SIXTH SUNDAY after PENTECOST

July 24, 2011

Text: Matthew 13:31-32

Pastor Dale G. Bauer

The faith you and I have comes from a little land, two thousand years ago, known to the Romans as Palestine. Geographically, it is a very little area and politically it was of little consequence. Its claim to fame was that it was at a crossroads in the Eastern part of the Empire. It was smack dab in the center of Asia, the Parthian Empire, Arabia, Egypt, and the Mediterranean Sea. So every dominant power over the centuries wanted to occupy and hold Palestine to keep trade routes open. And that’s about all it was worth. It didn’t have any strategic metals, like copper or gold. It wasn’t an agricultural breadbasket that could export grain. It had a tiny population that couldn’t put together much of an army.

The people were poor and uneducated. They were mostly subsistence farmers, herdsmen, and marginal craftsmen. They lived in small towns with poor roads. They
practiced a wacko religion. They believed there was only one God, Yahweh, who was maker of heaven and earth. Yahweh loved his people and practiced faithfulness and justice. They were surrounded by an empire full of gods, some of whom looked like animals and some of whom looked like humans. These gods helped out with agriculture, fertility, and played tricks on their peoples; the Greek gods where especially good at tricking and humiliating those who worshipped them. The Israelites were so strange that they refused to fight on the Sabbath and were exempted from military service.

In this backwater crossroads comes Jesus of Nazareth. Sitting in a little boat on a puddle called the Sea of Galilee, he tells his audience about mustard seeds. They are little seeds almost too small to believe, but when planted they grow to a bush that could reach ten feet tall. It was a place of shade, a place for birds to nest and play.

This image is used to talk about the kingdom of God, something which Jesus promised would spring from him. From this backwater country would come something great, even unimaginable. It was strange to the ears of his hearers. They could not conceive, I bet, what this kingdom meant. Or what shape it would take. Or what it would look like. Lots of them, I bet, didn’t understand Jesus or quickly forgot what he said. They thought very small; Jesus was talking very big.

We have the perspective of history. The kingdom of God exploded across the face of the Roman Empire and seeped well beyond it. They could not conceive of the basilica that stands over the grave of Peter in Rome. The death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth in his day was hardly noted. In a couple of generations, it stood as the empire crumbled. It lives on to this very day.

Mustard-seed faith promises that Christ will always be with us and it will grow into something amazing. Mustard-seed faith takes root one person at a time. Peter, the great disciple, lied about knowing Jesus. He went into hiding. But he later proclaimed his resurrected Lord boldly. Paul, the first great missionary and theologian of the Christian community, tried to eliminate Christianity. But when his mustard-seed faith took hold he began to spread word of Jesus around the world. I got a letter from someone once that was truly amazing. This person had the faith about the size of a mustard seed. This person went to church, didn’t go to church. Sought the ways of this world to find direction. Then reentered the church and this discipline of worship, reading Scripture, and prayer. That little mustard-seed faith grew into a life-giving faith and joy.

Mustard-seed faith takes hold in communities. None of the people listening to Jesus talk about the kingdom as a mustard seed that grows into a bush would have conceived of the church as we know it today. It outlasted the Roman Empire. It is truly a worldwide church that at its best proclaims the kingdom and seeks to bear the burdens of others.

It has, by the power of the Spirit, changed and adapted. We face those same challenges today. What will the mustard-seed faith we hold look like in a decade or two? What I read says that churches will look much different than they do now. Word is that people are becoming more “spiritual” and less “religious,” meaning that people want to move away from the organization and discipline of traditional churches. I have, on my little cul-de-sac, a home church. A Sunday get-together of people who want to talk, read Scripture, and pray. What is the mustard-seed faith going to look like as this congregation
ventures into the future?

What drives this mustard-seed faith? It thrives when we put fear aside, trust that Christ Jesus can bring about in us the kingdom, and each of us has a mustard-seed faith. It thrives when we keep our eyes on the big picture rather than the small picture. The great ability of mustard-seed faith is simply that it is able to see beyond the
grave. It is something that began 2,000 years ago in the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a hope that fueled the expansion of the community of Christ, the Church. Missionary Paul got it right when he said:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If you can believe these words, you can watch mustard-seed faith grow in you, in others, in the church.

Amen.