Imagine the scene: there’s a lady at a bus stop with around 20 children on a Sunday afternoon, looking like ‘the old woman who lived in a shoe’! She’s taking scruffy children from the council estate in the town where she lives to a Sunday school held in a hut. The scene will stay with me, I was one of those children. I loved going there each week: the people were kind, we got biscuits, we sang songs and listened to Bible stories - presented in a fun way, often using fuzzy felt cut-outs. After a couple of years I grew out of it and moved on in my life, but those kind people giving their time so generously had sown seed in me which God would have the opportunity to grow much later on. They were seeds of connection. Kindness and joy were connected with Jesus, and the Bible was connected with God. These truths stayed with me.
Our sermons over the last few weeks have been about truth, we seem to have a theme going! When I was ready many years later I drew near to God, and God drew near to me, helping that seed to grow so that I now have the confidence and faith Paul spoke of in his letter to the church in Corinth.
Jesus spoke in parables, which sow seed in the form of stories. He likened the kingdom of God to seed which miraculously grows once we’ve sown it, and to the tiniest of seeds which grows into a huge shrub. A farmer friend said that his act of faith each year was when he had ploughed the fields and sown the seed. There’s always joy when new shoots come through and start to grow, and delight when it grows to fruition and we can taste the results.
It troubles me though that fewer good seeds of connection have been sown over the generations, so that we may find it difficult to mention our faith at all. Some have sown false seed, connecting faith with conflict, spreading hatred rather than love, and disconnecting God’s name from the wonder of creation.
As Pat told us last week: ‘In today’s world we face testing the truth among so many deceits.’
I don’t know about you, but my vision for the UK and for the world is one in which all people will serve God and one another faithfully and confidently, one in which honesty, kindness, goodness, patience, self control, generosity, love, peace and joy are in evidence. God delights in people who have grown this healthy fruit of the spirit. So do we.
I wonder, do we have the confidence and faith to sow the good seeds of connection, to tell the truth about Jesus when the opportunity arises to those who have only heard the lies? A few words of truth are enough, God can grow the tiniest of seed.
‘If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation,’ said Paul, ‘everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!’ Some seed may land on stony ground, but unless the good seed has been sown, how will God grow it at all?
In the 6th century BC God told the prophet Ezekiel that he would take a tender twig from a cedar tree and plant it so that it would produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble tree. He accomplished this in the form of Jesus. 2000 years later, some kind people took seed from this tree and sowed it in me so that I came to believe, follow his teaching and become confident in faith. I am a new creation. God is awesome!
Each one of us has our own story to tell, and love of God to share. Let us pray that we will each have the confidence to tell our stories, to sow the good seed and make connections of truth for other people, when the time is right.
Amen.
Julie Rubidge, Lay Minister