Mark 4:26-36, 2 Corinthians 6-10, 14-17
Have you ever had
this happen...you arrive at home and realize that you don’t really remember the
drive that got you there? So many times
throughout our days there’s a temptation to switch into autopilot because we think
we’ve seen it all - that we already know all there is to know about a certain
situation. This is particularly true for
me when driving the same streets over and over again, which made me curious so
I googled “accidents close to home.”
Turns out that 52% of car accidents occur within a 5 mile radius of
home. So I’m not the only one who tends
to zone out. All to say that a few weeks
ago as I was driving home in a quasi-autopilot state I made the usual right
turn into my neighborhood and gasped.
Right in front of me was a rainbow.
Now this wasn’t my first rainbow nor was it the prettiest I’d ever
seen. Rather what made the biggest
impression on me was how it broke through my state of inattention. It was an unexpected wonder which ended up
completely distracting me on the rest of my drive home. But did you know that there’s more to a
rainbow than meets the eye? At least the
human eye, that is.
Harken back with
me to biology class. When it comes to
color perception the human eye has three types of cones that register
particular colors in a certain spectrum.
So we see a rainbow that has seven colors - red, orange, yellow, green,
blue, indigo, and violet. But that’s not
all there is. If we were blessed with a
literal bird’s-eye view - most birds having four different color cones in their
eyes rather than three - then we’d really be in for a treat. We’d see rainbows that would blow our minds
with a whole range of colors we had no idea even existed. But before we feel too sorry for ourselves
for missing all of that, let us take into consideration the lot of the humble
dog whose eye possess only two types of color cones which means they see
rainbows as a dull swath of muted blues, grays, and yellows. Nothing to get too excited about. Which makes me wonder...what does a rainbow -
or anything else for that matter- really looks like? Who gets to say?
Are human beings the best interpreter and arbitrator of what really
is? Is it wise to trust in our own
abilities to see is all there is in this world?
No. That’s the short and simple answer that our
faith gives over and over again. Relying
solely on our vision or our understanding of things does not provide a full
enough picture of what’s really going on.
That’s made clear in our reading from I Samuel. Israel’s first king, Saul, has turned into a
disaster, so God instructs the prophet Samuel to go and anoint a successor from
the house of Jesse. Now Jesse has a
passel of sons and when Samuel meets them he see seven strapping young men -
all who appear to be viable candidates to fill the role of king. Yet to Samuel’s surprise, God does not choose
any of them. It turns out that the
youngest son, David, the one out doing the grunt work of tending the sheep, the
one who no one gave a thought to, is the one.
And it’s during this anointing process that God declares to Samuel that,
“the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but
the Lord looks on the heart."
Clearly
human-seeing and God-seeing are on two totally different levels. Our capabilities to perceive things are
limited, not just by the number of color cone receptors we have in our eyes,
but by the finite nature of being. Sure,
we are able pick up on the outward and visible appearances of things, but even that
skill set is far from perfect. While
the view God has is all-encompassing, taking in not only what we see, but a
deeper, fuller, and inner reality that we are unable to know or even imagine.
Jesus drives this
point home in our reading from the gospel of Mark when he likens the Kingdom of
God to seed sown on the ground. Days
come and days go. Time passes. And for all the sower can see NOTHING is
happening. Until one day, without any
fanfare, a sprout breaks through the earth and comes into view. All that time even though it was out of view
of the sower something was going on.
Then again, Jesus says, the Kingdom of God is also like a mustard seed
which we all know is a very tiny seed.
It’s especially hard to see when scattered on the ground. Yet that tiny, seemingly insignificant seed
takes root without notice and has the power in it to grow into something
significant and life-giving.
It would seem
that rainbows are not the only thing in this world that we can’t see in all of
its glory. We humans are simply ill
equipped to grasp all there is of God’s life, presence, and power in the
world. That being so, Jesus again and
again tries to reassure us that there is always something more going on than
what we see. It’s kind of like if a
bird was talking to a dog saying, “Trust me there’s more to this rainbow than
what meets your eye. You may not see it,
but I can and it’s really there.” Jesus
proclaims the Good News that the Kingdom of God is really here in this
world. It’s already planted in
creation. And just like seeds in the ground,
God is always at work in our lives and in the world even when it appears that
nothing is happening. That means that
no act of love, no offer of forgiveness, no word of grace is ever wasted. No one is ever a lost cause. And no situation is ever truly hopeless. With our surface view of things it’s easy to
miss but even so there is always more going on than meets the human eye. That
more is the light, the love, the life of the kingdom of God taking root in the
world.
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