4th Sunday after Pentecost Sermon

As I listen to Jesus, in this teaching about the seeds, a couple points stand out pretty clearly to me:

1. Big things don’t start that way. They start our really small, and then they grow.
2. How things grow is something of a mystery.

And I find this to be rather comforting. I really do. It means:

1. It’s okay for me or my actions to feel small or insignificant.
2. I don’t have to understand everything God’s doing, to believe that I am part of something that matters – something that’s bigger than I am.

We see this pattern all around us.

I look at my kids and my experience of being their dad. Raising kids is not one, big momentous event. It’s just a bunch of days, one after the other, somehow blurring into years. And each day itself is a string of minor happenings that form and inform them. As their dad, some days I did a good job. Some days I did a bad job. Most of it was fairly unremarkable. But it all added to whom they’d become… along with what they experienced from Cynthia, teachers, other kids… along with what they discovered from books they read and the time they threw up after eating Cheetos and the time saw a dead raccoon on the side of the road. Everything’s merging together to form them – a process that will never end. Certainly not on this side of the grave. And who knows what “becoming” looks like on the other side?

And the same is true for all of us. We’re all little seeds becoming big trees. And it’s a mystery how the whole process works. But it all matters. And it’s okay that we don’t understand it all, or what our precise contribution is to someone else’s formation, so long as we can recognize, that it is happening – to us, to them – and that we’re all part of this extraordinary mystery of perpetual “becoming” and that God is within it all!

For so has God ordained. As God is, so we are.

And we are seeds becoming trees, even if we can’t see it yet. And (!) each little bit we contribute, for good or for ill, is part of what’s shaping someone else’s tree. Every interaction or contribution we make: it matters. In its own way it’s either degrading someone else, or reinforcing the status quo, or nourishing them. It all matters. We are all part of God’s Kingdom, and the invitation is always to see ourselves as participants in what God is doing. We don’t have to understand the whole big picture. It’s enough to believe that we are part, each in our own way.

The other day I reread a sermon I preached three years ago, just as we were reemerging from the pandemic.

When this pandemic shut everything down last March (I wrote), St. John’s established a list of six priorities that would guide the decisions we made as we waded into this uncharted territory. The sixth and final priority was this:

We want to emerge from this season as a healthy and vibrant community: that the changes and choices we make during this crisis should foster the ongoing growth and formation of our parish so that – when it is over – we will not only have survived, but will have emerged healthier and more alive to our mission.

(I went on to write):

And now it’s time to see if this is true.

I know we survived. I know we did things differently (I’m still functioning as a TV evangelist!) But are we more healthy? I don’t know yet. But I hope so. And this is what I’ll be looking for: that we will we awaken from our dormancy ready to live in a way that matters.

I know people are tired…. But as we begin to find our feet again, I do hope we can commit to this: that we will live and that we will live for one another – believing that the smallest, mustard seed gestures of love we share are all a part of the mystery of life that God is growing amongst us.

When we come back to church next month, we’ll be returning to a building that’s been beautifully renovated. And I can’t wait to welcome you into it. But my prayer is this: that our building will be a sacrament of sorts for us – a visible sign of an invisible grace – that the church itself, you and I together, will have been renovated for love and for life.

That was three years ago. We didn’t yet know if we would emerge a healthier, more vibrant church, or not. But now, three years down the road, we do know. We are healthier and more vibrant. A couple visited St. John’s recently for the first time in several years. They hardly recognized the place. Yes, the building looked different, but it was the people they were talking about – the kindness with which they were received.

“The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed [that] … grows up and becomes the greatest of shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade” (Mark 4:33).

Reading this parable, today, I’m especially attracted to this image of the birds making nests in the branches. It’s very picturesque – imagining a tree filled with colorful birds. But it’s the nests that Jesus is focusing on, not the birds themselves. And even though we often think of nests as little bird dormitories in the trees – where birds go to spend the night – that’s not actually the case. Birds only use nests as a place to lay their eggs and to raise their babies before they can fly. Nests exist to foster new life for the next generation.

So, just as the seed was a kind of “baby tree” that grew and grew, once that tree grew up, its job was now to stretch forth its branches to hold a nest that would hold the eggs from which would emerge the baby birds until they fledged and flew into this world.

This is the nature of things. This is the way of the Kingdom of God. The tree does not grow only unto its own strength and glory, or even only for its own kind. Its purpose is bigger than its own success. To be a seed that grows into the tree in the Kingdom of God is to know and believe that what’s been formed in us through our years – through our seasons of growth and seasons of dormancy, seasons of plenty and seasons of want – can now become strength and safety for others being reared in our branches.

Who are they? Well, certainly, the children we see coming down the aisle each Sunday during the Offering – who we hear during Communion, who weave among us during coffee hour – these are our baby birds. At each of their baptisms we were asked, “Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ?” And we said, “We will.” We will be your branches. We will be your shade.

But it’s more than that. We are the church wherever we go. We each are like branches of this tree stretching broadly into this world. Whatever child we see and nurture and protect is our baby bird – wherever and whoever they may be: our children, our grandchildren, our neighbor children. Every child daring to fledge and make its way into this glorious, frightening, beautiful, violent world belongs to us, because they belong to God. And who God loves, we love. The strength that is growing within our church is strengthening us to be the church, loving this world. This is the Kingdom of God.

So let us have eyes to see, with hearts that care.

The other day I was sitting on my front porch, watching the birds on our feeder. And this one bird came along and perched near the feeder, but not on it. It just sat there, kind of shaking and fluffing its feathers and acting weird. “What are you doing little bird?” I wondered and kept watching. Then another bird come along, who went to the feeder and got a seed, and then started feeding the first bird.

“Oh,” I realized, “this is a baby and its mother.”

Now here’s the thing, that baby looked all grown up. In fact, it looked bigger than its mother. And it looked better than the mother. It was young and fresh and beautiful and perfect. The mother was a wreck – kind of scrawny, her feathers all out of whack. Like we’d say in the south, she looked “rode hard and put up wet.”

Which is all to say: Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s the baby and who’s not. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the age at all. The ones among us who look the most pulled together might actually be the ones who are suffering. And the ones who look damaged or weak may actually be the strong ones – who’ve been through much and survived. And, honestly, there’s no telling from day to day which one any of us will be: sometimes strong, sometimes weak; sometimes needing to be fed and sometimes doing the feeding. In fact, most days, most of us are both at the same time: We’re all babies, and we’re all grown up; feeding with one hand, being fed with the other. Which is all to say, we are the church, together: young and old; weak and strong; needing help and giving help.

Cynthia and I were on the front porch the other evening. We’d just finished eating when this bird flew past us, hit the window behind us, and landed on my plate. It was kind of revolting and fascinating at the same time. It was still alive, but in shock. Its head was a little cattywampus. I picked it up, off my plate, and set it down on the porch. Then Cynthia and I, well, we just kept talking. There wasn’t much else to be done with it. It either wouldn’t live or not. And, after about five minutes, I looked down, and the bird was gone. This one had lived.

And, you know, this, too, is what it means to be the church. Sometimes we’re just a safe place where someone can rest for a while when they’ve been hurt, where it’s okay to show up and be a mess without being fussed over too much: to rest in the peacefulness of the liturgy, to slip out without staying for coffee, and after a while to fly away again into the world.

After all, it’s God’s church and God’s world; God’s seed and God’s tree; God’s nest and God’s bird. And when the grain is ripe, we shall become God’s harvest.