Lessons From The Mustard Seed - Mark 4:26-32

This year makes my first intentional attempt at growing vegetables. When I was a student pastor we had a volunteer tomato plant come up in the back yard of the parsonage.  That experience was interesting.  Never having done any gardening before, I way over fertilized that tomato plant and it grew big enough that it would dwarf most of the shrubs around any of our homes.  It was hearty enough that it withstood the winds of Hurricane Fran while possible funnel clouds ripped the tops out of many of our neighbors’ trees and it was still producing tomatoes when the mid-November frost came in. This year I haven’t done the “over-fertilization” and we probably won’t have a repeat of that volunteer.  But, if any of you come by the parsonage, you will see our German Johnson in the pot on the front porch.  You will also see our first attempt at growing peppers as we are also raising a chocolate habanero that was given to me as a seedling by Eber, one of my friends from Biscuitville.
Watching the tomato and habanero plants, along with the wild flowers where we scattered seeds in the flower bed, has shown me the truth this year of Jesus’ first parable.  We transplanted the tomato and habanero and scattered the seed, we watered, and then we watched.  As we watched, it was like watching that pot of water on the stove waiting for it to boil.  Nothing seemed to be happening.  Had the birds eaten all of the flower seeds?  Did I mess up the plants as I moved them from their original containers to the larger pots?  The ground seemed to be bare where I had scattered the seed.  The tomato plant had two tomatoes on it when I bought it, but they never seemed to be growing or ripening, and no new blooms were forming.  The pepper plant seemed to have stunted growth and was just there with its five leaves.  However, practically in the same way Jesus told the parable, it was as if we went to sleep one night and God’s miraculous work began.  Suddenly there were green sprouts in the flower bed, and again a week later, almost overnight again, there were first white, then purple blooms.  Suddenly the tomatoes started to ripen and more blooms appeared, and we picked our first tomato right minutes before leaving for Conference.  Suddenly the pepper plant was much taller and many more leaves had appeared…
Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is like that.  We scatter the seed.  We do the ministry work of Jesus.  We have fellowship events.  We have Bible Studies and Sunday School.  We reach out in missions.  We worship together.  We try to faithfully attend to these and look for different ways to expand them—watering and fertilizing.  And we watch...we look for folks growing deeper in the commitment to Christ, we look for folks growing closer together and more accepting of one another as brothers and sisters in Christ despite differences, we watch to see folks praising God as we sing and fervently praying when we turn to God in prayer, we watch to see folks committing to serve in the ministries and outreach of God in our congregation.  And sometimes it is like staring at the ground watching to see a seed sprout.  It seems as if nothing is happening—the only folks we see are the same old folks.  Sometimes it is like watching a transplanted plant start to wither or die—such as Rev. Mike Slaughter, one of our speakers at Annual Conference shared, where in the first year of his ministry in a small rural community in Ohio he watched the congregation grow from more than ninety persons to sixty persons.  And yet, as we remain faithful in following God, remembering He is the True Farmer, and we are merely the field hands, we wake up to see amazing things.  Rev. Slaughter, having been with that small rural church now for more than thirty years, finds that God has grown that congregation from sixty to become one of the largest United Methodist congregation in the US with more than 5000 a week, right there in Ginghamsburg, Ohio and nearby campuses.  Things don’t just happen and grow in Ohio mega-churches though.  They even happen in Burlington.  After no professions of faith at St. Paul’s last year, we witnessed a first-time profession of faith during our Sunrise Service on Easter morning as Jimmy gave his life over to Christ and he and his children were baptized.  We have watched what at times have been children’s messages of only one or two children suddenly sprout into many Sundays of twelve to fifteen young ones.
Lesson number one, before we even get to the mustard seed, is just this.  We need to sop getting frustrated with staring at the ground or a wilting plant, and just remain faithful—continue watering and continue fertilizing, and then praise God in amazement when we see the amazing miracles of fruitful growth and produce that He will bring forth.
Now the mustard seed.  It is among the tiniest of seeds.  Its size makes it seem insignificant.  How many times do we feel like a mustard seed?  As individuals?  As a church?  We feel insignificant.  We feel weak.  We feel like we don’t have much to offer.  We’re small.  The gifts and abilities we have don’t look to us like much.  Yet, as we continue on with Jesus, we read that this small mustard seed when planted grows into the largest of the world’s shrubs.
The size of the mustard seed is no indication of the size of the plant to come forth. The size of our church, the size of our gifts, the size of abilities, don’t matter if we fully immerse them in the ministry of Jesus Christ.  God will work with even our smallest efforts if we are fully giving them over to God.  You can’t preach or teach, you can only offer smiles and hugs on Sundays?  I’m here to tell you that a warm hospital welcome to a visitor is more apt to bring them back than any well-crafted sermon or intellectually researched Sunday School lesson.  You can’t lead a team to rebuild homes after a hurricane, but you can wrap plastic ware or make sandwiches?  You can be part of Jesus’ efforts to feed the 5000.  Even the smallest of the seeds we plant can be used by God to do something amazing.  I don’t believe it is anything but a God-incident that I received a call this week from someone I haven’t heard from in months.  I still remember the first Sunday he walked into St. Paul’s and sat down.  I began to cringe when I saw Lloyd Carter walk toward him.  The last church I had pastored had stories of ushers informing people that had a different skin tone being told they weren’t welcome.  However I watched as Lloyd sat with this young man, giving him a bulletin and guiding him through the service.  That young man, who shared with me that if it were not for St. Paul’s he would likely have dropped out of high school, graduated, and rather than being a gang-member now helps care for the least of these, working at a nursing home in New Jersey—a small effort now touching a number of lives we will never know, and those lives will touch other lives.  Lesson number two—size doesn’t matter if we fully immerse the gift, the talent, the effort, our church, into the ground of God’s work, it will grow into something much larger than we might ever expect with the grace of God supporting it.
What would be the purpose of the mustard plant?  Did the Hebrew people need another condiment for their Kosher hotdogs?  Actually the most common thought is that the people would have used the mustard plant in the same way some use it and its relatives, such as cabbage—the leaves would be used as greens in their meals.  However, Jesus doesn’t lift up the nutritional uses of the mustard shrub, but highlights the fact that it is so large that birds are able make nests or rest in its shade.  Here we see lesson number three, while we may have our own agenda or expectations out of the efforts of ministry and outreach, God has His own intentions and will use it not simply to bless us, but to bless all of His Creation.  The Hebrew folks may have thought that the Messiah who would come, who had come, would come only to bring salvation to God’s chosen people, the Jews—that was the only purpose they saw,  Peter and many of the others in Jerusalem offer us that picture in the book of Acts.  However, that was not God’s intention—indeed the Messiah, Jesus, had come to save God’s people, but as Paul, and later Peter and the others realized, that the shade of salvation offered through Christ was not only for the Jews, but for the Gentiles (everyone who wasn’t Jewish) as well.  We may have our own ideas for how the ministry and outreach of St. Paul’s should bless us, but the birds reminds us that God’s intention is not only to bless us, but all the world around us.
My brothers and sisters, consider the mustard seed, consider St. Paul’s and those of us who make up the Body of Christ here, consider the way that God has planted us here, let us not discount our size, let us not worry that we do not see the sprouts and growth happening as we watch, but let us be amazed at what the grace of God is doing and will do, as God seeks to bless not only us, but all of those around us.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.