Proper 6B, June 17, 2012

O startling God, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Instead of the usual Gospel acclamation this morning, I was tempted to shout, “Hallelujah, we are back in the Gospel of Mark!” and invite you to respond, “Thanks be to God!” I don’t actually know if you all are as happy about it as I am. I am aware that I’m a Bible geek! I just love the baffling Zen koan nature of Jesus’ teachings in the earliest Gospel, and I love Mark’s aside’s like when he writes“with many such parables he spoke the word to them…but he explained everything in private to his students (or disciples).” Left unwritten, however, is the private explanation of the riddles. I think the assumption is that the readers or hearers of this Good News get the jokes. I have a strong sense that Jesus was a very funny man – that humor was a part of his medicine bag. The problem is that two thousand years later, no-one cracks up with laughter when I read this Gospel passage in church.

Those of us who were conditioned by Sunday School tend to hear this as a tender and sweet story about how God grows what we plant in mysterious ways, and about how tiny people and tiny deeds and tiny faith can grow into something great. This was the Sunday School lesson that tried (but failed) to keep me from digging up my little seed planted in a Dixie cup to see how it was growing when I just couldn’t wait any more for it to sprout through the soil at the surface. It was this Sunday School lesson that made me want to buy a little charm for my little charm bracelet that had a little mustard seed set (safely) in a plastic bubble.

I’ve never been much of a gardener (as my inauspicious start with the Dixie cup planting predicted), and so the idea that throwing seed on the ground (the word here is more like toss than plant) and then having it all ready to harvest because the work of the earth, after I did nothing but sleep and rise every day, sounded pretty good for a long time. The word in Greek about how the seeds grow is “automatay” – automatically. And since I’ve never tried to plant and harvest a crop, the idea of attracting all the birds of the air to a field never struck me as particularly problematic until much later. But I know that some of you are marvelous gardeners and perhaps that’s why you don’t laugh when you hear this lesson. It’s really not that funny if you are a careful, hardworking grower of food.

So it’s not that those Sunday-school lessons were all wrong – they were just much too tame and careful and utterly devoid of mischief. Here’s the thing about mustard. Roman historian, Pliny the Elder, wrote this about mustard, in his first century encyclopedia, Natural History: “Mustard…with its pungent taste and fiery effect is extremely beneficial for the health.” In fact, according to Pliny there was hardly an ailment that mustard could not cure. Pliny continues in his entry about mustard, “It grows entirely wild…[and] when it has been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it.” [1] And here’s the other thing about mustard. The Mishnah, an ancient middle-eastern almanac for faithful Israelites, points out that it was unlawful to plant mustard in a garden and it was dangerous to plant it in a field.

Perhaps this is a clue that Jesus’ hearers don’t have fields to work in and maybe that they resented folks who did. Perhaps this is a clue that Jesus is teaching something subversive here. Jesus is saying that the realm of God is like a seed that grows into a shrubbery – a big scrubby bush, which takes over where it is not wanted and that quickly gets out of control and that it attracts undesirables who will make a big mess. You know birds make big messes right? Jesus is saying that the realm of God has blatant disregard for order or common sense, or for the expectations of law-abiding people. (Listen well Episcopalians.) But it’s not any old weed that he used for an example of the realm of God – it’s this amazing source of healing power, this mustard! The realm of God, the rule of love, is scandalous, wild and incredibly healing. It will turn your world upside down. (Or maybe turn it back right side up.)

In spite of my cautions that this is not a tender Sunday School tale, I’ve had a sappy Burt Bacharach song stuck in my head all week as I’ve meditated on this Gospel lesson. I’ll not sing it for you, but look up the lyrics if you don’t know it. The chorus goes, “The world is a circle without a beginning and nobody knows where it really ends. Everything depends on where you are in the circle that’s spinning around, half of the time you are upside down.” In the Gospels, it’s parables that are meant to overturn, deconstruct, and transform in the most subversive ways. These ways are frightening if we are fairly satisfied with the way things are; but if we desire something “more than the status quo of scarcity and fear and limited justice and all the [inadequate] rest we’re regularly offered, then maybe…[this promise about the realm of God, the rule of love] offers a word of hope.” [2] This hope isn’t just meant to cheer us up; it is meant to move us to action. [3]

What are we meant to do in response to this teaching of hope? Well I can think of three things. The first is laugh. You know, loosen up a little, when Jesus tells his funny stories about the chaotic and amazing ways that the Love of God works. In the 16th century Martin Luther wrote, “If you truly understood a single gram of wheat you would die of wonder.” I think that maybe if we truly understood a single mustard seed we would die of laughter!

The second is renew a practice of humility. Strip away whatever pretense has accumulated in our hearts lately. Remind ourselves that we don’t have the foggiest idea how life and growth really happen. Even if you are a medical doctor or PhD biologist or chemist or physicist, there’s still a lot of mystery. “Remember that God is God and we are not God,” as Bishop Barbara Harris likes to say. The Church is not God. Military might is not God. Economic power is not God. We can’t control our own life or the lives around us, really. We can choose to co-operate with God’s grace or not. We can be loving and generous or not – that is our choice.

The third thing that we are meant to do in response to this teaching is harvest what we did not plant or water; we are meant to go right away when the grain is ripe, when the time is right, and gather some of the abundance of God’s grace. We do have work to do. We are also meant to notice – to take stock of those places where God’s realm is infiltrating – where hope is growing like a weed – where God’s love is sneaking in or spreading out. We are meant to gather the fruit of the harvest. I’m sure I don’t fully understand what that means, but here’s an idea for you.
A month or so ago, I invited you to get out your phones and take pictures in our worship service during a baptism so that you could have a reminder of your own inherent dignity and the dignity of every human being. I’m not going to suggest you take your phones out again right now at this service, but I do want to invite you to take pictures during this next week of those places where you see unexpected growth in love and generosity. I saw an example the other day on a tractor trailer on the Mass Pike. It was a big sign that said: “1 Cor 16:14 Let all that you do be done in love.” It was so surprising to me – not what I expected at all. The examples you find might not be completely obvious or grand – it might be more like the way a weed spreads – and you’ll know it’s the realm of God at work if it’s providing encouragement along the way or a safe space for folks who are usually least, lost or left out. If you can’t take a photograph, find one in the newspaper or draw one freehand! Send them to me – I’ll figure out how to share them with the rest of the Emmanuel community. It will spread hope and help us all take the long view.

Many of you know the famous reflection written for Archbishop Oscar Romero – which is often referred to as a prayer. It was in our bulletins for the celebration of my institution as your rector. I review it periodically. It goes:

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. [I would add – we harvest what we did not grow.]
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are [all of us] workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

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