(Mark 4:26-34 Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come." He also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade." With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.)

When I was in college, I had a class once in Plant Ecology. The professor was a gentle old soul, probably late 60s at the time, and he began each class throughout the term by presenting two or three photographic slides of a variety of vegetation. At the beginning of the semester, the slides were black and white, faded and stippled from years of degradation, and we thought to one another surely he could obtain some better, more recent slides for his class.

 

Much to our satisfaction, as the semester continued the slides became more colorful and brighter. What we didn’t know until we were several weeks into the term was that Dr. Ramseur was showing slides of the same spot in western North Carolina where he had completed his doctoral work some three decades earlier.

 

He was demonstrating the natural phenomenon of ecological succession in a meadow, and over the course of his slide slow we could see the remarkable transformation that had taken place in this simple meadow—from the charred landscape following a forest fire, to a peaceful space with tall grasses, to a thicket of small bushes, to spindly pines. And then the slides stopped. He moved onto something else at the start of each class.

 

Near the end of the term we took a weekend field trip to the Smoky Mountains, where we inspected all sorts of ecosystems, and then on the final day, just before we were to return to Sewanee, he stopped the van on the roadside and said, “Everybody out…let’s go see something.” There was a tone of excitement and urgency in his voice, and so although we were exhausted by the weekend’s activities already, we piled out to see where he was leading us.

 

Just off the road, some fifty yards or so, we came to the meadow—only it was no longer a meadow, but a stand of beautiful young hardwoods that had taken hold. We took out our measuring tools, and recorded diameters and densities of the various plant species present while Dr. Ramseur took more pictures of this place that was so special to him.

And then, when we returned to class again the next week, he took us through the slide show from the beginning in the 1950s to our trip thirty years later, and we saw the connection—the progression—the culmination of a hardwood forest.

 

And although the hardwoods might last for centuries, they are there, growing in the soil made fertile by the grasses, bushes and leaves of earlier trees. Nothing grows independent of the other parts of an ecosystem—that is the beauty of it. The substrate for the hardwoods there today is integrally connected to the life that has gone before. Few people get to observe such a transformation as Dr. Ramseur had, and we knew we had been treated to a glimpse of something special.

 

I have often thought that this science of ecological succession of a temperate deciduous forest in Appalachia (or the Ozarks), although anachronistic to Jesus’ time, is as rich an image of the fulfillment of the kingdom of God as there is. The ecosystem of God, I would call it. Connecting it to the simple similes presented by Jesus: the kingdom of God is like…a sprouting seed that grows “white already to harvest”[1]…is like…a mustard seed growing into a magnificent tree in whose boughs the birds find safe haven…is like…the ecosystem of a stand of hardwoods that harbors an array of plants and animals, each one finding its niche in the elaborate balance of the biosphere.

 

The ecosystem of God. Did you know that the Greek root from which we get eco—as in ecosystem, economy, ecology—the Greek word is oikos—which literally means “house” or “household”—the ecosystem of God is the household of God. What a wonderful image that is. And it is biblically grounded, too. “In my father’s house (my father’s oikos) there are many rooms.

 

The kingdom of God—perhaps anachronistic to our democratically-driven minds—is one and the same as the oikos of God. The ecosystem of God. Not out there, up there, to be experienced only in the age to come, but grounded in the history of what has been, taking form even now, and most assuredly to find consummate fulfillment in the grand design of God in the fullness of time.

 

The household of God…where all are invited to dwell and bear good fruit that can be harvested in due time for the benefit of the world…of the household of God.

 

It is the culmination of what we were created for—we were created to dwell in the household of God, and Jesus, blessed Jesus, has come into the world as the way by which we can discover and become a part of this household of God, he has come to bear the truth of this promise made by God, he has come to witness to the life that is offered by God for all who dwell here.

 

We are part of God’s ecosystem in which nothing is designed to stand alone. We are who we are because we have been formed by those who have gone before, and we, in turn, will serve as a piece of the substrate for the world that follows, and Jesus has come to reveal that wonderful fact to the world. Nothing is disconnected from this design that God has established. What God has planned for the world—for us and all things—is the connection—the progression—the culmination of redemption by God.

 

And for that, may God’s holy name be praised. Amen.