by a different standard than we do, and I suspect that it’s likely that God judges the church by a different standard than we do. And, if we could see things from God’s perspective, I wonder what a difference it would make to the life of the church? Rather than lamenting everything we’ve lost and everything we no longer have and continually looking to the past, I wonder if seeing things from God’s perspective might not allow us to focus on the possibilities and the potential and to look boldly into the future - to reflect not on what was but on what might be; to focus not on what we feel we can’t do but on the things we can do - on the needs around us that we can meet, on the difference we can make in people’s lives. What if we just poured ourselves into ministry and didn’t worry about whether we survived - because, after all, whoever tries to save their life will lose it, Jesus said, but whoever loses their life for his sake will find real life. So perhaps we need to stop fixating on survival - which is going to kill us - and start to think about living - which just might save us.
I was thinking about this over the last week. Last Wednesday, the United Church of Canada turned 90 years old. We’re pretty young by the standard of many denominations, but we claim a heritage going back to Jesus and the apostles. And we’re struggling. We’re closing a church a week according to the statistics, and most of the churches we do have are declining and aging. We know that. And it would be easy for us to give up in despair - except that I just can’t let go of the thought that just maybe God has a purpose for us - for the United Church of Canada, for Central United Church, for all of us as people of the United Church. God has a purpose for us. It may not be obvious or even visible right now. Plants grow in ways we can’t see. The roots grow underground before we’re aware of any life above ground, and as we all know you can try to get rid of the dandelions, but the chances are they’re going to come back. Life is pretty resilient. Some things go extinct, but life hangs on in surprising places - deep underground, inside volcanoes, at the very bottom of the ocean. If life exists in the strangest of places, then life surely exists in the church, where the risen and living Jesus greets us and guides us. And, surely, that’s the yardstick we use to gauge the success of the church.
Is Jesus among us? Do we believe he’s here? Do we feel his presence? Do we sense his guidance? Do we listen to his words? Do we follow his example? Do we do his ministry? Do we embrace love and grace and set aside judgment and law? Those are signs of life; those are measures of success. Do we touch the lives of those around us? Do we have an impact on the community around us? Do we do things that would be missed if we weren’t here anymore? Those are signs of life; those are measures of success.
Basically, do we see the signs of the Holy Spirit among us? That’s the real measure of success. Are we open to the Holy Spirit or have we quenched the Holy Spirit? By that standard, I would say we’re alive and well, even if by worldly standards we’re sometimes struggling. But God doesn’t use worldly standards. God looks at those intangibles I just mentioned and God sees signs of life in them. Eventually, as Jesus said, the seed will sprout and grow, even though we may be able to neither see it nor understand it.
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