Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ

Preached by Winton Boyd on Sunday, August 12
Matthew 13 (see end of sermon for text)

As a parent of three teenage children, I have a special place in my heart for parents of three young children. In the vast reservoir of memories over the last 20 years, one of the most poignant is the shift from two young children to three, all under the age of 5. Tammy and I always thought we would like more than two children, and yet the shift from two to three was one of the hardest transitions of our lives. It was then that I learned the true meaning of the word exponential. The chaos, work, sleep deprivation and relational interactions – at least for us – were vastly, exponentially, more complicated with 3 children than with 2. It wasn’t a reflection on the personality or demands of the third child - but the impact of adding just one person - no matter who it was. It was a classic case, literally, of too much of a good thing. It was an amazing experience of knowing that the thing we had waited for for years was both beautiful and amazingly out of our control.

It is this exponentially growing chaos, my spiritual director would tell me at the time, that will teach me about faith.

Jesus was also about using life to teach faith. Brandon Scott, speaker in our Java and Jesus series, “Saving Jesus” points that Jesus, as a Jew, emerges from a “culture of interpretation.” Taking very simple images and stories, Jesus seeks to think about and experience God.

Example one. The realm of God is like a mustard seed.

It has generally been agreed among Bible scholars that the mustard tree of Scripture is the common black mustard which was cultivated for its oil as well as for culinary purposes. The seed of this plant is about the size of a pin head and was one of the smallest known to the people of Galilee, and likely the smallest cultivated seed.

The remarkable phenomenon of these mustard plants is that, though they are really herbs, they may grow to be ten or twelve feet in height, with a stem the size of a man’s arm. Thus they become a resting place for the smaller varieties of birds.

John Dominac Crossan points that this image has a touch of satire – making fun of the usual image of temporal power as a mighty oak or cedar. It would be obvious to state that the Kingdom of God is like the mighty Lebanon cedar, which also starts from a small seed, but instead Jesus says it is like the mustard weed. However, he also says this parable evokes an image of something that is both useful and dangerous. The mustard seed is, on the one hand, useful and manageable; but on the other, it is dangerous and can easily take over.

The realm of God, Jesus seems to be saying, is both useful/desirable/admirable AND dangerous. Watch out, he seems to be saying, with a wink in his eye – while the presence of God in our lives may be desirable, we need to be careful because it might takeover. God is a dangerous commodity.

Is he suggesting we NOT take God seriously – no. Rather, as Marcus Borg points out, he is inviting us to a “radical centering in Mystery with a capital M.” He is speaking about the futility of domesticating God.

He then moves into today’s second parable, known as the parable of the baker.

The imagery of this parable is quite striking - by the amount of flour that the woman adds the leaven to. Three cups (¾ lb.) of flour is enough to make a loaf of bread large enough to feed ten or more adults. The three “measures” (Greek: sata = Hebrew: seah) that the woman uses in this parable, however, amounts to half a bushel (almost 18 liters) or more than 30 pounds of flour. That would be enough to make at least 40 large loaves or sufficient bread to feed at least 400 people.

In addition, in everyday Jewish imagery, leaven was tied to corruption. Unleavend bread was holy bread. The Dueteronomic code was that God takes that which is impure and makes it pure.

So Jesus is saying that the realm of God is like “a lot ofleaven” (that which is unclean) that corrupts or infiltrates everything until it is all impure. How is the Kingdom of God a corrupting agent? Could it be that in a surprising turn, Jesus is saying, God has changed sides. God not on the side of holy/clean; God not making the impure or unclean holy. God becomes unclean and unholy by association. God is on the side of those we may not expect.

As I have thought about this first parable in particular, I have pondered what it means for our time. If Jesus was making a joke that God might take over our lives - those words play right into the fears many of us have about religious faith in our time. We do know too many for whom religious faith is fanatical, is overpowering, and is dangerous – in very real ways. It makes it at best a bad joke and at worst, blind to the real issues of our time.

But the more I sat with this I realized that in an ironic twist, this may be speaking to us in very important ways. I suspect for many of us the “weed” that could grow out of control is not an overly religious faith, but a safe, compartmentalized faith - the stance that keeps faith at an arm’s length. Our challenge may be the reverse of Jesus’ joke – that in working so hard to keep our faith reasonable and manageable – we face the possibility of actually losing our faith.

This congregation has created a team of folks called the Next Generation Mission Team that is looking at how we want to program our ministry into the next generation of this church’s life. We are looking at the characteristics of programming that research and observation suggest inspire a growth in faith and trying to match them with the work and ministry we do here. One of the key questions in our deliberations is How seriously do we want to take our faith? How big a component of our life do we want our faith to be? How much do we want to grow as spiritual children and adults?

In the climate of religious fundamentalism and fanaticism, how willing are we to open our lives to the work of the Spirit?

Because so many fundamentalists use faith as a weapon against all who think differently than them, many liberal, churchgoing folks have given up pursuing a faith life at all. In our effort to control and compartmentalize God, we lose sight of how easily our unwillingness to see the world with eyes of faith will take over our lives. We easily become observers of religion, rather than practitioners of spiritual faith. We don’t take our spiritual growth seriously, we don’t think about praying, we don’t look for ways to deepen our understanding. We keep our faith manageable and in its proper place. And please don’t think I am not including myself.

As a tradition, many liberal churchgoing folks have flipped Jesus’ parable on its head.

Just about a month ago, I received a call on our cell phone with some very bad news. I received the news at the beginning of a weekend when my extended family were gathering for celebrating, eating, golfing, and honoring my father’s 80th birthday. At the moment I heard the news, I was sitting with two relatives who are what I would call enthusiastic evangelical Christians. We don’t usually agree on theology or politics. At times we have argued mightily. But while I don’t share their perspective, I have always respected their faithfulness. Within a minute my telling them what I had just heard on the phone, news that not even Tammy had heard yet, they asked if we could pray. Right there on the lawn of my sister’s house, they prayed spontaneously, verbally, and powerfully. Before I knew any details, in a moment of confusion and shock, they asked God’s spirit to be in my life. They asked God’s spirit to be in the life of all involved. They named the power of trusting God’s spirit even in the darkest hours. They did not give me theology, they prayed on my behalf.

Our family has received many, many cards, calls and words of sympathy, for which we are grateful. But I must say that I was uniquely touched by the gift of faith, the gift of prayer, the willingness to immediately and without reservation, invoke the Spirit of life and light.

Their instinctive reaction became a powerful and potent spiritual resource in a time of need.

Our faith, Jesus says, is a mystery that defies our expectations – God comes to us and the world in ways that are mysterious and a bit out of control. It is into that mix – that chaotic, complicated and curious life – that we are called.

Matthew 13 (New King James Version)
31 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field,
32 “which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.”

33 Another parable He spoke to them: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.”