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Truth be told probably one of my
most favorite parables of Jesus is that of the mustard seed and the Kingdom of
God. There are so many beautiful amazing words that are in our Gospel. I think
perhaps we take it for granted since some of us are probably not daily thumbing
through our Bibles or making enough of an effort to even do a devotional in the
morning. That little mustard seed can grow into a mighty shrub like a tree.
Like a tree on the mountaintop that Ezekiel uses in his conversation as God is
setting things straight, shaping the spirit: “22Thus
says the Lord God: I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I
will set it out. I will break off a tender one from the topmost of its young
twigs; I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. 23On the
mountain height of Israel I will plant it, in order that it may produce boughs
and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar.”
Flourishing is such a strange term
especially when you put it regarding being children of Grace and promise. What
does it really mean? It's certainly not about the ego and does not cater to the
"health wealth gospel..." Flourishing is realizing your potential.
The spiritual growth that both Saint Paul and Mark's Gospel snippets are
reaching out to our hearts to (really) hear today, is taking that great leap of
faith. Faith is a gift. It is that tiny, teeny, weeny mustard seed planted in
the tabernacle of the soul to truly be reaped spiritually, first, and most
importantly planted as a life-time commitment.
Yes, we only have one lesson this
morning included in the bulletin because it is perhaps the most profound
writing we have next to today's Gospel for us to prayerfully contemplate. We
need to hear nearly all of Paul's thoughts here. We need to hear about this
building, that we have of the spirit, versus the earthly tent of flesh that we
know succumbs to the reality of death in more ways than one. This is a shadow
aspect of this text, but the great glowing light of the Gospel is most
profoundly enclosed in it's very last verse: "... so if anyone is in
Christ, there is a New Creation: Everything old has passed away; see,
everything has become New! Wow what amazing insight....
This is just chapter five's
beginning conversation in seventeen verses reaching out once again to his wayward
Corinthians who can't see past themselves enough to divorce themselves from
their old ways and truly surrender themselves in prayerful obedience to the
work of the Spirit in their lives. A little side nugget note for you is that I
mentioned the place and the number of verses. I did this intentionally to prove
a point. A point on how this is just a small little segment, a little tiny seed
of the whole Gospel story that the entire Bible represents for the world to
hear. You could say that Paul’s pastoral conversation this week with his
wayward Corinthians is his mustard seed message to faithfully act, live,
believe, and GROW into change.
Helping others to come to understand
the Kingdom of God, see the potential and realizing the miracle of growth, has
been the passion and motivation to my ministry from the beginning. One of the
gifts I was given by a new friend was hearing about their joy in considering
being commissioned into ministry. He is
truly a man with a deep faith and bottomless heart. I wouldn’t have come to know of his plans
hadn’t he not been able to share with me at this past week’s prayer gathering.
Truth be told one of my pet peeves that really saddens me to witness in a
spiritual formation event such as this, is when someone tries to
"micromanage" God's work. We probably have all had various bad
experiences with people who try to micromanage things. The delusion of control has its way with them
you could say… Anyway, anytime anyone is giving a testimonial of sharing their
faith with others in either groups of prayer partners or in reunion gatherings,
we're not the ones that should be putting up brackets of time upon something
that is truly of God's timing. It's squelches the work of Spirit plain and
simple. As the woman who was in this group with me said, some people's
perception of Faith grates upon her like sandpaper.
The Corinthians were having this
problem as well. They were a divided Congregation of some do-gooders, and those
who just wanted to look better than others, and still more, who just saw things
as an earthly conquest or accolade. They had a very hard time understanding the
mystery of the Spirit’s growth into New life, just like the mystery of the seed
in today's Gospel. The one sewing isn't the one predicting how things will go
but it is the one who eventually sorts out the bad tares on the thrashing floor
from the good harvestable wheat. Probably the title of my sermon this
morning throws you for a loop, 'Pruning the Spirit.' There's a beautiful Taize
song that one of the verses says: “…the spirit is willing, but the flesh is
weak.” Perhaps that is the shadow aspect of walking by faith and not by sight.
As our Mustard Seed Faith grows, and
we begin to become perhaps little shrubs on the mountaintop overlooking the
valley of our whole lives... We really need begin to understand just what is
the New Creation through Christ? He is our great Tree of Life and we are the
little shrubs, he has planted. He has planted in His promise that we will fully
develop and become flourishing life on this small floating rock in space and
time, that we have so little understanding of, or faith in.
Doing the “do's” of the Gospel, as
we began to talk about last week, as a theme, is hard stuff. It's hard being
accountable, yet alone being encouraged enough to move forward. We have a hard
time being motivated, and that's the plain truth. Reaping that little tiny mustard
seed of planted Grace through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ,
is our life's journey. And we do need to have the Spirit within us, shaped or
pruned, by God's will and purposes for our lives. Though, we love trying to go
at it alone with so many things... but in the long run, this is what makes us
short sighted. We get so isolated into ourselves, into our lives and all the clutter
that pins down our earthly lives to a particular routine, and a particular
death. All of what we have painted is merely an “illusion of freedom.” This has
pinned us and imprisoned us to the empty promises and temptations to things
that will never bear fruit for our lives’ journey.
Empty promises, never bearing
fruit.... this brings me to share a very sad and troubling counseling
experience I had with someone a couple of years ago. I was triangulated into
two counseling experiences that were not only boundary breakers but breakers of
the Spirit. The first one was between a colleague and their congregant...
Apparently, they began a forbidden verbal relationship all through social media
chat... After a year or two, the light humor and emotional “foreplay” went on
the wayside to create a challenged marriage and a very indifferent,
self-seeking pastor. In retrospect, in my view of things, this person is truly
a lost soul. Someone lost in the titles and degrees but can't see the truth
right in front of them to really save their life. They just couldn't see
the forest from the trees, about turning away the Old Nature and living into
the New. Doing the right thing… The mustard seed, you could say, was never
truthfully reaped for this person. They got lost within the wilderness,
worldliness of their journey.
Perhaps they were once planted on
that mountain top as a young tree root but didn't find true access to the
Living Waters, Words of God? Perhaps they looked out over that mountain top but
didn't see the valley. They only saw clouds, and white washed away what was the
valley that they could not, didn't have a choice to avoid. I had to give
a rite of confession, private confession for the troubled congregant. On a side
note there, it is a little-known fact that Protestants can offer private
confession. It’s not just a “Catholic”
thing, contrary to opinions. Returning to this person, even the thought they were
suffering from, that they were, for perhaps a moment, unfaithful emotionally to
their spouse, needed deep prayer and conversation. On the other end of the
coin, I also needed to counsel my colleague. All that was ever said, or laid
out there in defense was that boundaries were “set” and they expressed that
they basically could do whatever they wanted to do... Well we know how that got
Adam and Eve into trouble don't we? They ate the forbidden fruit from the tree
of knowledge… and where did it get them?
Being set in a high and lofty
position is a worldly gain. Being a minister for and through Christ, is not a
"job," it's a vocation. It is a covenant between God and those
that you are to render loving service to, your neighbors. What seemed to be the
case was that the faith just wasn't there. The mustard seed was not really
reaped... The fact that remains however, is that God is truly upon the mercy seat
of freeing us from death and resurrecting us into New life through
Grace. When our lives truly begin to flourish is when we can be builders,
ourselves, and offer beyond ourselves for the greater good of all.
Offering beyond ourselves for the
greater good of all… This sounds like
the beautiful goal of someone like Mother Theresa to have said during their
life-long ministry in loving compassion to their neighbor. Something perhaps,
not only pastors, but everyone should think about as the motivation to reaping
their own mustard seed faith… This was
the thought I was left with not only in remembering this soap-opera counseling
story I just shared, but even thinking about a ministry meeting I was involved
in this past week for faith leaders in Clark County. The meeting was very poorly attended with
nearly half of the board absent and only one visiting, disgruntled &
retired member. Talk about “Old Nature
vs. New Nature” moments butting head to head… This person was absolutely
cheerless, hopeless and angry! Yikes,
what not to have “present” during a time of formation and spring boarding ideas
to helping others, and creating programs.
Was this person entitled to their “Old
Nature rant?” Perhaps, but to what
avail? To Whom did it truly serve? Was it really constructive to say—“… you
should all just consider dismantling… no one’s interested anymore?” No matter where people are on their journey
through life… no one should ever say— “give it up.” We don’t have the right to
cast hopelessness upon anyone! Though
I’m sure all of us somewhere down the road has caught ourselves saying these
kinds of faithless and discouraging things to one another. It’s easy to want to stomp up and down upon
that little mustard seed of faith with indifferent boots of probability and
uncertainty. These are hard things for
us to determine what is “right” and what is “wrong.” I don’t think we take these kinds of things,
often enough, to the Lord in prayer. We
are those Corinthian peoples, that nearly drove poor St. Paul nuts. Our faith in things, yet alone for others,
gets even smaller than that mustard seed… How sad & disappointing!
Sad and disappointing— it is for
those who won’t open their eyes to God’s reign of Grace flowing all around
us. Every day the sun rises as well as
sets… but it never goes down for the
Spirit and His work. The Holy Spirit,
the breath of life is lifting us, encouraging, enlightening, renewing and
strengthening us as I speak. The Holy
Spirit is the mystery of God working invisibly, but internally upon our hearts
to DO the right things. He may not be
the “miracle grow” to our mustard seed faith, but it doesn’t mean, He doesn’t
try to be. Walking by faith is living a
life shaped by the cross. It is
flourishing as that mighty mountain-top tree, offering all it has to offer as
the fruits of a mighty faith dedicated by Christ and out of love for
neighbor.
We are a part of Christ’s family, we
are those vines and branches. We are
those children of Grace and promise. We are the Body in the world, but not of
it! So, on this blessed Father’s Day, think about your family tree and extend
that up into God’s almighty tree of life.
The promise has never been taken away yet alone broken on our heavenly
Father’s side… We’ve broken many
promises and have gotten uprooted as well as at times wandered and gotten lost
in the wilderness… We may never realize
the Garden of Eden restored in this time and space, but it doesn’t mean we
shouldn’t try.
The prelude and postlude this
morning has beautiful words. It is
called ‘Walk by Faith,’ by Jeremy Camp:
(He starts questioning God) Would I
believe you when you would say—Your hand will guide my every way?
Will I receive the words you say—Every
moment of every day?
Well, I will walk by faith, even
when I cannot see
because this broken road prepares Your
will for me
Help me to win my endless fears
You've been so faithful for all my
years—With one breath you make me New
Your grace covers all I do…
Hallelujah
Just those few sentences say it all,
doesn’t it?
Let us pray,
Loving and Gracious Jesus,
Help us to stay rooted in Your Word
and Will for us
Help us to stay encouraged by
walking in faith
Reaping that mustard seed and
bearing forth the New Nature
May we flourish upon that mountain
top rising in Spirit with You
To be the Gospel, realize the
Kingdom of God
Here and now.
AMEN
June
17th, 2018; Fourth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 6; Year B; SOLA Lectionary
Sermon
by: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins
Psalm
1; Psalm 92:1-4, 12-15; Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2 Corinth. 5:1-17; Mark 4:26-34
The link below is to this sermon's delivery at First Congregational Church UCC at 10am:
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