There are a few phrases about God that people use all the time that sometimes we should slow down and think about more closely. Today I would like to draw your attention to one of them, a little phrase from an 18th-century poem that actually has always driven me a little crazy: The Lord works in mysterious ways.
Let’s be honest: You know when you last heard this phrase, or when you said it yourself: I’ll bet it was the last time you heard of something bad, but not too bad, happening to someone, or even more likely I’ll bet it was the last time you heard of someone succeeding who maybe shouldn’t have. I was in the formation program for deacons more than four years, and I heard this phrase a lot, and I particularly remember hearing it whenever one of my classmates ended up with a new pastor that he wasn’t quite expecting. The Lord works in mysterious ways, someone would say. But no one really wanted to come out and say what they were thinking, which was Enough with the “mysterious” already, that God ought to find a way to be a little less mysterious and that clued a few of us in as to what God could possibly be thinking with some of the things that happen.
Frankly, it’s one thing to believe that God has an unpredictable side and likes a good practical joke. I like the idea that God would be that way; there’s certainly plenty of evidence that it’s true. But there’s a problem with regarding what happens in the world as beyond our understanding. As soon as we start to believe that what happens in the world is “mysterious” in the sense that God is a little irrational or random, and that we shouldn’t be able to understand a lot of things that happen, then that affects our life, our faith, our willingness to take on the work that God has prepared for us to do. We see noble things fail, great efforts fall apart, good people die too soon, and we’re tempted to give up because we can’t see the pattern in a way that makes sense to us. If we can’t understand what looks like the results, if what happens in the world seems unrelated to our efforts and our hopes, what’s the point of the effort?
Today’s gospel from Mark has two parables from Jesus that are about this gap we can feel between cause and effect, between planning and results. In the one, the sower scatters the seed, and the harvest grows, and frankly, the sower has no idea how: “the earth produces of itself,” the gospel says. In the second, the smallest possible seed, the mustard seed, grows the greatest of all shrubs. Here, the story reminds us of something we do all know in our hearts is true: that sometimes the smallest of all things produces the most glorious result — in this case, the parable could have suggested to some listeners that from Jesus himself, an unlikely seed, would come the fulfillment of all the hopes of Israel, that tree we heard in the first reading from Ezekiel, up on the mountaintop of Israel, in which every wonderful bird will be found, all grown from the smallest possible seed that no one would have expected anything from.
So Mark says that in many cases, what happens in this world seems to have little relation to our expectations. But the fact is, we don’t like the fact that things seem to work that way. In fact, that’s so difficult to live with, that we can check out of life, or at least the parts of it where results are hard to see. We have all had the experience of taking risks or reaching out to people, and have seen failure, or a result that seemed like failure. So as a result, we change the way we live our lives, and work on the things we seem to be able to control, where there is a cause and effect that seems reasonable: maybe the world of work and money and planning for our futures often seems like it has clearer rules.
But here is the key: In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians today, we hear that we are looking at it upside down. It’s hard to live with that confidence that Paul always seems to have: We are always confident, he says, not because he can see the tree and we can’t, but because, as he also says, we walk by faith and not by sight. We are looking for the grown-up tree we can see when what should excite us is the seed that doesn’t look like much but which, if we look closely, we can see everything in. The fact that we can’t see the relation between what happens and any cause that we can understand ought to excite us, because it means that anything can happen, that what we see around us, the evidence we examine to see signs of God’s presence, is the wrong evidence.
The kingdom of God, the parable actually says, if you read it again, is not the grown-up tree with all the glorious birds, but the seed, the possibility that looks like nothing, but has all of God’s gifts contained inside it. We do have no idea how it grows, why some seeds grow and some don’t, but we plant anyway, without regard to the results. Because the results are certain, even if the evidence is not.
If we lived our lives as if that were true, we would maybe try again when we were being cynical about how possible it was to actually help someone, or when some decision we need to make about our lives seems too risky or uncertain. It might also help us understand when we’re a little unsatisfied with the results of all our labors, whatever they are; perhaps our planting has been too focused on something with immediate results rather than this kingdom of God, which seems to grow only if you give up all your preconceived notions about how it grows and where.
So there may still be times when we’re tempted to say that the Lord works in mysterious ways. But actually in the important things, God is consistent: it is we who need to be a little more mysterious in how we approach life, less concerned with seeing the result of our labors than with the happiness and hope of beginning them. We want the mustard tree, and all God is saying is, so plant the seed already, keep planting, without waiting for the reward. It’s difficult, and beautiful, but not so mysterious.