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…
[Mark 4:26-27]

Have you ever been to New Orleans?

I should ask that differently: have you been to New Orleans since August 29, 2005?

New Orleans flourished and floundered for a little over three hundred years before the storm surge of Hurricane Katrina destroyed 80% of the city. Eighty percent – it’s hard to get your mind around a figure like that. For every two houses that weathered the storm, eight were destroyed. The only area of the city that survived was the group of neighborhoods hugging the northern bank of the Mississippi, from Uptown to the French Quarter. Everything else—gone.

Last month, as part of my diaconal internship, I organized a group of ten volunteers from St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church to go to New Orleans and lend a hand. Four years after the storm, the city still cries out for help. We went there and did, oh everything, for there was everything to be done—we sanded and mudded walls, then primed and painted them; we drilled Sheetrock into ceilings; we nailed siding onto a house; we laid ceramic tile, we grouted, we sanded, we swept, we cleaned.

And it was hot. Sometimes we would feel a breeze, but even in May New Orleans is a humid place to work. And every once in a while, someone would point out that we were rehabilitating houses in a drained swamp, a former bayou, a section of land that lay several inches below sea level. If you walk up to a levee, you can see the Mississippi flowing above the city. Why would we do this? What’s the point? Won’t this basin flood again? And given global warming and the disruption of weather systems around the world, wouldn’t it flood very soon? Isn’t this madness, what we’re doing?

And it’s not only that. Some of us were well aware that we were not exactly skilled construction workers. One person on our team noticed one day that others kept coming behind her to redo all the work she had done. By the end of that day, she was frustrated. Another volunteer felt even more discouraged. He meant well, but he felt he had a long, long way to go if he wanted to fulfill his dream of, in his words, “making a difference” in New Orleans.

Even those of us who thought we were a little more skillful, or at least trainable, nurtured few illusions that we were making a big impact. On the day when we hung Sheetrock, I think we only managed to attach five or six pieces to the ceiling. It’s discouraging to get to the end of a long workday and see that only a few more rectangles of Sheetrock are hanging on the ceiling, and whole rooms still wait to be finished.

Whole rooms? Whole neighborhoods. A whole city. If we’re making a difference, “we know not how.”

And this is where I felt I had to say something, do something. When we were about halfway through the trip, some of us feeling personally discouraged, others thinking about the futility of rebuilding in such a precarious landscape, some of us feeling more hopeful, and all of us feeling pretty tired, I made a little speech. I told these good people, these hard-working, dedicated volunteers, that I was a member of St. Paul’s, and my home parish had a perspective that might help them.

I said that if St. Paul’s has a gift, it’s a gift for prayer. In prayer and presence, silence and stillness, music and meditation, St. Paul’s can hold a city like New Orleans on our hearts, and before God. We have a knack for the ministry of simple presence.

Whereas St. Andrew’s has a deep and broad gift for action. At St. Andrew’s, it’s not a big deal that they’re sending not one but two groups to New Orleans this year. There’s the Teen Feed program, but also the monthly Jubilee dinner for homeless folks. And that’s just the beginning. St. Andrew’s is good at tasks, agendas, objectives. St. Andrew’s gets things done.

But in New Orleans, it doesn’t always work that way. It’s a funky, unpredictable, rough, wild place. The problems are overwhelming, yet somehow, in some bizarre way, they’re not.

In such a wild and troubled place, our simple presence was a ministry all its own. Our volunteer who felt discouraged when others redid her work—it was she who spoke at length to a homeowner, a New Orleanian, a woman who stopped by her house to meet all the strangers who were working on it, and identified this volunteer as a kindred spirit. The homeowner singled her out—our friend and coworker—to sit down for a chat. “You,” she said. “Come and sit with me. I need someone to talk to.” And nothing could have been more valuable. Most of the people in New Orleans feel lonesome, bereft, and strung out. The whole region was traumatized. To simply go there, sit down, and chat with someone is a tremendous contribution.

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…

One of the odd truths about mission trips like these is that, in the end, we realize that we didn’t have to go. We could have stayed in Seattle, stayed in our lives, stayed with you, stayed in our workplaces, stayed with our families and partners. The scattered seed would still sprout and grow, we know not how. Neighborhoods in Seattle need Sheetrocking. Your workplace and mine cry out for the ministry of simple presence, a ministry that might be free of religious language (at least in this part of the world) but is full of God’s life, God’s flourishing life. Right here, in our tiny-as-mustard-seed lives.

I wonder—is it hard to see the scattered seed in your life, the way in which the kingdom of God sprouts and grows, you know not how? You’re a teacher, and some days you wonder what anyone has learned from your labors. You are a nurse, and you’ve seen one too many tragedies, and the gray dawn finds you ruminating about the career you chose. You’re an environmental activist (I met a few of these at St. Andrew’s!) and you feel discouraged by the magnitude of our planetary crisis. Or it’s much smaller: you’re in a relationship that confounds you. Or you’re confounded by loss, by loneliness.

Today we remember Jesus, who “with many such parables…spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it.” We are invited by this same Jesus to deepen our listening, deepen our awareness of the growing kingdom of God in our small lives, our small contributions. We do not know how… yet. Like my new Sheetrocking friends, all of us are saying and doing tiny things, making little efforts. Sometimes it’s just a kind gesture, or a silent embrace. Sometimes it’s a small act of justice, a standing up, taking a stand for yourself, or for your co-worker. Sometimes it’s just holding a suffering person—or a suffering city—on your heart.

In our little lives, the kingdom of God sprouts and grows, and often enough—or is it all too often?—we know not how. But be comforted, be encouraged: the tiny seed of your work and your household, the tiny seed of this gathered community, the tiny seed of St. Andrew’s, all these tiny seeds: their branches stretch far and wide, offering shade and rest to the weary and worn, the beloved of God.

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