Wednesday, January 27, 2021           (today’s lectionary)
Listen to the grass, growing
In our wanderings Monday we found new growth everywhere. Now as January turns over its last leaves, the Texas hill country begins to bloom. Under the live oak trees soft green shoots rise into the sun through dead brown grass. As a small tribe, Miles and Jasper and Margaret and I traveled across the street to our own Hundred Acre Wood. Under Grace 360’s four live oak trees we settled down for a bit of picnic with an apple, strawberry spinach smoothies, three kinds of chips and a tall container full of fresh water.
We too shoot up like young trees with our own new growth. Jesus said we would. And we are.
Some seed fell on rich soil and produced fruit. It came up and grew and yielded thirty, then sixty, then a hundredfold … the mystery of the Kingdom of God has been granted to you.
This growth does not take to privacy, keeping to itself. It needs time to absorb the sun, but it also needs space to spread. A hundred follows on sixty, which follows on thirty, and all of this takes time. In our moments we at last encounter eternity.
Jesus began to teach beside the sea, and a very large crowd gathered around him. Jesus got into a boat on the sea, sat down, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the shore. Then he taught them at length, in parables.
He might have been teaching in the spring. Galilean farmers left their fields to hear the words of the master. He promised to heal them, and feed them, and his words sparkled in the nnonday sun. Hearing Jesus speak they took heart, they leaped for joy, they held their children close and knew how much they all were loved. The priesthood of all believers is what Peter called the church, and our priesthood is led by the “Priest Forever,” begotten like the dew. We are the bride, and Jesus is the bridegroom.
The Lord said to my Lord, “Yours is princely power from the day of your birth. Before the daystar, and like the dew, I have begotten you. You are a priest forever.” Because of you, their sins and their evildoing I will remember no more.
Is this Wednesday? Is this another day to encounter eternity? Just a few miles away on the river, my friend’s wife has a new lung cancer, and they are remembering God’s surprises over and over in their lives. How will things go this time? They have grown into yields of thirty and sixty, and now they call on God’s promise for a hundred. How will the harvest look?
Richard Rohr wrote on Monday of our growth as we move across the street, over the sea, into the clouds through the years of our lives: “When we are able to move beyond the small or “false self”—at the right time and in the right way—it will feel precisely as if we have lost nothing.”
Miles told us that he was afraid and I said, “You don’t look scared, Miles.” And he said, “That’s because it’s in my mind that I’m afraid.”
Precisely.
(Hebrews 10, Psalm 110, Mark 4)
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