|
Wallingford Presbyterian Church November 19, 2006 |
Rev. Ken Sunoo |
In my back yard, there is a massive cedar tree. It’s beautiful, solid, noble, gigantic, strong, great. It provides tremendous shade in the summertime, and birds and squirrels occupy its branches. It’s easy to see why the mighty cedar has been used by biblical writers such as Ezekiel as “a messianic allegory” (NRSV notes on Ezekiel 17:22-24).
Jesus knew the writings of this prophet, and Mark did, too. Jesus asked a question, “To what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?” He must have remembered that cedar mentioned by Ezekiel, in which every kind of bird, and every winged creature, would find a nest.
So Jesus told a story to the crowd at his feet, but it turned out a little bit different from our Old Testament text. “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? Well, it is like a mustard seed which is the smallest of all seeds, and yet, it shall grow, and it shall become the greatest of all…shrubs!” That’s it? What happened to the noble cedar?
At first glance, the message of these parables from Ezekiel and Mark is quite simple. “Both parables are about hope in the Kingdom of God. Both affirm that God will accomplish great results from small beginnings.” (Lamar Williamson, Jr., Interpretation) The kingdom of heaven starts very small, like a mustard seed, but sow the seed, and the kingdom will expand in astounding ways. Look how one man, Jesus, preaching in an out-of-the-way corner of the world, transformed the world.
A closer look at this parable, however, shows us that it’s more complex than it seems at first. First, it’s interesting to note that this parable appears in three out of the four gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Luke writes that the mustard seed “grew and became a tree” (Luke 13:19). In Mark, “it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs” (4:32), and Matthew conflates the two: “When it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree” (Matt. 13:32).
Notice that the parable of the mustard seed is full of hyperbole. A mustard seed is small, but it’s not the smallest of all seeds. Furthermore, it’s quite an exaggeration to say that a mustard seed grows into the “greatest of shrubs,” and it certainly doesn’t become a tree vast enough for flocks of nesting birds. Tom Long notes that “Jesus probably has a twinkle in his eye as he plays on the popular image, drawn from the Old Testament, that a mighty political kingdom is like a great and strong tree.” (Long, Matthew, 153).
Great kingdoms are supposed to look like the massive cedars of Lebanon. So what does Jesus offer? The humble image of a mustard bush. The kingdom of heaven is like…a mustard bush? An overgrown shrub? Long says, “The main point remains intact – the kingdom grows to great size from very small beginnings – but another point gets made as well: This greatness does not come in the form we expect. As David Garland has remarked, ‘Jesus’ parable hints that the kingdom is breaking into the world in a disarming and, for many, disenchanting form. We do not sing, ‘A mighty mustard bush is our God.’ The parable implies that the kingdom…will not come ‘as a mighty cedar astride the lofty mountain height’ reaching to the topmost part of the sky but as a lowly mustard bush” (Garland, Reading Matthew, 149-50) (Long, 153)
Barbara Lundblad notes that when the noted minister William Sloan Coffin died not long ago, one of her friends e-mailed her across the country and wrote, “I feel like a giant sequoia has fallen.” Despair falls, when we realize we’ve lost a person like Coffin, or when the task set before us is overwhelming; so often, we’d like to be a noble cedar, but instead we realize that we’re a shrub.
And yet there are over 100 adults and children in our congregation – I would say we as a church are working hard to live faithfully and to use our minds as a gift from God in discerning his word to us. And what if each of you have 5 friends? Surely some of you must have 5 friends. And you shared the good news of Jesus Christ with 5 friends, and they shared with 5 friends, and so on, and so on. Well, that would mean that within Seattle there would be thousands of people who might hear something of the transformative power of God. It’s a start. It’s at least a shrub.
Small places and things can transform our world and make a real difference. Lundblad tells the story of Nehemiah Housing in Brooklyn, which has built many units of affordable housing for poor people. What that program began with was not Nehemiah Housing, but one streetlight at a dangerous intersection. We can be in our city the greatest of all shrubs. (Barbara Lundblad, Lecture at 2006 Festival of Homiletics)
Wallingford is known as a small but mighty church. We raised more money for the Peacemaking offering (not only proportionally, but perhaps overall!) than other much larger churches. The generosity of this congregation for projects like the CROP Walk, Souper Bowl of Caring, Heiffer Project, and the Alternative Gift Market is astounding.
Please don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against large churches. In fact, I love large churches. When I was at seminary, I was under care of a 2000 member church. I worked for a year as an intern at the 60,000 member Young Nak Presbyterian Church in Seoul, Korea. The good work that these large churches with their incredible resources are doing in this world is significant.
But this passage from Mark’s gospel shows us that God also uses small churches for extraordinary purposes. We don’t have to be a mighty cedar megachurch with thousands of members to make a difference in this world. All we have to do is be the shrub God calls us to be, and God will bless the world through us.
We can find comfort in this fact because many days, I don’t feel like a giant cedar tree. Many days, I wake up feeling like a puny mustard shrub. But Jesus says that’s fine – God can still work wonders through little mustard bushes who are trying to be all God has called them to be.
One commentator notes, “The parable of the mustard seed speaks of a kingdom which, for all its miraculous extension, remains lowly. Mustard is an annual plant; its perpetuation depends on renewed sowing, and its perennial promise depends on the life of the seed. It is an image which corresponds closely to the picture of the Kingdom of God in Mark: a mystery whose realization will come as a surprise; a reality whose weakness is its power” (Lamar Williamson, Jr., Interpretation, 98-99).
May God sow and re-sow us, tend and water us, so that we continue to grow into the healthy, fruitful shrub God has called us to be. Amen.