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
