Chapel – George Sweetman
You can be seated. Over the last three weeks, we have been enriched as a community with our community chapels, haven't we? Started off three weeks ago at commencement chapel with Dr. Kerr speaking inspiring words of God's provision. Then a week later, we had Dean Emerita, Dean Clark, Dr. Clark, reflect on the Tyndale Seminary history of 50 years of God's faithfulness and education across Canada. Then last week, in celebration of William Tyndale's 500th anniversary of the translation of the New Testament into English, Dr. Wesley Hill was with us and brought meaningful words to us. And then this week, what we just experienced, Renee Rowe was our guest, or is our guest instructor. She helps Dr. Michell out on an occasional basis, and she mentioned at the beginning this morning that she was feeling a little under the weather. Imagine what it would be like if she were well? Oh my gosh! I've never seen Johnny enjoy drumming so much either. And Thomas' bass chords are still vibrating in my chest.
I've often wondered if students read the weekly Tyndale Chapel announcements that I send out on Monday morning. Until just today, I was told by one of my team members that a student asked Lizzie, "Is there a mystery speaker in chapel today because it wasn't noted in the announcement?" Mystery unveiled. And thanks, Mitch, for reading, I appreciate that.
So today is October the sixth. It's week four of the fall semester, and I've heard from many of you, many of you, that you're already tired. Some of you are worn down. Some have been dealing with illnesses, and I get it. I think that bone tired fatigue isn't just because we're staying up too late binging Netflix series, or because we decided at one a.m. to make a Timmy's run. That inflicting deeper tired is more likely the result of the cumulative effect of 100 small decisions that life demands. A tired that comes with changes in health; of being sandwiched between aging parents and children setting out on their own. It's a tired of a full calendar and a longer to-do list; and for some, the inability to say no. Some of you are carrying four books for that essay due next week; or maybe it's a budget; or a stack of emails; or a thesis; or a family or maybe it's all of those things together. It's the tired of living in an age of distraction; and lives are mediated by three by six inch screens in our pockets—the very thing that some of you have already checked five times before you sat down here in the chapel this morning.
Speaking of our phones, I think that many of us also feel that we are not necessarily at a life stage, but more that we are living on a stage; always performing, and there's never an intermission. It feels as though our lives insist that we act all the time lest we be found out. But it's not only acting; we're directing too. Some of you might be familiar with a recent TV commercial for a travel company that shows a man living a pretty ordinary life, who, in a moment of crisis, has his life flashed before his eyes, and he's really deeply unsatisfied with what he sees. So he decides on the spot, "I need to live more." The result: he becomes the director of his life, and with it, travel, food, and adventure around the world. We're all wrapped up in this. Students curate a campus identity; faculty manage an academic one; staff feels compelled to be competent always and never show the strain. We're all editors of our very own highlight reel, and underneath all of this runs a quiet code. "We should be further along." Further along in our degrees; further along in our careers; our walk with Jesus; our prayer life. For many, we're treading water or running in quicksand, all effort, no movement; it's exhausting.
While we know there is another way of doing life; the slow, sometimes messy reality of being formed by the Spirit, of learning to lean on and love Jesus and follow Him; the reality is that the kinetic and complex impulses of this instant hyper showcase life, the one that fears missing out, the one that races to the next thing, the one that says if you're not producing you're disappearing; all of these things pull us away from formation and instead disintegrate our lives. Social psychologists tell us that we are the most connected people in history, but at the same time, they also tell us that we are among the loneliest, loneliest; hyperconnected, but deeply lonely. This is true of students, but honestly, isn't it true for all of us? Many of us long for a kind of intimacy that we've forgotten how to build relationships with one another, and with God Himself.
Today begins our chapel series for the 26/27 academic year. Every year, our chapel committee meets in the spring and tries to listen for a story our community is telling. And as we thought about it and prayed about it, we kept circling to one idea that is now the title of this series: Deeply Rooted, The Outward Life of an Inward Faith. And within this theme, we're going to explore two movements.
This fall, we'll be invited to take a collective deep breath and begin untangling ourselves from the exhausting performance-based way of living. There is a freedom in stepping off the stage, in that we'll also learn that it's fine to set down the well-managed and curated versions of ourselves, and instead know that we're all invited to meet God, who's entirely comfortable with slow growth and hidden places. This semester, we'll learn to rest with God, to abide with Him by sitting in His gentle presence, and discovering that we are loved in quiet, deeply personal spaces. This semester, this semester will be about nourishing our roots that will sink deeply into the grounding of Jesus' love.
And then in the winter, the focus turns from solitude to solidarity. If the fall teaches us that we are loved in the quiet, the winter will ask, "How do we live with each other?" You know the beautiful, complicated reality of relationships. We know these things. We understand the joy and the celebration and the memory making of being with friends and family, but we also know about friendships that go sideways, about words that cut, or hurt, or even dismember in the resulting injury to our community. So for this fall, we hope to deepen our faith together, and then in the winter we'll learn about what it means to live healthy outward lives, and we'll do all of this for the sake of Jesus.
But this morning, I want to spend a little bit of time with a short story that Jesus told, and I hope that this story will be the step to a different way of thinking about our curated lives; a step to removing our theatrical masks; a step off the endless performance of the stage. Instead, let's brace ourselves for the good and slow work of God in our lives.
I'm going to read from Matthew, the Gospel of—sorry, the Gospel of Mark, chapter four, verses 26 to 29, and I'm reading from the New International Version.
"He also said, 'This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scattered seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.'"
Well, we don't necessarily see it in this short passage. Have you ever noticed the pace of Mark's gospel? It's breathless. At the church I attend north of here in Markham, this fall there's a semester class that's being offered that's called, "Mark: The Go Go Go Gospel." It's a perfect title for a Bible study of Mark. Mark is the shortest gospel, and it races. It feels like the word that encapsulates the gospel is eutheos, or "immediately" in English. That word, in some form, appears over 40 times in Mark's 16 chapters. Jesus is baptized, and immediately the heavens are torn open. The Spirit immediately drives him into the wilderness. He calls fishermen, and immediately they leave their nets. Immediately Jesus teaches. Immediately the leprosy leaves. Mark reads like a person sprinting down a hallway, shouting, "You won't believe what's going to happen next!"
But then there's this odd pause, right in the middle of that race. It's the passage that I just read. Jesus stops. He tells a story about a man who scatters seed and then does nothing. He sleeps. He gets up. He sleeps. He gets up. Day and night, night and day; and the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.
And here's the hook: in a gospel consumed with the immediate, and in the way we live in our culture right now that rarely allows us to catch our breath, Jesus tells a parable about "eventually". This momentary pause really stands out. Mind you, there is still immediacy in the passage, but it's not during the growing stage. The growing stage tells us, "first the stalk, then the head, then the kernel of the head." "First, then, then." That's the vocabulary of patience. "Immediately" only appears when the grain is ripe. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it.
This is fascinating to me. Mark is telling us that the immediate is God's doing, not ours. In these short four verses, the hearer is invited to yes, act in the scattering, but then, to do nothing; to let God work, to let Him work in His timing, and all we do is wait.
This parable faintly echoes previous ones in Mark. Earlier in the Gospel, Mark speaks of the seed being scattered on different surfaces: hardened, rocky, thistled, and finally good soil. In that parable, the word immediately shows up in a different way, though. For example, we read that the seed on rocky ground immediately springs up, but that growth isn't healthy. There's no depth because there's no roots. The ground is shallow. In that passage, I wonder if the concept of immediate growth is more of a warning sign than something to be pursued. In that parable, we see fast but shallow, in contrast to the slow and deep of verses 26 to 29. Even before we got to today's parable, Mark tells us what we ought to be suspicious of.
But let's go back to the parable. Here's the heart. When the man goes to sleep, the gospel writer says the soil produces grain all by itself. The Greek here is aftómatos. It's where we get the word automatic. The soil does its own work. The growth is self-acting and sustaining. It's not because the farmer doesn't matter. As I've said before, he scattered the seed, and eventually he'll swing the sickle. But between the beginning and the ending, the farmer does nothing; yet the seed matures to become a plant, and eventually grows to fruition.
Anyone who gardens is familiar with this, right? That small tomato seedling planted during the May long weekend this spring, becomes an out-of-control thicket of green with ripening reds in late summer. Or how about the perennial of that single flower that was planted in 2019 and is now a hedge of brilliant colors. If I were a student of botany, I'd be able to tell you a scientific explanation for these phenomena, but I'm not. What I do see is growth, and it's breathtaking. The farmer in Mark doesn't know how it happens; the gospel writer isn't embarrassed by that. This is the kingdom of God; mystery, not method. Could it even be that when we feel like nothing is happening in us, that may be exactly when we are growing?
Now, one more image. We encounter, two times in this chapter, a sleeping man. But this isn't about laziness. In verse 27, the farmer sleeps because the seed doesn't need him to be awake. And then we read the story of Jesus asleep on a cushion in the stern of a boat, while the disciples are terrified as the storm overwhelms them. Can you imagine sleeping through such commotion; the yelling, the tossing, the turning? There are some today who travel on huge cruise ships on placid waters and get seasick, but here Jesus sleeps. It's the rest of trust. He understands something that the disciples don't. God is present, and God is working. To rest in this way is to trust. God's work continues even while we sleep, when we cease, as we step off the stage; the world does not depend on our waking vigilance.
So here's what the parable says in three short sentences:
The kingdom is planted, not manufactured.
It grows in hidden places on God's schedule by God's power.
It's always going somewhere good.
Friends, holiness can't be rushed, and it can't be curated. Our postings don't move us toward becoming more like Jesus; if anything, perhaps it's even the opposite. Instagram has a lot of filters, but there isn't one for love. Our social stories and highlight reels don't help us grow a heart for God. Could it be that it's the things that happen off stage and offline? Those are the things that are worth most having? The roots that deepen while we kneel in our prayer closets or greet the sunrise with scripture and song? These are the times and places where nobody's watching.
In the biography of Pastor Eugene Peterson, author Win Collier recounts a story of Eugene's son Eric catching his dad in prayer early one morning. "As a nine-year-old boy, Eric's mother asked him to tell his dad that breakfast was ready, so Eric snuck down to his dad's basement study, found him on his knees in prayer, the psalter before him, a candle representing the light of Christ. Eric knew he had seen something holy, and later called his dad the holiest man I know." There was no broadcast, no post, no stage. Just a man in the Psalms and a candle, quietly praying to God.
I want to be clear about something. I'm not saying that we don't do anything as apprentices of Jesus. The farmer first scattered, then harvested. Our spiritual formation is about showing up; reading the word; praying, even badly; coming to chapel; going to church; sitting with people; serving the disenfranchised; defending the foreigner; visiting the prisoner. I would contend that if we show up faithfully, God will grow us. Did you get that? God grows us. It's not the other way around. It's not what we do that grows us. In other words, patience, yes; control, no.
One of my favorite novelists and essayists was Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry, who passed away just this summer. He wrote prolifically, he spoke eloquently and powerfully, but he lived gently. Here's what someone said of him, and I think it's apt given this morning's conversation: "Wendell Berry's formula for a good life and a good community is simple and pleasingly unoriginal. 'Slow down. Pay attention. Do good work. Love your neighbours. Love your place. Stay there. Settle for less. Enjoy it more.'" Our invitation to the good life isn't about being unhurried, although there's certainly a part of that. What it is, it's about being unobserved by other people, and knowing that God sees us.
One last thing, I am keenly aware for some of you, this season that you're in is not about gentle germination. I know that there are real struggles embodied by some of you in the chapel this morning; stories of grief, fear, loneliness. I understand that. You are not alone. This community cares, and you don't have to figure this stuff out by yourself. We'll talk about this more in the winter semester during chapels, but before we even get there, the Tyndale Wellness Center stands ready. Your professors care. The staff is eager to respond. Your friends, long-standing, and those you made only a month ago, they'll listen carefully, quietly. Part of what community is, is helping each other tell the difference between a seed that is being nourished and a wound that is festering and needs attention.
To tie everything up then, let me offer three small practices—not a program, just three ways to live as someone who wants to trust the hidden life, who wants to be planted, cultivated, and nourished in Jesus.
First, rest. I mean it literally. If you treat rest, whether literal sleep, or times to recharge, or Sabbath, as the first thing to sacrifice for productivity, remember our farmer in Mark 4. Remember the fourth commandment. Rest is the one way that we say literally, "I am not holding the world together."
Second, keep one thing hidden: pray, serve, give, or write something this semester that no one will see, no one will repost. They won't even know about it. Let there be one root system in your life that no camera will ever capture. Keep it between you and God, and that's where the growth will flourish.
And third, stay a minute longer. When you're bored; when it feels unproductive; when the speaker's going past 12 o'clock in chapel; when the silence gets uncomfortable and your hand starts to twitch for your phone, just wait a little longer. Growth is slow, and it's often imperceptible. Don't try to hurry things, and don't be distracted by not being attentive to the one who grows us.
Friends, you, we, are a seed that's being planted in good ground by God, who is not in a hurry, and who has already promised us a harvest.
When some of us think about the Holy Spirit, we think exuberance, preaching that's on fire, perhaps even ecstatic moments, jumping around, even shouting. And don't get me wrong, there's a place for all of that. But I think we see in Scripture that the Spirit is more often quiet. It hovers, it broods, and it waits like a bird over water at the beginning of the world.
So here, at the beginning of this year, I want to give you something that is rare, a moment of silence; not to be productive, not to check your phone, not to have a breakthrough, just to sit embedded. If you like, you can close your eyes, or keep them open and rest on something that's still. You don't have to say anything to God. You don't have to be anything for God. Just let yourself be planted. Let's take a moment.
Friends, will you stand with me for the benediction? And if you're comfortable, I would invite you to put out your hands as a posture of reception from the One who gives us that unhurried beauty and growth.
So, God, teach us to trust the slow work of Your hands. Give us the courage to be hidden with You this year, and the joy of being found in You. Grow something true in us in your time, in the name of Jesus, who slept in the storm and rose in the morning.
Amen. Go in peace.
