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Sermon - Second Sunday after Pentecost (B) - 14th June 2009
St Aidans' Anglican Church West Epping - 8:30am
Reading: 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13, Psalm 20, 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17 Mark 4:26-34
Jesus said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God?”
It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’
As you recollect these verses about the kingdom of God picture in your mind of the vivid image of a beautiful tree. It is a tree of the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control and justice about which the prophets spoke in God’s name. The tree of life is sturdy and strong, standing by the banks of a flowing river. The poor are resting in its branches and it is large enough for everyone; black, brown, red, yellow, white, men and women, young and old, saints and sinners alike, all have a place.
I long for the kingdom to reflect that image but Jesus says the kingdom is like a seed, the smallest of the seeds, which will someday grow into that great tree.
A teacher uses a mustard seed when teaching this parable about the kingdom. When he passes the seed around a circle of children, he tells them to be careful not to breathe out or they will blow the seed out of their hands.
The kingdom always starts small, beginning in ways that are quite fragile and shaky. We want to be the tree but God says, "Be patient, have courage, you still have some growing to do, and I am not done with you yet."
There is only one way to see a large tree of peace and justice when we are looking at a small seed in the palm of our hand and that is to see through the eyes of faith. The eyes of faith don't despise small beginnings. The eyes of faith don't despair of little things.
Our communities, our work for peace and justice, and our efforts often seem small. We face seemingly overwhelming odds. We are small mustard seeds, so fragile sometimes that it seems we might just be blown away.
We live in a rootless age. People are tossed to and fro by every wind. The forces of evil know that's the best way to control people: take them away from their roots, destroy their knowledge of their past, crush their hope for the future, consign them to live only in the present. We are people who need to be called again and again to faith, back to our roots.
In the second reading we are called to “ … walk by faith and not by sight.”. Faith means to believe in spite of the evidence and then watch the evidence change.
These readings are about the heart of what we believe. They remind us of who we are. They remind us of who our God is and who we are supposed to live as the people of God.
I would suggest that we either will learn to live by faith, or we are not going to survive. Unless we can learn to live in the way that these passages suggest that we are to live, we are not going to make it.
By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God and that God continues to care for the world. Our spiritual forebears all knew that, no matter what happened, God would have the last word. They demonstrated that knowledge by the choices they made and the way they lived their lives.
The roll call of faith is long and varied. We hear stories of the lives of Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, Peter, Mary Magdalene, Augustine, Francis, Aidan, Luther, Cranmer and members of our own family. This is not a gallery of success and accomplishment; these are not winners and world shakers here. In fact, most of them wouldn't be called successful by any standard. Things didn't go well for a good many of these people, but they kept the faith and so they are remembered.
The situations we sometimes find ourselves are in gives us countless reasons to give up on faith. None the less, for us, faith is not an abstract issue. It is the substance necessary for survival.
Every one of us has known the agony and loneliness of despair. Every one of us has had to find the kind of faith that is not destroyed by the failure and suffering of the moment. We are a people accustomed to suffering from time to time difficult days and hard times.
We are also becoming a people learning where to turn for faith. We are still on the road, still fighting the good fight. That simple fact alone is a concrete sign of hope.
If we gathered all the mustard seeds together, we could grow quite a garden. The promise of faith is that these seeds will grow into a great tree of justice and peace. That tree of justice and peace is a family tree, the tree of God's family.
In these days we must encourage one another to tell the story of the family tree and our own stories because we too are part of that great cloud of witnesses. The roll call of faith continues. Let us not miss the opportunity to tell our stories, to listen to the stories of one another and to understand ourselves to be part of that family tree. Let us be people of faith.
Based upon Seeds of Faith. by Jim Wallis. Sojourners Magazine, May 1985