Sowing Seeds of Hope

What follows is a transcript of our guest speaker's message from our Sunday morning gathering. We share these messages on our blog for those who appreciate the opportunity to read the sermon again—whether for deeper reflection, personal study, or a quieter moment of prayer and introspection. As you read, we invite you to linger with the words, notice what resonates, and remain open to how God may be speaking to you through them.

by Kirby Marks, VP Christian Church Foundation

Well, good morning, church. It is a pleasure to be back with you again today. Some of you might remember that I was here back in May of 2024 and offered the message.

And I know most of you who heard that were so enthralled with it and you took it so much to heart and went out and used that sermon that I thought, well, maybe I better bring a different message for you today. Also back then, I was known as Kirby Gould. Since then, I have gotten married.

And I am now a Missouri resident. Having left the state of Kansas, I now live in Pleasant Hill, Missouri with my new husband. But still doing the work of the Christian Church Foundation.

It was many years ago with my good friend Dale Stewart, who we began the conversations of First Christian Church Maryville entrusting their permanent funds to our foundation for investment purposes. And we appreciate that long-term relationship that we have established over the years and the many conversations we've had to try to grow those funds and maybe increase the generosity of those who might want to contribute. So it is a pleasure to be back with you as you're in sort of this transitional time.

And always enjoy the time to share a good word from the scriptures. And the scripture that I've chosen for today is from the two parables, very well-known parables, the parable of the growing seed and the parable of the mustard seed, Mark 4, 26 through 32. He also said, the kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise night and day.

And the seed would sprout and grow. But he does not know how. The earth produces of itself first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.

But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle because the harvest has come. He also said, with what can we compare the kingdom of God or what parable will we use it? It is like a mustard seed, which sown upon the ground is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. Yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shape.

So how many of you grew up on a farm? Okay, or how many grew up in maybe a rural area? Okay, probably quite a few of us. Well, I grew up in the town of McPherson, Kansas, and it was a farming community in central Kansas, but I really didn't know that much about farming life. So I guess you could call me a city girl.

So I discovered that in the late 1800s, immigrants from Germany and Russia settled Kansas and brought with them turkey red wheat. They smuggled the seeds out of Russia in the hems of women's skirts. Now, this particular kind of wheat was especially well-suited for the harsh environment of the plains and the prairies.

History says that the first field was planted in Gossel near Amerion, Kansas in 1874. The hardy seed and the hardworking Europeans brought prosperity to the state of Kansas. So in 1974, Kansans hosted a centennial celebration, commemorating the first turkey red wheat planting.

Wheat seed was sold in glass bottles, claiming it was the original wheat from the Ukraine. And actually, I'm sure it was just a clever way to raise money for the new Wheat Museum, but it did help people understand the importance of the seed and the impact that it made on Kansas and the generations who benefited from its many products. There was one certain family that settled in McPherson County, and they were members of First Christian Church, the church where I grew up.

They were devoted members, and they loved their church. In the 1940s, when it was time to move away from the farm, they decided to donate the farm, along with their home, all the land, and a few oil wells to the church. That gift, represented by the labor, the sweat, and the caring of the land so many years ago, was used to provide scholarships to young people pursuing a college education, or those who desired to become a minister.

I was one of the recipients of that scholarship fund to attend Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma. The earth is so elemental to our very existence that the Bible is filled with stories as to how land and its products provide for all of our needs. In both the Old and the New Testament, these images help us connect our lives to the earth.

Many of the parables Jesus taught describe the growing of the kingdom with metaphors of seeds and harvest and fruit. These parables help us understand the growth in the spirit, in our faith, and in our walk with Christ takes care, and tending, and nurture. Our lives will be like a plentiful harvest, full and ready to provide sustenance and nourishment for those we are called to serve.

The parable of the mustard seed is one of my favorite scriptures, as it describes something so small that grows to be so big that it can be a place for birds to rest. But when the Israelites heard Jesus use the term the kingdom of God, they thought they knew what he was talking about. They were under the occupation of the ruthless Roman Empire, and they were told stories about the coming of the kingdom of God, the time when God of Israel would finally reign as king over his people and the land.

If the Jews were to compare the kingdom to any plant, they would probably have chosen the cedar. As we hear these words in Ezekiel 17, I will plant a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar on the mountain height of Israel. I will plant it in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit and become a noble cedar.

Under it, every kind of bird will live. In the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. So Jesus was probably playing on the people's idea of a cedar when he says the mustard seed becomes a tree, which is actually more like a bush, which can grow up to 10 to 20 feet high, while a cedar towers to be 130 feet high.

For Jesus to say that the kingdom of God is more like a mustard bush than a tall cedar in Lebanon would have shocked his audience, especially farmers and gardeners. The mustard tree was potentially a noxious weed which could take over gardens and crops. At the time, there were even laws prohibiting planting mustard trees because of its threat to other plants.

It would be like Jesus coming today and saying, the kingdom of heaven is like a dandelion. Even though it is a small seed, it spreads an unstoppable plague across cities. The kingdom of God is here, but it is more like a weed and a pest than a towering tree.

Now to make things even more complicated, gardeners and farmers did not want those pesky birds indulging in their gardens. Not only is the kingdom of God like a weed, but it also attracts unwanted birds which will further destroy your fields and economic livelihoods. But you know, perhaps Jesus did want us to be more like a spreading weed than a towering uniform tree.

Perhaps his message was to complicate the lives of people so that they would take notice of his ministry. Now in the parable of the growing seed, Jesus tells of a man who scatters seed on the ground and then allows nature to take its course. He cannot even fully understand how it happens and the parable ends with the harvest at just the right time.

It is the first part of this parable that contains the most important lesson to be learned. We tend to focus on the fact that the farmer waited for the harvest. His action was passive, but first he had to do something active.

He had to scatter. Using the gift of seed that was granted to him, God then provides the growth. God has given us the miracle of multiplying seed for our needs.

God can accomplish God's purposes even when we are absent or unaware of what God is doing. The goal is the ripened grain and at the proper time, God will bring forth its fruit. Now using yet another image of a field, Paul speaks to the people in Corinthians as recorded in the third chapter of the first book to address diversity within leadership.

There were many differing opinions about whose teaching was correct or which spokesman was going to provide the best leadership. All the leaders represented gifts, talents, and skills that could be used to build the church, just like we heard in the offertory meditation. You know, time, talent, and treasure, wealth, wisdom, and work, they all are gifted to us so that we can build the church.

They all had the same goal, to make disciples, but they wanted to go about it in different ways. So here it is, the passage as interpreted in the message Bible. Who do you think Paul is anyway, or Apollos for that matter? Servants were both of us, servants who waited on you as you gradually learned to entrust your lives to our mutual master.

We each carried out our servant assignment. I planted the seed, Apollos watered the plants, but God made you grow. Paul planted the seed by initially bringing the gospel to the believers in Corinth.

Apollos, in turn, a resident of Corinth, watered the seed that Paul had brought. One cannot say that either Paul or Apollos was more important to the church in Corinth. Without a sower, there had been nothing to water.

Without someone to tend to the growing seed, it may as well have never been planted at all. The good they received through Paul and Apollos should have contributed to their loyalty to God, not to their appointed servants. Human leaders are only instruments God uses to grow God's church.

These parables and scriptures help describe the ways that the kingdom of God will grow. If we do our part in planting, God will provide the harvest. They help us understand that growth in the spirit, in our faith, in our walk with Christ takes care and tending and nurture.

You know, so much of what we do is dependent on the faith that there will be a positive result on the other side of our actions. Having faith in the future is like knowing the gas station is 20 miles away and you only have one gallon in your tank. Faith is planning a party with the hope that all the guests will enjoy it.

Faith is found in the story of the Jewish Hanukkah miracle, where they only had enough olive oil to keep the menorah's candles burning for a single day, but the flames continued to flicker for eight nights. Faith is standing strong on the past while peering into the future, hoping that good things are coming our way. Faith is not necessarily defined by what we believe, but by what we hope for in the future.

There are times when we do things, but we never quite know what the results or outcomes might be. You know, we send a donation to a charitable organization. We hope they put it to good use.

We might say hello to a stranger on the street. Well, we hope it helped them have a good day. We send get well cards to our friends.

We hope it raised their spirits out of their doldrums. The harvest of the fields, the produce of the trees, the yield of the ground, the gathering of the crops give life and sustenance. To be witness to such bounty, our question should not be how big are my barns? How many acres do I tend? How much land do I own? But rather, how bountiful was the harvest? How long is the vine on the tree? And how nutritious is the fruit that it produces? We know that kingdom building is hard.

It takes work. And sometimes we may never see the fruits of our labors, but we can sow seeds of hope now and allow God to provide the nourishment for the future. As we look to the future of this church and to the future of all communities of faith, we realize that the plans we are making are not necessarily for us, but for the generations to come.

I wanna close with this prose. It was written by Ernest Campbell, former minister of the Riverside Church in New York City, entitled, Understanding Maturity. And I found that I shared this with you back in 2024, and I felt like it was an appropriate time to share it again.

To be young is to study in schools we did not build. To be mature is to build schools in which we will not study. To be young is to swim in pools we did not dig.

To be mature is to dig pools in which we will not swim. To be young is to dance to music we did not write. To be mature is to write music to which we will not dance.

To be young is to worship in churches we did not build. To be mature is to build churches in which we may not worship. There's a plaque out at our church camp up in the greater Kansas City region at Tall Oaks Camp and Conference Center, written by Elton Trueblood, who writes, a man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.

So may we be ever faithful that our seed planting will bring forth a harvest of hope guided by God's grace and love as we seek to build the kingdom of God here on earth. Amen.