(Scriptures: Genesis 29:15-30; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52)
As I was
preparing this sermon, an old Eric Clapton song popped up in my head – I can't remember all the words, but it's the one with the chorus that goes.....
Baby if I could change the world
Baby if I could change the world[1]
Baby if I could change the world[1]
If I could change the world…..If I could….
Today’s Gospel reading gives us a number of “mini-parables”
– sermon illustrations or teaching points for which Jesus didn’t provide
interpretations. Indeed, unlike the
parables we read last week and the week before, these parables are only a
sentence or two each. Jesus is trying to
describe something too wonderful to put into words – the reign of God – and so,
like an artist furiously throwing strokes of paint on canvass in an attempt to
describe the indescribable, Jesus is tossing out mental images, one after the
other, to give his listeners a glimpse of God’s glory.
Oddly enough, though, the first mental images Jesus tosses
out aren’t all that glorious. Jesus
first compares the reign of God to the little mustard seed. We think of this parable telling us that
great things can come from humble beginnings – mighty oaks from little acorns
grow. Certainly, in a little church like
ours – our itty-bitty congregation itself hardly bigger than an acorn compared
to others – this is a comforting image.
And it’s a true image.
But this leaves out an inconvenient fact – the mustard bush is a
weed! Nobody in their right mind would
plant mustard in their garden along with anything else; the mustard bush would
take over…..and indeed, it would get big enough to attract birds – which you
likewise wouldn’t want in your garden.
(Indeed, when I lived in South Philly, the lady next door put plastic
snakes on the fence near her tomato bushes to scare off the birds – but that’s
a story for another time…..) In
comparing God’s reign to an invasive weed, Jesus is not only saying that big
things can come from small beginning – he’s saying something more like, “you
give God an inch and God’ll take a mile.”
More traditional Old Testament
images of national glory – such as near the end of Ezekiel 17 - compare the king
to a mighty cedar tree planted atop a mountain, under whose branches all birds
and animals find shelter. But in Jesus’
parable, the kingdom of God is compared to a weed overrunning a garden. No one can say Jesus didn’t have a sense of
humor.
Jesus’ comparison of God’s reign to that of a woman mixing
yeast in dough also has an element of subversion. We, who live on Wonder Bread, are used to bread
that has risen, bread with yeast. But in
some parts of Old Testament tradition, yeast is associated with corruption –
and so, before Passover, all yeast is to be removed from the house – indeed,
the house is to be scrubbed carefully to remove every last speck of yeast, and
only unleavened bread eaten. Paul picks
up this theme in I Corinthians 5 when, in admonishing the church there to disfellowship
one who had committed grave sin, tells us readers, “get rid of the old yeast” –
that is to say, the yeast of corruption and sin – “so that you may be a new
unleavened batch, as you really are.” And of course, once yeast or leaven gets into
a batch of flour, the yeast will do its thing and there’s no way to reverse the
process. And yet, Jesus is comparing God’s reign to yeast. In
comparing God’s reign to an invasive weed and to yeast, he seems to be saying
that God’s reign is something that, once it breaks in, is subversive, taking
over and undermines the established system – the powers that be, the powers of
Empire – what Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, called
“this filthy, rotten system”, and what St Paul called powers and
principalities, and spiritual wickedness in high places – and turns it into a
place where God can reign.
The Revised Common Lectionary – the assigned Scripture readings
for Roman Catholics and many mainline Protestant denominations, which we also
follow – sets Jesus’ parables of the mustard seed and of the yeast side-by-side
with today’s section of Paul’s letter to the church of Rome, in which Paul
encourages that church to keep on keeping on through persecution, promising
them that, in Christ, they will be “more than conquerors”. “More
than conquerors” – big words for a small group of disciples that were being
persecuted – believers that, in Paul’s words, were being killed all day long,
sheep for the slaughter. How was this
little cluster of believers in Rome – and little clusters of believers like it
in Jerusalem, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, and so forth – going to be more than
conquerors? I think Jesus’ parables
about seeds and about the mustard bush and about yeast give us a roadmap. For Jesus and for Paul, being more than
conquerors was not a call to act like invading armies, but rather like invasive
weeds. You know how weeds are – pull
them all you want, spray them all you want; they always come back. And that’s
how we are to be as people of faith, as followers of Jesus – being tenacious
in holding to our faith, being tenacious in acting out our faith with words of
kindness and deeds of love, words and deeds that plant seeds of faith that will
blossom in the lives of others – being tenacious in saying yes to God and no to
the greed and violence that would destroy our world.
Back to that Eric Clapton song with which I began this
sermon, with its haunting refrain of “If I could change the world…..” If I could change the world. If…..
A colleague of mine, the Rev.
Dwayne Royster, a former classmate at and fellow graduate of Lutheran
Theological Seminary, founded Living Water Community Church, which a few years
ago joined the United Church of Christ, and is now known as Living Water United
Church of Christ. They started out with
a group about as large as our church – 15-20 people – but have grown to the
point that they’ve outgrown several buildings, including a dance studio and a
former liquor store where they had once met, and just recently bought the
building of a Lutheran church in the Northeast that had fallen on hard
times. They do tremendous amounts of
ministry around the city – AIDS ministry, feeding programs, advocacy for public
schools and for getting guns off the streets.
Understandably, Rev. Royster gets lots of calls to speak before church
groups; he spoke at several of my seminary classes. And Dwayne always begins his talk to
seminarians with a question – phrased in a way that sounds out of place in a
church setting – “What are you going to do to change this damned world?” Of longtime pastors and established churches,
Dwayne asks, “What are you doing to change this damned world?” Of course, there’s always a gasp of breath –
Pastor Dwayne said a swear word. And in
quoting Dwayne, now Pastor Dave said a swear word. I’ll wash out my mouth with soap when I get
home. But Dwayne’s question reminds us
that the world system – our world’s system of greed and violence and
materialism and militarism and racism and sexism and all the –isms – is
condemned by God to destruction, is, in a word, damned – for that’s the
original meaning of the word, condemned by God.
And as Christians, more generally as people of faith, our task, our job,
our calling is to change it, to claim it for God. Not by going off on self-righteous crusades –
as I said last week, crusades past and present always end in killing the
innocent and cause more suffering than they relieve – and our own sinfulness is
always the first thing we need to hand over to God for God to deal with before
we set out to change anything else.
Rather we change the world first by allowing God to change us, and then,
like weeds and like yeast, we change what’s around us, showing kindness where
the world shows contempt, feeding the poor and clothing the naked, caring for
those that those in power would rather ignore – sort of like the stories of
Bethany Children’s Home caring for those refugee children from Central
America. Of those children, the
powerful say, “Send ‘em back home” – back home to be brutalized, raped,
killed. Bethany, by contrast, is caring
for them until they can be reunited with their families here in the United
States. Changing the world means
standing with those who are unpopular and unwelcome, and risking becoming
unwelcome ourselves – as our food cupboard here in Bridesburg has done in
feeding our neighborhood’s hungry. All
of this is the work of the kingdom, acting as yeast in turning systems of
domination upside-down, acting as salt and light in a world that needs both.
All of us here are fighting difficult battles – with our own
weakness and brokenness, and with the brokenness and sin around us. Worse than fighting difficult battles is
feeling like we’re fighting them alone.
We may wonder where God is as we struggle. Has God forgotten us? Has God left the
building? St Paul assures us: “Who will separate us from the love of
Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or
peril, or sword? …No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through
him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor
depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the
love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
May we, who have been conquered by Christ’s love, live as “more than
conquerors” as we go forth from this place to live and to love and to serve
here in Bridesburg, where God has planted us.
Amen.
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