Elma United Methodist Church

Mustard Seed People

Elma United Methodist Church

Mustard Seed People

Dan Shelly

Elma United Methodist Church

June 18, 2006

 

I have to admit that Nancy Thiel and I just finished a long and exhilarating, but also a tiring, week at Annual Conference.  And this long week finished yesterday afternoon with a 2 ½ hour commissioning and ordination service at which I had the honor to be commissioned as a probationary member of our Pacific Northwest Conference by not only Bishop Paup, but also by Elma’s own Bishop Mary Anne Swenson.  This made for a very special day indeed!  And it was made even more special by some of you coming all the way up to Mason United Methodist Church in Tacoma to be there with me yesterday.

 

But this did leave me with a bit of a dilemma.  After a long and tiring week, here it was late on Saturday afternoon and I had no sermon prepared, no bulletin printed, no PowerPoint slides done, I hadn’t even picked out all the songs for this weeks service yet!  So I asked some of my ministerial colleagues what they did on the Sunday after Annual Conference.

 

Some just give a report on what happened at conference.

Others begin to talk about Fathers and then pass the microphone around to let other people tell their Father stories

And some simply arrange for a substitute to fill in for them on that Sunday.

 

But our time left together is too short for me to even think about a substitute, and when I saw that today’s gospel was Jesus’ parable of the Kingdom and the mustard seed, I knew that I wasn’t about to give up the opportunity to preach on one of my favorite parables of Jesus. 

 

Besides, for many folks the sermon is an important part of the service.  In fact for some it’s the most important part.  That kinda’ reminds me of the kids in the school yard bragging about their fathers and what each of their Dads did for a living. The first one said, "My Dad just scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a poem, they give him $50 for each one.

 

The second kid said, "That's nothing. My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a song, and they give him $100."

 

The third one said, “Well my Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a prescription, people give him $150 just for coming in to see him do it."

Finally the forth one spoke up and said, "I got you ALL beat. My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a sermon, and it takes two people with great big plates collect all the money!"

 

Sometimes we Dad’s never know the full effect that we have on our children.  Often we feel that the job of Dad is one of providing for the family, providing a warm and safe home, providing love and security, and an example for our children to follow.  But every day, we also plant seeds, seeds that take root over time, seeds that help to shape and grow our children into the future people and future parents that they may someday become.  The job of a Father carries with it an awesome and awe filled responsibility, and today is a day that we set aside to honor all of those Dads who have given of their time, and knowledge, and love to raise their children, and also all of the good and upright men who have served as examples within our lives.

 

So today, we thank God for those upright and Godly men we have experienced within our lives who live their life in such a way that they plant seeds of love and health within the lives of the children that they care for.

 

And as we think about sowing seeds, let’s take a look at what Jesus had to say about seeds and the Kingdom of God.

 

He 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."

 

You know today we find ourselves so separated from the time of Jesus that sometimes we really do have a bit of a problem catching the irony of some of Jesus’ parables.  Almost all of Jesus’ ministry, his time of teaching and healing, took place out in the countryside, away from the large towns. So Jesus found himself speaking to crowds of people who either farmed or fished to make a living.  These people were well aware of the agricultural images that Jesus used, and the strange ways in which he used them.

 

Remember in the very beginning of the Gospel of Mark, after his baptism Jesus came back from the desert and declared, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the good news.”  He was teaching and healing, and people became interested.  They wanted to know what this kingdom was that Jesus was talking about.  Now you can imagine that Jesus could have gone with one of the traditional images of strength and growth, he could have talked about the Kingdom of God as a great tree planted by the water, strong and able to stand and withstand any trouble or conflict.  But instead, Jesus said the Kingdom of God is like the tiniest of seeds.  This had to get an agricultural people to stop and ask, “What is he talking about?” The glorious Kingdom of God is like the tiniest of seeds?  But it wasn’t even enough for Jesus just to compare this anticipated Kingdom to a tiny seed, perhaps a beautiful grain of wheat that is scattered and grows into abundance.  No, Jesus said the Kingdom was like a mustard seed.  Now to anyone who made a living by growing wheat, a mustard plant was a noxious plant, a weed that took away from their harvest.  So they had to be saying, “What?  The Kingdom of God is like a noxious weed that sprouts up where you don’t want it?  What kind of Kingdom is this guy Jesus talking about?”  And then he goes on to say, “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."  Well these people he was speaking to all knew the mustard plant, and there’s no way that it really grew up to anything like what Jesus described.  No mustard plant grew up large enough to support a bird’s nest, let alone become a whole tree full of them.  So what was this Jesus person really telling them? 

 

Obviously Jesus was speaking metaphorically.  And the image that he was using for what this tiny, noxious seed would turn in to was not unfamiliar to his listeners.  They would have immediately thought of the tree of life, the tree described in Ezekiel that were planted on the sides of the river.  In Ezekiel’s vision these trees bore fresh fruit each month for food and their leaves were for the healing of the nations.  This was an image of God’s Reign, of Earth healed and restored, that they were familiar with.  So what was Jesus’ parable telling them? That God’s Reign would not come in the way they expected? That the very things that they rejected were going to be used to bring about God’s Reign?  Using the tiniest thing, that which seems least likely, that which seems impossible to our sensible minds, that’s how God operates?  All of this turned their understanding of how God worked and their relationship to God upside down.  If God used the tiniest seed to bring about God’s Kingdom, then what did that say about their hundreds of laws and purity codes?  And what did that say about their strict adherence to these laws?  This sounded like the Kingdom of God was going to spring forth from a completely unexpected source and in a completely unexpected way.

 

And what does Jesus parable say to us today?  Does it even speak to us today?  You know, one of the problems that many of us encounter with the parables of Jesus is that we’ve heard them so many times that they begin to lose the ability to shock and surprise us like they did his original hearers.  But if we step back just a little and let the images Jesus used speak to us, we can begin to ask the question, “What does it mean that God is going to use the very things that we reject, things we consider impossible, to bring about the God’s Reign here on Earth?  To bring about reconciliation and restoration, things that in today’s world seem so far away that you might as well try to bring about a new heaven and a new Earth from a speck of noxious weed seed.

 

One thing it says is that this healing of the nations and the healing of the Earth is going to be God’s doing and not something that we bring about by ourselves.  We are to follow God’s call to stewardship of the Earth, and the call to become the Blessed Peacemakers whom Jesus calls the children of God.  Like Jesus - and his disciples who followed after him - we are to work tirelessly to help bring this about, but always aware that the One who will finally bring this vision of peace, of justice, and of reconciliation to pass is God.

 

Another thing that this says to us is not to lose hope.  Even when things look impossible, when the odds look insurmountable, when our good old “common sense” says this will never work, people will never change, war will never end, hate will never cease, the poor will never find justice, the Earth is beyond the point of redemption, at those times – remember that we serve the God of the mustard seed – and we are mustard seed people.  People who know that God takes the least and the lowliest and from that grows the tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

 

And this says something else to us too.  At Annual Conference I heard the story of someone who had grown up in the church.  He had spent his whole life hearing about God, but when the day finally came, when a major crisis hit his life, that’s when he realized that he didn’t really know how to pray – not the way he wanted to.  He didn’t know how to place his whole trust in God.  He didn’t know how to give the situation over to God, and have the faith to believe that God could actually bring him through.  And this is how Jesus still speaks to us today through the parable of the mustard seed.

 

Jesus says, you don’t need to know how to act perfectly, to pray perfectly, or trust perfectly. God is in control.  Even though you only have the tiniest bit of faith, so small that it seems like no faith at all.  Even though you feel like you’re messing it all up or aren’t worthy of God’s attention.  Even if you feel like you don’t even know how to talk to God, remember that God is the God of the mustard seed and from even the littlest and the lowliest beginnings, God can bring forth amazing acts of Grace, of transformation, and of restoration and new growth.  So find that mustard seed of faith that each of us has within us, and plant it, bring your problems to God.  Even those things that seem impossible to fix –addiction to drugs, to alcohol, pornography, or gambling, anger or hate, jealousy or greed, low self worth or an ego so large there’s no room in your heart for anyone else, let alone God.  Whatever it is, bring it to God and then let God be God.  Then wait for the God of transformation to do marvelous and redemptive things within your life. 

 

Like the shrub that sprang so unexpectedly from the mustard seed, God may surprise you.  Your answer may not be what you expect or how you expect it, but God will be faithful to answer you and God is love.  In all things God seeks and offers reconciliation, restoration, and relationship.

 

So even today, Jesus’ parable of the Kingdom and the mustard seed can still speak to us and call us to bring that tiny speck of faith back to God and watch within our lives as God begins to do wonderful new things.