Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 14, 2009

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

It’s a puzzling thing. What Jesus says about mustard in Mark’s Gospel just doesn’t make sense. He says that the mustard 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.” And we all know that that’s just wrong. A mustard seed may indeed be very small, but the mustard plant is hardly “the greatest of all shrubs,” with large branches providing shelter for birds. A mustard plant just isn’t anywhere near that big or that grand, that imposing. It’s just a small plant. A useful plant to be sure. I certainly enjoy a preparation made from it, or from its seeds, on my hot dogs. But the plant isn’t particularly impressive. And it’s hard to imagine that Jesus would have made that mistake. He was a rural person, well acquainted with the agriculture of his time and place. So what’s going on here? Did Jesus just get mixed up about mustard plants?

Well, no. It seems that the version of this parable in Mark is not the original version of the parable. It seems likely that in the original version of the parable there was no reference to the mustard seed growing into a large shrub, much less into a tree as it does in Luke’s version of the parable. Apparently in the original version of the parable the mustard just grows into a regular mustard plant, a very modest plant indeed, hardly one in which birds can nest. At least, the original version apparently didn’t emphasize the size of the plant as much as Mark’s version does. And it appears that the tradition wasn’t satisfied with that modest metaphor for the Kingdom of God. As time went by the parable got retold in ways that make this botanical image of God’s Kingdom bigger and grander, more like the great cedar tree in the reading from Ezekiel that we heard this morning.

Jesus, on the other hand, apparently was satisfied with a very modest image for the Kingdom of God. It begins from the tiniest seed. It grows into a modest plant, at least in this parable. The Kingdom isn’t big. It isn’t powerful. It isn’t grand. It is ultimately the most powerful thing in the world, but it is powerful in some way that is very different from the world’s conception of power. Apparently we are to understand that the Kingdom’s power is in its modesty. Its extraordinariness is in it ordinariness. Jesus often used very modest metaphors like this for the Kingdom. The salt of the earth. The leaven in the loaf. Things small yet having powerful effects disproportionate to their size. The Kingdom comes not through violent revolution, not through force and power. The Kingdom comes through the transforming power of little things, things that work slowly and are often quite unnoticed except in their effect. Jesus is of course upending society’s expectations in these metaphors. In his day the Kingdom of God was supposed to come with chariots and spears, with military might that would drive the Romans into the sea. In our day so many people expect it to come through the kind of violent end time upheaval depicted in the book of Revelation. Jesus called it a “Kingdom” after all. Kingdoms have kings, and kings are figures of power and military might. But not for Jesus. Jesus turns us away from the culturally conditioned way of thinking and points us to the modest, the small, the agent of transformation that is barely noticeable but that does profound, even powerful work in the world. The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that grows into a modest plant. There is, I think, an important lesson for us in that way of seeing the Kingdom.

After worship today we will gather in what I have been calling a “Get the Word Out” meeting. In the email I sent out some time back first announcing this meeting I asked whether you ever wonder why our congregation isn’t ten times bigger than it is. I said that I do wonder why our congregation isn’t ten times bigger than it is, and I suggested what I think it is about us that, I believe, should result in a lot more people coming to us than have so far. I do wonder those things, but before we go into our meeting here in an hour or so there are some additional observations I want to make.

We all want our church to grow, or at least most of us do; but there is a danger in that desire. It is the danger of falling into the world’s way of thinking that bigger is necessarily better, that size indicates success, that small is powerless and insignificant. As we’ve just seen, that’s not Jesus’ way of looking at things. Jesus points us precisely to the small, to the modest, and says that’s how it is with God’s Kingdom. So as we consider how we might attract more people to our fellowship, we need to keep one thing firmly in mind. There’s nothing wrong with how we are now. We are just fine the way we are now. In fact, we’re great the way we are now. We’re extraordinary the way we are now. If you doubt that, talk to some of our newer members who have come from other churches, or from no church, and have found here what their spirits long for that they thought they’d never find. We are already extraordinary. We preach a gospel of God’s unconditional, inclusive love and grace that you’d never hear in the vast majority of the other churches in this area. We are a fellowship of Christians that for many of us becomes a fellowship of real friends. We care for each other. We nurture each other. There truly is nothing wrong with how we are right now, right today.

But here’s the thing. We need to do a better job of getting the word out about who and how we are not because we need more people, not because we need to change or be transformed from what we are. That truly is not what it’s about. I used to hear all the time around here that we need new people because of our budget deficit, but the success of our capital campaign for the roof shows that we don’t really need new people even for financial reasons. No. We need to do a better job of getting the word out about who and how we are not because of our need but because we know that there are so many people out there in need of what we, of what through us God, can give them. There are so many souls out there who think that Christianity rejects them because so many other churches reject them because of who they are. They may even think that God rejects them because that’s what other Christians have told them. And we know that it just isn’t true. We can tell them that it just isn’t true. We can show them that it just isn’t true by being instruments of God’s grace and God’s peace for them. We need to get the word out not because we need to grow but because, small as we are, we can be a place for troubled souls to rest, for seekers to explore, for inquiring minds to learn, for giving spirits to share.

And we think: But we’re so small and the job is so big. Which is true of course, but Jesus, the one we call Lord and Savior, pointed again and again to the power of the modest. Jesus believed in the power of even the tiniest thing, even a mustard seed, to transform the world. After all, the group around him was, at first at least, smaller than we are; and look what they did. There’s nothing wrong with being small. God works with the small, I believe, even more than God works with the big things of the world. God works with the small to transform the whole, and that’s why we need to get the word out. There are people out there, folks, who need us and what we offer. But they don’t know we exist. They think all Christian churches are narrow and judgmental. They don’t know that there is a better Christian way. They don’t know the Jesus we know. They don’t know the God we know. They don’t know the church we know. Let’s get on with the work of telling them. Amen.