In September 1941 Nazi Germany laid siege to the city of Leningrad in the Soviet Union. For more than two years the citizens of the city were almost completely cut off from the world, with only occasional deliveries of food or opportunities to flee the city. Finally, in January 1944, the siege was lifted, as Soviet troops drove the Germans away from Leningrad and out of Russia. During the almost 900-day siege, between 600,000 and 800,000 people died, mostly from starvation or from the bitter winter cold. A group of geneticists who occupied the Vavilov Institute in the city were the caretakers of a remarkable collection of seeds, some 200,000 specimens gathered from all over the world. This unique collection housed the seeds of many species that had gone extinct in the wild, and it contained strains of rice, wheat, and other plants that were also no longer extant in nature. During the siege fourteen Vavilov scientists died of starvation. Though they were surrounded by seeds that they could have used for food, they refused to sacrifice an entire species forever for the sake of their temporal needs. They protected their seeds from consumption by rats and humans alike, because they saw in their seeds the hope for humanity. In today's reading from Ezekiel, the prophet has just told a parable of two eagles and a vine, a tale of judgment on Judah's King Zedekiah and the end of his kingdom. It was a terrible message for the exiled Jews to swallow, but it wasn't the end of the story. In verses 22-24 the prophet lets the people in on a little secret. God had a plan to restore the fortunes of Judah. Though the situation looked bleak, they had no reason to lose hope. God would preserve a remnant of the nation, and from that remnant God would bring forth new growth, which would prosper and multiply. Eventually from the few seeds that were left behind, God would bring forth a new people whose blessings would benefit the whole world. When I see the short-sighted schemes of politicians, and I see that so many Christians support such schemes, I sometimes despair, wondering how so many people could miss the message that God's people are called to be a blessing to the whole world, not just to their own ethnic groups or fellow citizens. Valid debates about terrorism or immigration often devolve into racism and ethnic stereotyping. As is clear from this passage in Ezekiel, however, the people of God are called to be a blessing to people of all nations and all people groups, to share their bounty, not to exploit the weak in underdeveloped countries. If we would shift our focus from dominating the world to blessing the world, peace rather than war could be our legacy.
When my daughter was younger, she used to stare out the window as we were driving along, sometimes for half an hour at a time or longer. When I asked what she was doing, she just said, "I'm thinking about things." Modern life is often filled with so much noise, so many images, and so many distractions, that I wonder how much time we spend just thinking about things today. I've read that Isaac Newton kept a day bed in his Cambridge University office, so that he could take short naps if he wanted to. Sometimes he would awaken from a nap, sit up on the edge of the bed and begin thinking, and he would remain sitting on the edge of the bed for hours at a time, too engrossed in his thoughts to get up. In this day of radio, TV, video, CD, and DVD, I'm afraid that thinking has become an endangered species. The psalmist says of God, "How great are your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are very deep!" People who have accomplished great things in the past were almost invariably deep thinkers as well. Expert strategists like Alexander and Napoleon, despite their other flaws, were undoubtedly deep thinkers about the stratagems of war. Religious reformers like Luther and Calvin, social reformers like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dorothy Day, mathematicians like Gottfried Leibniz and Kurt Gödel, and scientists like Albert Einstein and Francis Crick couldn't have achieved great accomplishments in their respective fields unless they had taken the time to think deeply. But profound thoughts require more than just time; they also require expending great effort. Novel solutions to problems rarely come to people in daydreams, or at least they don't come to people who do nothing else but daydream. Deep thinking is work, and the person who wants to think deeply must become educated about the subject matter, focus on the specific issues of the problem at hand, and have extended periods without interruption during which to think. It is this last commodity that is in such short supply in the modern world, but it is something that we must recover if we want to be thinking Christians who come up with the ideas to face the complex challenges of the modern world. God's thoughts are very deep, the psalmist says. If we are to emulate God in this manner, it is imperative that we be able to shut off the noise around us and concentrate on matters of importance.
Although I'm not a scientist, I hold science in the highest regard. I am a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and I read widely in a variety of scientific disciplines, including evolutionary biology, paleoanthropology, genetics, and subatomic particle physics, as well as the odd book or article on mathematical topics. This is not to say that I'm an expert in any of these areas--I'm not--but I am an interested amateur. In a book I'm currently reading, a critique of the Intelligent Design movement, the author, a scientist, admits that as important as science is, it does not answer all of life's questions. "Science cannot tell us what we ought to do or what should be, only what we can do and what is. Religion thrives because it addresses our deepest emotional yearnings and society's foundation moral needs." Paul puts it like this: "We walk by faith and not by sight." Now sight is a valuable sense, and no one who has it would willingly give it up in order to be blind. It is not that sight is an inferior sense, it is that it has limitations. If we have sight, we should certainly take advantage of it, and that's why attempts to negate the findings of science on the basis of religion are foolish and ultimately doomed to fail. However, sight--or science--is not all there is. People of faith recognize that beauty, value, and meaning are real but not susceptible to scientific probing. Sight tells us many important things; faith tells us the most important things.
Mark was the first of our canonical gospels to be written, and both Matthew's and Luke's gospels use it as a basic framework. Most of Mark's content is repeated in either one or both of these gospels, but the first parable of the kingdom in today's reading is unique to Mark. Jesus tells of a farmer who sows his seed on the ground, then waits expectantly until the earth yields its harvest. When the harvest comes in, he takes his sickle and reaps the grain. Why was this story omitted from Matthew and Luke? There is nothing obviously troubling about the story, but a closer look reveals that if God is too closely identified with the farmer (after all, God is the one who reaps the harvest), the statement that the farmer doesn't know how the seed sprouts and grows would seem to contradict the concept of an omniscient God. This might be the reason that the later gospels omit this parable, or there might be another reason. Nevertheless, the important point of the parable is that the kingdom of God is mysterious, particularly in its growth patterns. Why does a church planted in one area grow while another does not? The pastors of growing churches often like to imagine that they are doing something better than the churches that are struggling, but is that really true? Does a church planted using one set of strategies grow because of those strategies? If so, then why doesn't the same set of strategies work universally? The answer is that it is not the strategies and it is not the pastor. The kingdom grows in sometimes unusual ways and under rather odd circumstances. Sometimes the kingdom merely holds its own, or even shrinks, in a particular geographical area. If the kingdom could be bottled, someone could make a fortune selling churches a "church growth kit" that really works. But the kingdom can't be bottled, and God can't be predicted. Maybe we'd prefer a God who's a little more like we are. Fortunately, God knows better. Rather than focusing too much on how to get our portion of the kingdom to grow like the big megachurches (which may or may not represent true growth of the kingdom of God), it might be better if we looked around to see where God is already growing the kingdom, and join in. There's a caution, however. Growth of the kingdom doesn't necessarily equate to numerical growth. The biggest church in town might not be the strongest representative of the kingdom. In fact, it might just be that the most profound kingdom growth isn't even in a church. It could be in an educational ministry, a feeding program, or a medical ministry. God works in mysterious ways, and the growth of the kingdom really is like the seed that the farmer put on the ground in the parable. It grows, and we don't know exactly what caused the growth. All we can do is rejoice in it.