Letting go can be the hardest thing

‘… With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.  (Mark 4:33-34)

Mark 4:26-34 (Year B: Trinity+2)

Gospel as story telling…

A key feature of Jesus’ ministry was telling stories. Because it is very often hard for us and for the people who lived 2,000 years ago to ‘get it’ we need to hear and tell stories – stories about real people and their lives and the actual environment in which people live. A good story is remembered because it touches the heart, the mind and the will.  In fact, the very word Gospel means good news or good stories.

Telling stories and connecting to the social, political and economic life of others lies at the core of Jesus’ preaching ministry. Not that Jesus engaged in polemics or analysis about whatever is in the news at the time. Rather, he took natural examples from the natural world of living, working, relating and caring to illustrate what the ‘kingdom of God’ is like. The phrase ‘It is like ….’ crops up all over the gospels. We are hard pressed to draw up systematic philosophical or theological bodies of knowledge based on the gospels. These would follow later and have their own undoubted use and value at the service of the Word.

Going with the flow of nature..

We do well to pause and reflect on the gospel stories we may hear week after week and year after year. The same story is never quite the same each time we hear it.  The secret is to link it to our own personal life experience as well as that of others. This requires patience, diligence and openness.  All of this takes time – that precious commodity that seems to diminish just as ‘time-saving’ productivity innovations increase their hold on our lives.

The challenging aspect of this Sunday’s short extract from the gospel of Mark is that we are placed in a world of growth, nature, uncertainty and yields. Pictures of fields and crops are painted across our imagination.  We can rest in these images contemplating the mystery not only of nature but our own complicated lives intertwined with those of others. Gone are the textbook manuals of scientific determination. In with the organic, intuitive, living, growing, flourishing, decaying, ageing and harvesting images that best reflect the way the world works. The detached, rational, Cartesian mind is challenged.

And this is healthy.

We can strive to order our lives and plan for everything. We don’t want anything left to chance. The rent-seeking sellers of insurance and assurance enter the picture! However, life is never quite that simple. There is a natural process of growth and decay marked with unexpected turns and developments.

Not knowing where or how or when the plant and its fruit appear …

We must trust in a divine plan that cooperates with, and respects, us (as well as the other way round). Sometimes, we need to ‘scatter the seed’ on the ground and then leave it there for a time. The opposite to this is sometimes called ‘micro-management’ where – for reasons of insecurity – we seek to plan, order, manage and direct the details of a project, a relationship or an event. As it says in this Gospel passage: ‘Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.’ We just do not know How or When or Who. We only know a What - that what is sown is sown and God is active somehow but the results are not to be seen now. It is a case of doing the following:

-       We hear the Word of God as seeds of possibility in our depths;

-       We make it our own by planting deep in the garden of our soul like a mustard seed (Matthew refers to the seed being planted in the person’s own garden);

-       We live it and let it grow;

-       We do not know how it happens (the mechanic elude us); and

-       We believe that God is in charge; and

-       The results are plain to see not now but later on and perhaps only for others who come after us.

We plant or sow the seed and then we need to stand back and watch the growth. For someone familiar with computers it is the equivalent of pressing ‘system restore’ and then waiting to watch the grass grow as the little waiting symbol appears on the computer screen.

Of course, we may need to stay close at hand to where we have sown in case help and intervention might be needed. Whether in the domain of parenting or work or ministry we need to strike a balance and allow others to grow (or not as the case may be).  In the case of parenting it may involve a very gradual letting go as children move into adulthood. However, staying close and being available and stepping in are essential (and it may be an unwelcome but necessary stepping in depending on circumstances!).

The poet, mystic and monk, Thomas Merton (1915-1968), put it this way:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. (from Thoughts in Solitude).

Letting seeds grow and letting go …

Letting go is required – of our fears, our insecurities, our attachments, our detailed plans, our risk analysis, our ‘nutty, musty’ mental frameworks and our self-image. We are planted to grow in love and to help others grow in live. Like the farmer we need to work with the ‘grain of nature’ (some might say the ‘grain of the brain’) rather than try to ingrain nature. But, like the parable of the mustard seed what we sow may seem of little consequence in terms of size and standing. Later, however, the seeds give rise to ‘the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade’ (verse 32). Whether this detail matters (Matthew and Luke refer to a tree – the point still remains that what we see now and what will be is different and we don’t know how this change will be affected).

It might take a crisis or severe drought or another calamity to let go and let flourish. At that point we allow God more than ever to step in and direct our limited efforts and understanding. God’s love is bigger than our plans and expectations. All we need to do is what we can do now – to sow the seed and keep it close to our hearts and then let God lead us forward step by step.  Life is a series of steps, decisions, actions and arrivals.

As Brother Mark Brown of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist In an excellent online resource (ssje.org) puts it very concisely in a reflection entitled ‘Let Go’:

If we’re not paying attention, we can find we’ve accumulated a vast treasury, truck loads of fears and anxieties, trunk loads of resentments and grudges, crates of unrealistic expectations and boxes of presumptions and unreasonable demands. Remember to leave all this baggage behind, to travel lightly on the way. Remember to travel forgetfully and follow Jesus.

-Br. Mark Brown