Growth

 

Haiku of the kingdom

Agricultural

metaphors abound: seeds, growth

and much fruitfulness.

Here is the kingdom;

seed is scattered on the ground,

grows in ways unseen.

How does the seed grow?

Who can understand? Who cares,

we’ll still harvest it!

Again, the kingdom

is like a mustard seed; small,

but great potential!

A home for the birds;

a great outcome for this seed,

small and unacclaimed.

Parables sneak up,

catching hearers by surprise;

life-giving wisdom.

Great story-telling

Jesus! Drawing us in, and

disturbing our thoughts!

© Ken Rookes 2021

The Greeks

Haiku of fulfilment

They liked debating,

those Greeks, coming with questions

to put to Jesus.

He had a Greek name,

Philip; perhaps that is why

the Greeks approached him.

Things are climaxing;

the hour is coming. Glory

revealed in dying.

The grain falls to earth

to find fulfilment through death.

and is made fruitful.

This is the pattern

for living that is true; death

overcome by life.

My soul is troubled.

It’s not hard to imagine,

what might lie ahead

This is the reason

I have come, not to retreat,

but to embrace death.

The world has been judged;

rulers who wield power, fear,

will be driven out.

When I am lifted

love’s power will be revealed;

they will come to me.

© Ken Rookes 2021

For this reason

Haiku for those who seek

Some Greeks found Philip,

knew he was a follower,

asked to see Jesus.

Jesus met with them,

laid it out straight and simple;
The seed has to die.

To be made fruitful

the grain of wheat is buried

and dies to itself.

The same for us all;

if you want to save your life,

you must give it up.

Become my servant.

You must follow after me

to the hard places

My soul is troubled,

not looking forward to it:

the coming hour.

Should I entreat God

to spare the pain and dying?

No, it’s why I came.

The voice from heaven:

God’s name has been glorified

and will be again.

As he is lifted

Jesus changes ev’rything,

restores creation.

© Ken Rookes 2018

A sower went out.

Haiku for gardeners

He goes to the lake,

finds a boat beached on the shore.

The crowd waits, eager.

What word will they hear;

what deep message awaits them?

He tells them stories.

Calls them parables;

he wants to get them thinking,

pondering kingdom.

A sower went out

to plant; eager and with hope.

He cast seed widely.

What might it produce?

That, friends, is the mystery;

depends where it lands.

The path and its birds,

shallow soil on rocky ground,

or the thorns that choke.

There is good soil, too.

The disciples are puzzled;

What does it all mean?

The seed is good news,

the gospel of the kingdom.

Not all receive it.

Some seed finds good soil;

hearts that are open to love.

These will bear much fruit.

© Ken Rookes 2017

I Find You, Lord, In All Things And In All

I find you, Lord, in all Things and in all

my fellow creatures, pulsing with your life;

as a tiny seed you sleep in what is small
and in the vast you vastly yield yourself.

The wondrous game that power plays with Things
is to move in such submission through the world:
groping in roots and growing thick in trunks
and in treetops like a rising from the dead.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
trans. Stephen Mitchell

A wonderful take on the parables

A wonderful take on the parable. look up the full sermon..

"What’s the difference between a fable and a parable?

I think answering this question is crucial if we are to preach this passage. You see, a fable is primarily didactic, a clever story meant to offer some insight into and instruction about life – think Aesop’s Fables for a moment. A parable, on the other hand, is intended to be disruptive, to interrupt what you thought you knew and not just teach you something but actually to confront you with a surprising and often unwanted truth.

Fables are handy when you want to give kids some good advice or teach them some moral or practical lesson. Who doesn’t remember the lesson of “The Tortoise and the Hare” (slow and steady effort pays off) or “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” (honesty is the best policy)?

Parables, on the other hand, are useful when the truth you want to share is difficult – whether difficult to hear, comprehend, or believe. I don’t know if Emily Dickinson had parables in mind when she wrote her poem on telling the truth “slant” but she just might have:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

Jesus describes the coming Kingdom of God in parables because he knows the reality it introduces is unexpected and that his hearers can’t really take it in all at once. Parables, as Eugene Peterson has said, are in this sense like narrative time bombs.

...

So here’s the thing: I don’t know how these parables and this sermon will sound to the most established of our congregation. But I do know how it will sound to everyone – established or not, longtime member or first time visitor – who is struggling, who does not feel accepted, who wonders about the future, or who has experienced significant loss or rejection. Because in these parables Jesus reminds us that the Kingdom of God comes of its own…and comes for us. The Kingdom Jesus proclaims has room for everyone. It overturns the things the world has taught us are insurmountable and creates a new and open – and for this reason perhaps a tad frightening – future. This is, in short, a threatening word for any and all who believe they are “self-made” men or women, but simultaneously good news – perhaps the best news – for anyone who can admit his or her need.

Early on in Leif Enger’s wonderful book Peace Like a River, the narrator, in talking about our penchant for domesticating miracles, contends that people fear miracles because they fear being changed. I think that’s true with parables, too. We want them to affirm our assumptions and confirm our faith. But perhaps this week, Dear Partner, our task is to shake things up a bit, unleash a parable or two, and preach the truth slant…that all may know of God’s surprising grace and disruptive love. Blessings on you and yours as this intrusive and redemptive Word takes hold."

http://www.davidlose.net/2015/06/pentecost-3-b-preach-the-truth-slant/

sermon illustration - seed

In London during the Second World War a church was decorated to celebrate harvest homecoming. The blitz began and the building was destroyed before the celebration could begin. Some of the sheaves of corn were scattered by the bombs. During the next spring, a small patch of corn began to grow through the rubble of the church. Life will not be stifled. 
http://www.sermonsuite.com/free.php?i=27457&key=gvshf3hh7ZykTlop

Fruitfulness

Love is a seed,

its deep-hidden dna

a blueprint carrying the hope for a harvest

of compassion and truth,

comradeship and care,

along with glorious defiant acts

of justice and grace.

Gospel-teller John,

in common with those who wrote before him,

calls his readers to emulate his hero

by joining his company of disciples.

A metaphor enthusiast of the highest order,

he writes of Jesus as a vine

into which the follower has been grafted.

The disciple is expected to be fruitful,

he assures us,

and identifies the pruning shears

as an essential means

by which that fruit is produced.

Ouch.

In another part of his story

Jesus appears as a lonely grain of wheat;

a seed that, to be made fruitful,

must be transformed so completely

and painfully, that its planting / burial

is described as death.

Returning to the subject of discipleship,

he insists that this loss of life

characterizes the process by which

his followers are to bear their own fruit.

Ouch, again.

These are, of course, mere metaphors.

and modern-day disciples have no need

to take them literally.

They are, however,

expected to take them seriously

and produce the multi-coloured fruits of love.

© Ken Rookes 2012

but if it dies

But if it dies.
Resist the temptation
to scurry to more comfortable parables.
They will not help you to understand this one.
The grain of wheat must die.
It is not about a sower and soil that is stony
or full of weeds; or even about good soil
which produces an hundredfold crop.
The death is real.
It is not about the tiny seed which grows
to become a home for the birds,
or even the seed which grows mysteriously by night
to produce the required fruit.
Life must be surrendered.
The story is about blood and brutality,
thorns, whips and betrayal.
It is about trumped-up charges, trials late at night
and a cross.
Before the grain of wheat can be reborn, fruitful,
it must submit to earth's dark embrace.
The story is about defiance and submission.
It is about courage, generous and true;
and love, deep and tearful. It is about death.
Real death.
It is about a man who will be buried;
a seed planted in the ground
who will bring a harvest of hope and life,
luminous and full.
There is no other way.
"Come," the man says; "Journey with me.
Share my joy, and my death.
Together we shall live."

Rev Ken Rookes