Gen 28:15-28; Ps 105:1-11,45b; Rom 8:26-39; Matt 13:31-33,44-52
Faith. Not so easy a thing to have these days. The forces of darkness are working overtime these days. Just look at one of the many ways evil manifests itself in our modern world.
Human trafficking is the trade of humans being used for the purpose of forced labor, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. Human trafficking is the trade of people as goods, primarily women and children. Currently it is estimated that over 40 million men, women, and children are the victims of human trafficking annually. Victims are forced into slave labor, forced into prostitution and pornography, forced into marriage, forced into surrogacy, forced into human organ harvesting, forced into domestic servitude, forced to transport and sell illegal substances like narcotics, forced into all manner of dangerous and illegal and humiliating work with little or no compensation. Those routinely trafficked are the most vulnerable and unprotected: the immigrant, the poor, the homeless, the victims of natural disasters, with children making up 30 % of those trafficked. It is estimated that almost half a trillion dollars are generated annually off the pain and suffering of those trafficked world-wide.
In the face of such evil it’s sometimes hard to believe that faith, even faith as small as a mustard seed, is still possible in our world today. If you put your faith only in humans, like Jacob did in his uncle Laban to be a man of his word and to give him the wife he worked for 7 years to earn, you’re going to be disappointed. Pride and thirst for power in this world make faith seem like a distant dream sometimes. But as hopeless and helpless as events in our world today seek to make us feel, neither pride nor power in this world can overcome faith; faith that transforms, the faith that comes from humble beginnings, beginnings as small as a mustard seed.
Humble beginnings. Those times in your life where you participate in something that seems small and insignificant at the start, but near the end you begin to realize that something miraculous has happened, a transformation that you never could have imagined.
Picture yourself at the beginning of High School. You can really see it in those ninth grade pictures. You enter as a gangly teenager, and you exit as an adult. It’s not until you look back in your yearbooks that you see the evidence of growth, of maturity, of transformation.
I remember looking at my father’s wallet when I was fourteen or fifteen. I didn’t even have one yet at that point. My father’s wallet was huge, the size of a hero sandwich, imposing. The contents of his wallet were full of life, full of maturity and power, full of that transformation into an adult that I was waiting for. It had: a driver’s license – that was a huge one, freedom I only dreamed about at fifteen; pictures of loved ones – especially of family and children; credit cards – a symbol that you were trusted; cash money – something I didn’t see a lot of at fifteen; a voter registration card – a symbol of what it means to take part in being an American; receipts – a history of life lived and things done; and notes: lists of things to remember like birthdays and anniversaries, or of groceries to bring home to a growing family.
I remember wondering what it would be like to one day have a wallet, a leather pouch filled with accomplishments and history and experience and life. When I finally got one there wasn’t much to put into it. My first wallet had that card you put your name, address, and phone number on so when you leave in on the roof of your car or at the check-out line it can be returned to you. It had about three dollars in bills. It had my membership card for the Titanic Historical Society. And it had my President’s Physical Fitness award card signed by former president Richard Nixon. Humble beginnings.
Jesus is speaking to us this today about humble beginnings, things that appear insignificant early on. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a mustard seed or a yeast germ. Both are pretty small as small goes. To look at them you’d never think they had much potential to do anything, to have any effect on their environment.
Those who looked at Jesus the man early on didn’t see anything significant, either. All they saw was another poor Jew, a hayseed craftsman who had gone into his father’s (small ‘f’ for father’s) business. He looked powerless and unimportant. As Isaiah prophesizes, to look at him there was nothing remarkable about him, nothing in him to take note of.
But if you judged the ability of a mustard seed to grow by its small stature you’d be in for a shock. Not only does a mustard seed grow into a bush the size of a tree, it also gives many branches and dense cover for birds to safely nest in. The mustard seed grows and brings new life.
And so also this insignificant man, poor and powerless, grows into his full stature and goes into his Father’s (capital “F” this time) business. From a dirty stable to an empty tomb, Jesus changes the world in 33 short years, and shows the world what the growing Kingdom of God looks like. The Father’s Son grows and brings new life.
Jesus’ message is subversive, probably ridiculous to the powers of his time: Everyone has value. Combat violence with stubborn passive resistance. Be prepared to die for the truth. To save your life you have to put yourself into situations where you may lose it. There is no greater gift than to offer one’s life for another. Wealth and possessions will possess you. Give thanks even in suffering? Put God first in everything? God is not the co-pilot, God is the pilot, so take your hands off the wheel. The measure with which you judge others will be the measure used to judge you also Love those who hate you and persecute you, and rejoice when they do so for the sake of the good news. These are difficult messages, even today.
Yeast is a pretty amazing thing. If you’ve ever seen bread without yeast, matzo and other flat breads, you witness the power of yeast to make bread fuller. Crackers and bread without yeast can get pretty dry and brittle. Add some yeast and poof, some of life’s most tasty breads and pastries are born.
Jesus’ good news adds fullness to life, adds meaning to a dry and brittle existence. Living in the Kingdom that Jesus brings means that, even in the midst of struggle and suffering and death, life can also be sweet and meaningful and joyous… and everlasting.
The good news in today’s gospel reading is that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, like a peasant child born in a stable, lying in an animal feeding troth for a bed. No one expects anything significant of him, yet he grows and shakes the very foundations and the powers of this world. He brings salvation through his death on the cross and in his resurrection, defeating death forever on the hard wood of a cross. Through him our path to everlasting life has been cleared.
The Good News of the Kingdom of God is like yeast, like the message Jesus left with his disciples. The “germ” of the good news he preached was mixed in with just a few faithful apostles, but after decades and centuries and millennia has spread throughout the entire world. The good news that Jesus preaches brings new fullness of life in this one, and life everlasting in the next. And in the Kingdom of God, there’s always more mixing and blending to do.
The Good News of the Kingdom of God is like finding a hidden treasure, like the good news that Jesus preached. At first it may seem too hard to believe or accept, like just another hope-filled fantasy. Upon finding Jesus’ good news of salvation, the only thing left to do to keep it is to give up everything else that gets in the way of accepting the salvation that comes with that good news. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The Good News of the Kingdom of God is like judging good fish from bad ones, like being in the world but not of the world. Living life according to the good news is not easy, is never easy, and if we think we can live in the world and in the Kingdom equally, we’re doing it wrong.
The Good News of the Kingdom of God is like a well-trained bible scholar who sorts through scripture’s treasures and wisely discerns how to apply old meanings to new times. It may seem like what is old is better than what is new or vice versa, but age has nothing to do with it. God is not concerned with time, only we are. In the Kingdom of God what has value is what is of God, those who nurtured his Kingdom two thousand years ago and those who nurture his Kingdom today.
The Good News of the Kingdom of God is like your first wallet or purse. It comes to you empty; how it grows depends on how much of your life you put into it.
Finally, the Good News of the Kingdom of God is you, and it’s me, and it’s here now. Our job until Jesus comes again is to grow the Kingdom until everyone, not just those we love but also those we hate, everyone is standing within the mighty gates of the Kingdom of God.
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