Sermon:
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, a seed so tiny it takes a thousand to
fill a thimble. Cast them into a field and they grow five, maybe six feet tall, producing
a canopy of brilliant yellow, like fire or the blazing sun. In a forest of mustard
branches, birds and butterflies find their home and all is at peace in the kingdom of
heaven.
The parable seems to summarize the whole Christian enterprise. It's a preacher's dream.
From small beginnings you can change the world. From a handful of disciples to a global
movement Christendom has practically conquered the world. This is the power of faith. Your
faith may be weak, but strong faith can move mountains. It starts with a little seed, but
just watch and it will grow into the mightiest of trees. So preachers for centuries have
hyped dramatic growth through the power of faith. The parable has built impressive
churches, conquered new lands and converted the heathen. Just from one little seed!
The parable plays well in America because it seems like a quintessentially American
story. The pilgrims and the Mayflower - there's a mustard seed parable. A scraggly band of
pilgrims fleeing religious persecution is transformed into the world's one remaining
superpower with a gross domestic product that stymies the imagination! From the tiniest of
seeds to the greatest of trees!
It's the story of that glass house in Anaheim that's taller than Disney's Matterhorn.
From a drive-in theater to the Hour of Power in the Crystal Cathedral we're talking
mustard seed big time.
I suppose Pasadena Presbyterian Church once fit the mold as well. From meager
beginnings in 1875, a band of pioneers crossed the Sierra and settled near the Arroyo
Seco. They planted orange trees, roses and founded the Valley Hunt Club. They started a
church: PPC. The first edifice was a mere postage stamp of a building, but with sunlight,
brilliant leadership, the grace of God and the postwar California growth miracle, PPC
became the third largest Presbyterian church in the country. From a tiny seed smaller than
a head of pin comes impressive growth, power to move mountains and conquer kingdoms to the
glory of God. It's the parable of the Mustard Seed where great things emerge from small
beginnings.
Nobody wants to be a little seed. Nobody wants to be small. Everybody wants to be taken
seriously, to be afforded full human dignity and to be recognized as somebody. Everybody
wants to be given what is just.
Nobody wants to be a little seed, to remain small, to be shamed, or ridiculed, or
abused, or overpowered, or scorned, or demonized.
Nobody wants to be a little seed. In the secret hidden places of our own personal story
we all want to be bigger.
So we run from our fear, and build up bigger walls of exclusion and moralistic
judgment.
We run from our fear and divide people into good and evil.
We run from our shame and squander our lives attempting to prove we are the best when
inside we suspect that we are not.
It's because we are so small and we want to be big. We desperately want to be big - all
of us, you and I - but we fear that we are small.
Then if by chance, we are given too much power, the power of this world. then we just
might abuse that power and lord it over the weak, the poor, the alien and the different.
With sufficient power we lord it over the whole planet and destroy it with war, hate,
injustice and intolerance because we want to be big. We desperately want to be big because
we fear that we might be small. Nobody wants to be a little seed.
Then Jesus gathers us, the whole crowd of us, small and large and in between, he
gathers us here at the church and tells a parable, "The kingdom of heaven is like a
mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field."
The problem with mustard is that they are weeds. They're weeds! Nobody in their right
mind sows weed seeds. They get in my garden and I rip them out. They're not a popular
plant. You won't find them at the plant nursery or the florist shop. Mustard plants are
like ragweed. It was the same in ancient Palestine. Mustard seeds were banned from planted
gardens. A Jewish Misnah forbids sowing them because they are useless, annoying weeds.
Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed sown into the field."
No one sows such weed seeds unless, of course, you are God.
Mustard seeds are rejects, outcasts, riffraff, lower class, despised and excluded. But
by God, do they grow. By God, they do grow. They grow like weeds: strong, dignified and at
peace.
What an odd parable! Jesus would have us sow weed seeds. He would have us reach out not
to the winners, nor to the kingdom builders, but to the losers:
to the Latino kid flunking math and English;
to the woman going through a divorce;
to the man struggling with his anger;
to the parents struggling to make ends meet and raise decent kids in a hostile world;
to the failed professional taking the first steps toward recovery after hitting bottom;
to the gay couple seeking to commit to a covenantal relationship with one another and
with God.
Jesus would have us reach out to these. Jesus reaches out to us in our brokenness, our
lostness, our spiritual poverty, our injury and, yes, our sin. He says, "The kingdom
of heaven is like you and I, weed seeds."
But far too often the church who bears the name of Jesus Christ, rejects him. We reject
him everyone of us without fail. We nail him to the cross because we are scared. We kill
him because we are scared. Then in the full power of the love of God, he forgives us. In a
dazzling display of amazing grace and resurrection power he forgives us and says,
"Come on in. This is your home."
Home to a stable,
Home to a cross on a lonely hill,
Home to an empty tomb,
Home to a room where in a rush of a mighty wind he pours out his power and enters our
lives and casts us into the field of faith mustard seeds, every one of us:
the proud and the shamed,
the puffed up and the humbled,
the broken and the healing,
the weak and the strong.
We are mustard seeds--weed seeds growing into the full dignity of God in the church
where the poor are rich, where the color of one's skin makes no difference, where all of
God's children, everyone of them gathers and knows that he or she is infinitely loved, and
where the birds of the air and you and I find a home where no one is a stranger.
That is what the kingdom of heaven is like. It is like a mustard seed where from small
beginnings we are transformed into a glorious display of the power of God. This is the
faith in which we stand. This is the faith in which we find our salvation. Thanks be to
God who gives us growth, both now and forever. Amen.
