I don't think I can, but I know God can

 

This morning we get parables from Jesus about the Kingdom of heaven.

Jesus uses everyday things to explain what the Kingdom of heaven is like.

The parables all have in common three things.

One, something small that becomes much more than what it appears.

Two, all of these things are hidden from us.

Three, that once we discovered it, we will give up everything for it.

I suppose one of the sermons that could be given about the parables is a common idea in our culture.

It is an idea that we learn from a very early age.

The idea that we can do it.

No matter how small or insignificant we might appear that if we believe enough, and work hard enough we can overcome anything.

This idea is present in a lot of media.

I know I learned it as a child from the popular children’s book, The Little Engine That Could.

I assume that all of us know that book, so I won’t repeat plot.

But we all know the catch phrase that comes from it, “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.”

When you’re young this is an important message.

It is important to believe in yourself, and it is important to do your best in whatever you do no matter how small the task is.

However, it is not the message of our parables this morning.

Our parables point to us a different truth.

It is a truth that is rooted in faith in God, and not in ourselves.

In all the parables God plants the hidden nature of the kingdom in small, insignificant, and in some cases opposite things.

In all the parables it is God whose action brings about the outcome.

 

I hesitate to give this sermon this morning, because I know how much it goes against our cultural beliefs.

But also, because it might appear that I am telling people to give up, or not to have hope.

I want to be clear that is not the message I am giving this morning.

Instead, I want to focus our hope and our belief in a different place.

I want to focus our hope on God.

I want us to believe in God.

 

As your pastor I spend time listening to your struggles.

It is the main part of my calling.

And many of you are getting older.

What comes with getting older is losing things.

Losing your physical abilities, your mental abilities.

As one person I was visiting said to me, “Pastor my world keeps getting smaller and smaller.”

Those conversations often end with people giving me advice about how to deal with getting older.

What many of you say to me is, “Pastor don’t get old.”

That is not great advice.

Because I know and you know that is impossible.

Everyone gets old, everyone loses things as they get old.

It is not only inevitable it is also the way God set up our life on this earth.

And no amount of positive thinking, no amount of thinking you can, will change that truth.

 

I don’t know when it will happen, but there comes a time for all of us when we realize that there are certain things that are out of our control.

I don’t know when I discovered that I simply can’t bend the world to my will.

I can’t stop wars, hunger, hatred, violence, injustice.

I can work to eradicate them from my life, but I can’t stop them from happening in the world.

 

I also realize that not everything happens for a reason.

I know that is also not a very popular idea.

The other day was the fifth-year anniversary of my mother’s death.

I will tell you that I can’t find one good reason for her dying.

Five years later it still doesn’t make any sense to me.

Why would my mother, who was a kind gentle person, who didn’t drink or smoke, who ate well, and exercised everyday die.

(Please don’t try to come up with one for me.

That will only tell me you didn’t listen to this sermon.)

Some things just don’t make sense, and there are no lessons to be drawn from them.

 

Perhaps you are worried that I lost faith in God.

And nothing can be further from the truth.

Because those are times when we need faith.

We need faith when there are no answers, when age catches up with us, when it seems that injustice and hatred have won.

That is what faith is for.

 

Consider the parables that Jesus tells this morning.

Yeast is buried in the bread.

It is underneath the surface and does its work in secret.

The Mustard seed is buried in the ground, doing its work beyond our vision.

The fish are beneath the surface hidden from us.

The treasure is buried and lost.

All the parables talk about the hiddenness of God’s work.

We can’t see it.

And to me that is the point.

We need faith to believe that those things will produce something bigger and better.

Faith to believe that the dough will rise and feed us.

Faith to believe that a tree will appear big enough to give us shade.

Faith to believe that God will sort out the good fish from the bad fish.

Faith to believe that the treasure is in the field.

 

Never once after my mother died did, I worry about her.

I knew through faith that God had something glorious in store for her in God’s heavenly kingdom.

When you tell me what you are going through as you age, I never doubt that God is with you giving you the strength to accept what is.

Despite all the injustice and hatred of the world I have faith that God will someday make it right.

 

I was reading this week about a person who had a very difficult life.

His father was a drug addict and would hit him and his mother.

He lost his job and ended up living a life of squaller on the street.

His mother tired of the years died at an early age.

He bounced around from place to place.

He struggled in his own life with drugs and poverty.

He said that when he read this parable of the mustard seed what he thought about was the tree that was produced by the mustard seed.

And he was drawn to the idea that it produced a tree where people find a home and rest.

He suggested that we not call it the parable of the mustard seed, but the parable of the home tree.

That is what God provides for us.

God doesn’t promise us a life that is free from the struggles and sins of the world.

God doesn’t say that if we only believe we will be able to do it.

What God says, is believe in me.

Believe that below the surface of what you can see and know, I am making bread, a safe home, a place of justice, a field of joy.

That is faith.

And I wanted to let you all know this morning that is what we all have been given.

Not a false hope in our ability to control the outcome.

But a living faith in God’s love and grace.

A living faith that tells us that God is always at work.

Even when we can’t see it, imagine it, understand it.

That is what I believe in.

Not that I think I can, but that I know God can.

I hope for all of you this faith that allows you to give control over to God, and believe that God will provide a tree for rest, your daily bread, justice for those who are oppressed, and the joy in knowing that you have the most precious thing in the world, God’s love and grace.

Amen