Tag: mustard seed

Love Takes Root in the Little We Are Left With

David HerbertLeave a comment

This week’s readings (Romans 8:26-end and Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52) ask one of the most searching questions in the New Testament: Can anything separate us from the love of God? Paul answers with a resounding “No.” Jesus then invites us to discover why—not in the spectacular or the powerful, but in the smallest, most easily overlooked signs of God’s kingdom. Perhaps the first step in following Jesus is simply learning to see what he sees.

Can anything separate us from the love of God?

There could hardly be a greater contrast than the contrast between ourselves and the people Paul was addressing in his letter to the church in Rome.

Just imagine what they were going through.

Paul gives us a glimpse:

hardship,
distress,
persecution,
famine,
nakedness,
peril
and sword.

This is no rhetorical exaggeration.
Paul is writing to communities living under the shadow of the Roman Empire,
where persecution, imprisonment, poverty and execution were genuine possibilities.
These are the lived realities of many of the Christians to whom he writes.

Over the years I have become increasingly aware that much of Scripture comes to us through the experience of people who were oppressed, enslaved, exiled or hated.

We read Scripture, as it were, over their shoulders.

Not that we do not know suffering ourselves.
We face other hardships.
Other powers can seem overwhelming.
Other fears can drain the life from us.

And so we, too, may hear this letter as though it were addressed to us.

We hear Paul insist that nothing in all creation—
not hardship or distress,
persecution or famine,
nakedness, peril or sword
—can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Neither death nor life.
Neither angels nor rulers.
Neither things present nor things to come.
Nor powers.
Neither height nor depth.
Nor anything else in all creation.

It is one of the boldest claims in the New Testament.
Paul doesn’t merely hope this is true.
He is utterly convinced of it.

And if Paul tells us that nothing can separate us from the love of God,
Jesus tells us why.

The answer comes in what Jesus sees, and who he sees.

Who he sees first are the least, the last and the lost in the ways of the world.
And he sees the little they are left with,
and the little we have.

He sees in the little people have all the signs of the kingdom,
the love of God, the presence of God, the rule of God.
And he wants us to see what he sees in the things he points out.

There’s the tiny seed – the tiniest of seeds.
There’s the yeast in the bread.

There’s all the things overlooked by the powers that be
with their attention preoccupied with what is bigger and better in their own eyes.

Jesus looks at the ordinary world and sees the kingdom of God.

A seed.
Some yeast.
A field.

Where others see almost nothing, Jesus sees everything.

He sees the tiny mustard seed growing to the huge shelter for the birds of the field.
He sees the yeast folded into the dough for the daily bread that keeps us going.
He sees a field and sees the treasure hidden within it that is never going to be found by those looking for bigger and better things.

He is always asking “What have you got – let me see?”
“What have you got?” Jesus asked
“Five loaves and two fish – what’s the good in that?”, the disciples replied.

“Just wait and see” Jesus said

The disciples see five loaves and Jesus sees a feast.

That’s the miracle.

Jesus sees the ways of God in the little people have,
and he points them out for the world to see:
the love of God,
the presence of God,
the kingdom of God,
hidden in the little things of their lives,

not in the big things.

The kingdom of God is revealed in such little things
and we are captivated by what Jesus sees.

To follow Jesus is to follow his finger –
to look where he is looking,
To notice who he notices,
to treasure what he treasures,

until, little by little,
we begin to see the world through his eyes.

And that is why Paul can say,
with such astonishing confidence,

that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

It is true: the powers can destroy bodies,
they can imprison us,
they can persecute us and hate us for all sorts of reasons,
they can starve us, they can threaten us
but none of that can separate us from the love of God
because God’s love is always finding somewhere to take root

in a seed
in some yeast
in a field
in five loaves and two fish
in a child
in the poor in spirit
in the meek
in those who hunger and thirst for righteousness
in those who mourn
in those who are persecuted
in a cross
in an empty tomb

Nothing can separate us from the love of God
because God’s love is always finding somewhere to take root
in the little we are left with.

After hardship,
after grief,
after disappointment
after persecution,
after loss.
what are we left with?

We don’t always come to Christ with abundance.
Sometimes we come with the little we are left with.

And Jesus says, “let me see”.

“Let me see what you have,
not what you haven’t,
nor what you wish you had.”

His love takes root in the little we have.

In the little faith.
In the little hope.
In this little church.
In this little time

he plants a tiny seed

pointing us to the way of the kingdom,
showing us that this is what the kingdom of God is like.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God

because God’s love is always finding somewhere to take root
in the little we are left with.

An uprising – the mustard seed and the seed growing secretly

David HerbertLeave a comment

Here’s a sermon for the 3rd Sunday after Trinity focusing on Jesus’s parables of the seed growing secretly and the mustard seed. They speak of uprisings and encouragement, perseverance and patience.

June 16th 2024

Our scriptures are the creation of a bruised and battered people, treasured and passed on by bruised and battered people for the sake of other bruised and battered people. It is a troubled people who have chosen the scriptures we inherit, and who have handed them on.

I keep saying this to remind myself whose these scriptures are and to remind myself to read the scriptures from that point of view.

Today’s gospel features a couple of parables used by Mark to end a sermon by Jesus. The sermon is given from a boat, to a crowd of people on the shore.

Their place on the shore is significant. Jesus and the crowd are from poor peasant communities, subsistence farming communities pushed to the edge by the taxation policies of the temple and Roman authorities. They were clinging on to life in any way they could. Jesus is one of them. 

His sermon was  particularly for them, the least and the frequently lost in the kingdoms of the world. Appropriately, for an audience of the least Jesus uses what is the least to make his points. Today, he picks a seed that grows secretly, and a mustard seed, “the smallest of all seeds”, which amazingly grows to be the “greatest of all shrubs” – and that picks up the prophecy of Ezekiel in our first reading. 

Ezekiel points us to a “lofty tree”.
In his mind it stands for empire and the highness and might of emperors and kings and all those who problematically lord it over others.
Ezekiel sees God cutting a sprig from the lofty top and planting it on a high mountain so that it produces boughs, fruit and shelter for all kinds of bird.
He calls this a “noble” tree rather than a “lofty tree”.
What makes the lofty tree is its highness, whereas the nobility of the noble tree rests in the shelter it gives.

Jesus is the sower.

He sowed seeds in his preaching – seeds of faith, hope and love – seeds of imagination which would grow in the hearts and minds of those poor enough in spirit to have the ears to hear and the eyes to see Jesus’ meaning of love in these parables. 

They will have loved his talk of the seeds for him highlighting the smallest of things as being full of life. They will have known that about themselves though generations of occupation, foreign rule and religious oppression will have eaten at their self belief.

Jesus takes two seeds. That in itself reveals so much about the kingdom of God, namely that the rule of God focuses on the smallest of things, the miniscule, on the least. When did you last hear an emperor, or a Mr Big, or a gang leader wondering about the smallest and least in creation?

Jesus casts the mustard seed as the smallest seed, which grows to become the greatest of shrubs giving shelter, shade and blessing to all the birds of the air. His hearers will have loved that. This is what can become of us is what Jesus is leading them to imagine. This is what can happen to the least of us. The least of us can become the most hospitable. The least of us can be the shelter, shade and blessing for so much and so many.

These are parables for the poor in spirit, for the weary, for the belittled.

They encourage us to believe
life will change for the better for the least, the lost and the last –
that the little, least, lost are great in the eyes of God and come first in his kingdom,

They remind us that the seeds of the kingdom are already embedded in the world
by Jesus the sower,
in our own paths and ways
a seed in edgeways

And those seeds have a life of their own.
We don’t know the effect of them – and we can’t control the effects of a kind word, or affirming gesture.

And they make small beautiful.

Small is beautiful in the eyes of the one who puts the least, the lost and last first.
We don’t need to lie
about how little we are
or what little we have
when Jesus sees the kingdom in a seed.

These parable have always encouraged the church,
particularly encouraging us these days
when the church is struggling,
when you’re feeling like there is so much to do
with fewer and fewer people – in a vacancy as well
we can love being small,
being the unlikely seed of the kingdom,
for ever unsure how it’s going to turn out,
just going day to day
with our small seed of faith
our small seed of hope
and our small seed of love,
sprigs cut from the high and mighty,
cut down to size and carefully planted
to be noble in the kingdom.

These parables encourage us to persevere with patience,
to carry on scattering seed in our small ways along the paths of our lives,
never put off by the idea of a harvest we will never see,
to carry on with those small things
that come naturally to those with a joyful heart:
a smile,
a touch,
a word of welcome,
small kindnesses
in all our ways
scattered like seed.

There was a song Jesus heard at home. He’d heard his Mum singing it. We know it as the Magnificat. It goes like this:

Her song praises the work of God showing mercy on those that fear him from generation to generation, scattering the proud in their conceit, casting down the mighty from their thrones, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with good things, sending the rich away empty.

This is the song that seeded Jesus’ imagination.

It is no wonder that he turns to the smallest in his preaching, to seeds to show us faith, hope and love. The seed growing secretly and the mustard seed represent an uprising – an uprising of the least, the tired and the broken.

Mark 4:26-34
He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’
He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 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.’
With many such parables he spoke the word of to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

Ezekiel 17:22-end
Thus says the Lord God:
I myself will take a sprig
from the lofty top of a cedar;
I will set it out,
I will greek a tender one
from the topmost of its young twigs;
I myself will plant it
on a high and lofty mountain.
On the mountain height of Israel
I will plant it
in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,
and become a noble cedar.
Under it every kind of bird will live;
in the shade of its branches will nest
winged creatures of every kind.
All the trees of the field shall know
that I am the Lord.
I bring low the high tree,
I make high the low tree;
I dry up the green tree
and make the dry tree flourish.
I the Lord have spoken;
I will accomplish it.

Small Kindnesses – where holiness dwells

David Herbert1 Comment

Small Kindnesses

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die” we are saying.
and sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder
and for the driver of the red pick up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only those brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here
have my seat.” “Go ahead – you first.” “I like your hat.”

This is a poem by Danusha Laméris from her first collection, The Moons of August which was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the 2013 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize. Naomi Shihab Nye has also written a remarkable poem on Kindness.

I like the language of kindness, of kith and kin, that in German children are kinder, that kindness is the making of humankind and that humankind should be qualified by kindness. By themselves small kindnesses are rarely remarkable in the sense that they are newsworthy, but they make our days and open the door to the greater kindnesses of friendship and community. Small kindnesses are usually intuitive, born by habits of the heart grown in rich cultures of difference and longing. In one place the bus stop is a silent waiting room of isolation, in another, like Glasgow, it’s a meeting place. Why the difference? What are the differences in the habits of the heart of both places?

Danusha Laméris asks the question, what if these small kindnesses are the true dwelling of the heart? Should we be surprised when everything about the kingdom of god is small? In two tiny parables Jesus explains the kingdom of God. “He said, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in a garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.’ And again he said, ‘to what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” (Luke 13:18-20)

So in a simple touch, a smile, a whisper or a word might be folded the holy – just a single seed planted in our lives. There probably isn’t anywhere else for the holy to dwell.