16 June 2024 Mark 4:26-34
“Of its own accord the land yields fruit….” Mark 4:28
Well, not quite.
There are plenty of places where the land, of its own accord, yields nothing. In those places the rain falls, when it falls, and it just dries up. Seeds, if they are planted, just dry up, too. It isn’t because there is no water in those places, but because the water is too scarce and too far away, and there are not people around to ask if it might be possible to conserve the rainfall, to study how it could be done.
Of course it can be done, has been done. One of the places it has been done is the American West, in large part because of the work of John Wesley Powell, a one-armed veteran of the Civil War who became the second head of the U.S. Geological Survey. He made several major surveys of the American West and came to the conclusion that the arid lands had to conserve every drop of water possible. It took years of persuasion before Congress was willing to keep people away from the sites of dams and watersheds, but in 1902 Congress passed the Newlands Act, which protected millions of acres of land, and dammed every major river in the west so that the land would yield fruit. Today, the United States produces more food than we can eat, more food than we can even sell. The excess we simply give away. Today hundreds of millions of people all over the world are eating who might not otherwise, and all because of the hard work and ingenuity of American farmers in the west, careful legislation in Congress, and the vision of John Wesley Powell.
“…and through it all the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how” (Mark 4:27). That was then. Now we do know how.
In Jesus’ day much of agriculture was a mystery. It is no surprise that many of the pagan deities of those days were fertility gods and goddesses. It was widely believed that the fertility of the soil was restored each year by certain gods and goddesses coming together in connubial union. Fertility is no longer that kind of mystery. It is another kind of mystery. Most people have never heard of John Wesley Powell. He spent his entire life in areas of the country, and in fields of endeavor, which would never attract the attention of very many. His hardest work was the kind that few would understand, that few ever did understand, and most would find profoundly dull. His greatest triumph, the Newlands Act, is at best an extra-credit question in AP U.S. History classes, too obscure even for games like Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit. He died just three months after the Newlands Act was passed, hardly enough time to know it was a triumph.
John Wesley Powell is a hero hardly anyone knows, and because of him millions of people are eating today who might not otherwise. He accepted obscurity for the sake of a vision that would benefit not just the United States, but the poor in many other countries as well.
What is it that makes men like that?
The Kingdom of God is that sort of mystery.
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