The Little Seed That Could

July 25, 1993

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Scripture: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Do you know what I almost wish? Not quite, maybe, but almost, I almost wish people didn’t know the Bible so well. That may seem like a strange thing for a preachers to say, and if you tell the Bishop, I’ll have to deny it, but I really do almost mean it. I almost wish people didn’t know the Bible so well. Most of us have just enough familiarity with it to keep us from hearing what it really says.... It’s as if we’ve been inoculated against catching an unadulterated dose.

How different it must have been in the beginning. When Jesus spoke, people listened! I’m sure of that. He spoke with freshness, and an intensity, and a sharpness that stabbed people awake and made them listen.

He spoke about things that were interesting because HE was interesting. He spoke about things that were familiar and commonplace, but He gave them a twist so that people saw them with new eyes.

He opened windows for people, so that new light could shine in, and fresh air could blow through their experience. In the 13th Chapter of Matthew, which we’ve been studying this month---you have, I trust----in that packed, throbbing chapter, we have a collection of some of these verbal windows Jesus threw open.

We call them parables, though not all are true parables in the technical sense. Some you’d more properly call “similes”, I think. Check with your resident English teacher on that. They’re not complete stories, as such---a parable usually is a story with a point---

Many of these are too brief, too compact for that.... just flashes of insight. But through a sudden comparison, quickly painted verbal picture, a telling phrase, Jesus lights up some aspect of truth.

His illustrations don’t explain so much as they stimulate, or enkindle. They don’t analyze so much as they illuminate.

They don’t make us know more so much as they make us see more. They don’t offer a depth of information so much as they offer a burst of perception. You read them, or hear them, and say, “Yeah, man. Of course! That’s the way it is.”

Now the general theme of Matthew 13 is the Kingdom of God.... or the Kingdom of heaven, as Matthew prefers to express it----NOT A PLACE, BUT A RELATIONSHIP.... we’ve talked about this before...the RULE of God, the REIGN of God, the SOVEREIGNTY of God, over a life, or over a situation.

What is that rule like when it comes to you, when you allow it to happen? Ahhh! Like a treasure of enormous value, worth giving up everything else you have to possess.

Like a pearl of incomparable worth...THAT valuable!

In another way, and to make another point, it’s like a big fishing net thrown out into the sea, with weights on it that close and encompass a diverse catch from which the profitable and the profitless will have to be separated.

WHEN GOD RULES, NOT EVERYTHING IS CONDONED.

Now none of these represents a complete picture of Kingdom life. They don’t embrace all of Christianity. You can’t build a whole theology out of any one picture, but they suggest, and they all contribute to give us a clearer portrait of God’s liberating truth.

This morning we want to look a little more closely at one of these sharply drawn similes that Jesus drew and that Matthew recorded. Actually, if you don’t mind, we’ll consider 2, the mustard seed and the leaven, since they’re juxtaposed anyway in the text, and since the emphasis of the 2 images is essentially the same.

I suppose no figure of speech Jesus ever used is more familiar to His people than the figure of the mustard seed. We all know it, even if you don’t know the plant. Most of us were raised on it. In Luke, we read, “If you have faith, even the size of a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea and it would obey you.’”

Imagine! That really impressed me as a boy in Sunday School. I’m gonna get me some of that faith, I said, and I’m gonna tear things up around here....

Matthew’s version of that passage turns the mulberry tree into a mountain. Not a bad piece of work for a mustard seed sized faith.

Do you know how big a mustard seed is. I brought one to show you. Here, I’ll hold it up for you all to see. There! Clear off your glasses. What do you mean you can’t see it? THAT’S EXACTLY THE POINT, OF COURSE. We’re talking small, tiny, minuscule, almost microscopic. And I think I’m finally beginning to understand the main thrust of this parable, or simile. Don’t worry if I go back and forth between those two designations. It’s not a parable primarily about GROWTH; it’s more a parable about POWER...and therefore, a parable about HOPE, and about ENCOURAGEMENT. That’s exciting.

Remember, all of these parables and similes in this chapter are used to illustrate the KINGDOM. Jesus is talking all along here about the Kingdom of God, or heaven. WHAT IS IT LIKE?

Fred Craddock reminds us that in the Gospels the placement of a story in the sequence of material is often important.... what comes before it, and what follows it. I think that’s significant here....

In the first 2 parables that we’ve already considered, the parable of the sower and the parable of the weeds, Jesus has been extraordinarily realistic....now, not pessimistic, not dour, not droopy-lipped discouraging, but He certainly hasn’t been guilty of rose-colored glasses naivete. You think Howard Cosell can “tell it like it is”. Compared to Jesus, Howard Cosell is Dr. Pangloss.[1]

There are going to be times when you’re not going to triumph. You’re not going to win ‘em all. Not all the seed you sow is going to bear fruit.... MIGHT AS WELL ACCEPT IT. And there are weeds out there. Don’t kid yourself. They’re real and they’re poisonous. MIGHT AS WELL ACCEPT IT. Harvest will come, but it’s down the road, and it’s God’s doing anyway.

It’s a realistic message, hard-nosed, and plain spoken. This is how it is in life. Being in the Kingdom doesn’t exempt you from hardship; it doesn’t protect you from disaster; it doesn’t guarantee you preferential treatment....and, to be honest, it may not make life any easier for you.

BUT---now we come to it---having made that clear, having dispelled phony issues of superficiality...a PROMISE... a rock-ribbed, cross your heart and hope to die PLEDGE: STEP OVER THE LINE AND INTO THE KINGDOM, enter the Kingdom of God’s sovereignty, allow God to come first in your life---the rule of God, remember---and powerful, dynamic, transforming things will begin to happen. That’s how the Kingdom works. “The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.”

You don’t have to do something big and momentous to make a difference. What a relief to ordinary people, like most of us, and like most of the people HE was talking to. It doesn’t take vast sums of money, or time, or ability, or training to bring about positive change, even dramatic change. All it takes is giving God a toe-hold in your life. Providing Him with an opening through which to squeeze, offering Him even a minuscule sized seed to take and run with.

Invest a penny with God, and He’ll break the bank with it, that’s the point of the parable of the mustard seed. Offer him a rosebud, He’ll turn it into a whole garden. Give Him an inch, He’ll stretch it into a mile.

The strength of the parable is in the contrast---humble beginning, vital result, tiny start, towering finish.

SMALL BEGINNINGS DON’T HAVE TO MEAN SMALL CONSEQUENCES...there’s the word of

encouragement. Jesus is saying to His friends, to His disciples, to His followers, to those serious about Christian living of ANY day, this promising and genuinely hopeful word: GIVE GOD A CHANCE WITH YOUR LIFE.

Let Him slip behind the wheel and take control. Let Him race the engine and see what that baby will do. You may be surprised at how much power can be generated with God in the driver’s seat.... THE EXPLOSIVE POWER OF THE MUSTARD SEED.

Now 2 caveats before we go any further. In fact, we’re not going to go any further. When we get to the end of the second one, we’re at the end. 2 words of warning in interpreting this parable.

1) Number ONE: This is not a parable about inevitable progress. It’s not talking about gradual improvement. It’s not a parable about quantitative growth at all.

We need to be careful. Some in Jesus’ day, no doubt, saw it in those terms.... they heard mustard seed, and immediately thought, “Aha, the story of our history as a people...

Abraham the human mustard seed---one lone man, the father of the faith, starting out by himself at first, putting his hand in God’s... and trusting allowing God to lead him out into the unknown.

From that tiny beginning, that seed, over time, through his grandchildren and their grandchildren, and on down the line, will emerge a tree which will call people from everywhere to come and find shelter. OUR DAY IS COMING.

That’s a nice, neat parallel. The trouble with it is, the facts of history simply don’t support it. Judaism never became a flourishing tree, quantitatively speaking, any more, frankly, than Christianity has these 2000 years since its humble birth in Bethlehem. Is the world becoming more Christian? After all this time, all branches of Christendom combined represent only 33% of the world’s population, and the percentage worldwide continues to drop.

The United Methodist Church, incidentally, and parenthetically, is not growing with exponential swiftness, either. That’s a kind way to say we’re losing ground numerically year by year. From 1968, when we reported over 11,000,000 members in the U.S., we now have a membership of only 8,500,000. Last year our net loss was approximately 50,000 more, and if you think that’s just because of statistics that represent conditions somewhere else, right here in our own Florida Conference, in one of the fastest growing areas of the country, where we ought to be taking in enough people by accident to push the graph upward, our net growth for 1992 was a MINUS 1309. We actually lost members last year.

But is that what Jesus is talking about? No. This is not a parable about the slow, steady Christianization of the planet. It hasn’t happened. It may not happen, or at least it’s not likely to happen with inexorable relentlessness.

When Jesus speaks of the mysteries of growth, He means not so much the quantitative process by which the Church grows ever larger and finally conquers the continents, but rather that there is within the Christian life an indwelling dynamic that has the power to lay hold of everything around it. Quality is where the power lies.

Even a little committed faith, even mustard seed size, can change things. Jesus believed that. Look at all the images He used to illustrate it....It’s the point of the “leaven” where just a tiny amount of yeast can leaven the whole mass of meal and totally change its quality....

It’s the point of the “salt” He often talked about, where just a pinch can alter the flavor of a whole bowl of soup.

It’s the point of those sayings which talk about light. “Ye are the light of the world.” How exceedingly small is the source of light from an automobile headlight, yet how great is the cone of light it cuts out of the surrounding darkness.

THE POWER IS IN THE QUALITY. Yes, we’re in the minority. Christians are in a physical minority on a worldwide basis, and sincere, devout, serious Christians are in the minority in what I think has to be called a largely pagan culture. Who am I to be telling you that? You know it better than I. You don’t get a lot of support out there, in the world, for the higher Christian values.

Who hasn’t had the experience of wondering, am I the only person in my job, my office, my school to be concerned about the ultimate things of life? Who hasn’t felt at some point, and maybe frequently, if only there were somebody I could talk to about spiritual matters, about the deep things of life without thinking they’d laugh at me or ridicule me.

We hesitate even to insert a word about faith into a conversation for fear we might offend the person we’re with, or put them on the spot. So we hold back. We don’t know how they’ll take it.

It’s not as much strain on preachers as on lay people, I would think. We’re sort of expected to be tactless and rude, but all of us from time to time, all conscientious Christians, feel encased within an invisible, insulated wall, which despite the cordiality of our relationship, leaves us feeling estranged, precisely at the crucial point. In more ways than one, we’re in the minority.

What Jesus is saying to us is that this quantitative way of counting is not the way to figure it. Here is an ounce of yeast, and there is 5 pounds of meal. To be democratic, you’d say, well, clearly majority rules.... the meal calls the tune.

Jesus is telling us just the opposite. It depends on which has the dynamic, and this is what the yeast has and what the meal doesn’t....

It’s what the salt has and what the soup doesn’t. It’s what the light has and what the expanse of darkness doesn’t....THE POWER IS IN THE QUALITY...

I can’t help but think here of the old story of the army chef. Well, I don’t know whether you could call him a chef. Maybe he was just a cook, but over the years he attained a reputation for his famous rabbit stew. It became a legend, and his fame spread far and wide. Everybody wanted some of his rabbit stew. They tried to get his recipe, but he was secretive about it.

Finally, though, through persistent cajoling, and the exercise of some well-placed pressure, which, they tell me, is possible in the military, they convinced him it would be in his best interest to tell all.

“How do you make that rabbit stew?”, they asked. “What are the ingredients?”

“Well”, he said, “Of course you have to have rabbit meat. That’s the basis of it.Then add some potatoes, and some celery, some onions, some carrots...a little garlic, some parsley, a touch of bay leaf...

“Is that all?” “O.K.”, he admitted. “I do put in a certain amount of horse meat.”

“What do you mean, a certain amount?” “Well, I do it according to a ratio.”

“What is that ratio?” “Actually, it’s a ONE to ONE ratio.”

“Oh, you mean equal parts of rabbit meat and horse meat?”

“Well, sort of like that. What I really mean is one rabbit to one horse.”

Now, that’s what this parable is about. THAT’S RABBIT STEW. Even a small supply of a commodity, if it’s dynamic enough, if it’s alive and vital enough, can change the quality of a whole environment. WHEN GOD REIGNS IN A LIFE, TRANSFORMATION HAPPENS, and, inevitably, it touches everything else.

2) Now, I said way back there, that there were 2 caveats we needed to keep in mind in reflecting on this story.... 2 warnings. It’s not meant to be understood as a parable about quantitative growth.... it’s not a parable about progress; it’s a parable about POWER.

The second caveat is that it’s also not a parable about ME and MY experience. It’s thrust is not on what will happen to me if I do this or make this commitment. There is nothing in it that says exercise your faith and you’ll feel better...or here is the way to emotional wholeness. That may be true, but that’s not in here...THIS IS A PRABALE NOT ABOUT PERSONAL REWARDS, BUT ABOUT RESULTS.

You give God an opening, even a tiny opening, and He can do something with it, whether you’re aware of it or not, whether the knowledge and recognition of it comes back to you or not.

Sometimes we know the results of our efforts; sometimes we don’t. Sometimes the “results” are a long time coming. And often OUR interpretation of how things went after a word is said, or an act is done...OUR feeling about it doesn’t correlate at all with what really took place.

I suspect every preacher who ever lived has had the experience of misconstruing the efficacy of a sermon. It must happen to teachers, too, and others, but I know it happens to preachers.

Occasionally---not often enough, but once in a while, you’ll preach a sermon and say to yourself afterward, “Boy, I sure knocked ‘em dead today”.... only to have it produce, at least discernibly, results of absolutely zilch.... NOTHING.

AND THEN, on other occasions, you’ll go home after the worship service and bury your head in shame for blowing it completely, only to have someone come up later, even weeks later, and say, “You know, something you said in that sermon you preached on...whatever...really stuck in my heart.” You figure back and it was the day you were at your worst.

You know good and well YOU didn’t do it. God did it, in spite of you....through you, but not because of you. What stuck, more than likely, was a text, or passage from the Scriptures, which of course is precisely the motivation for the effective ministry of our Gideon friends.

They’ve known this for years....THE WORD ITSELF IS ITS OWN BEST INTERPRETER.

The crux of it is---not the focus on feelings, not the “high” you get from doing good deeds, not the effect it has on you personally at all, but the conscious, intentional act of making yourself available to God....even for a day, an hour, a minute, so that HE can take that mustard seed sized commitment and use it to make a difference.

You may never know what God does through the power unleashed through that availability.... You don’t have to know....Sometimes a report filters back, sometimes it doesn’t.

The wonderful thing, the hopeful thing, the encouraging thing is that God can take minimal opportunity and magnify it.

That patient, well-timed word inserted sincerely into an otherwise totally secular conversation might bring a new awareness for another, and then another......That non-threatening, but calmly stated refusal to be a part of something questionable might change the whole mood of an office, and from there, who knows where it might go...

That quiet stand on the basis of principle and out of commitment to the Eternal may have more impact on the quality of life around you, and hence even on subsequent destiny than you have any idea is possible. THE KINGDOM IS LIKE THAT.

John Claypool in one of his writings uses an illustration taken from an old movie. It was a movie from back in the 40’s, I think, entitled “Stars in My Crown”. I didn’t see it, but Dr. Claypool says one part of the story is about an old black man who had lived all his life in a little town somewhere in the rural south.

He had been sort of an Uncle Remus to several generations of children in that area. He told them stories, taught them to hunt and fish, and in general was greatly beloved. He owned a little cabin and some land, and after his wife died, he continued to live there alone. One year a very valuable deposit of copper was discovered that ran through his property. Some of the business leaders of the town came to him and offered to buy his land.

The old man hadn’t been raised in a money culture. He simply wanted to live out his days in the only house he had ever know, so he refused to sell. A lot of money was at stake and the atmosphere turned ugly. When the businessmen couldn’t buy him out, they resorted to nasty threats. Many of the very people he had befriended all his life became his foes. They sent him a note, saying, “If you are not off the property by sundown tomorrow night, we are going to come get you and hang you.”

But one man in town, a lawyer, got wind of what was going on and went out to the black man’s house. At the appointed sundown hour, the executioners rode up, hiding behind their white hoods and masks. The lawyer stepped out on the porch with the black man and said, “John knows that he is going to die. He asked me to come out today and write his last will and testimony. He wants me to read it to you. He wants to give his fishing rod to Pete, because he remembers the first bass he caught with it. He wants to give his rifle to James, because he remembers using it to teach him to shoot. Item by item, the old gentleman proceeded to give in love to the very people who had come to take his life. The impact of that was more than even their hardened spirits could handle. One by one, the would-be executioners turned away in silence until no one was left.

The little grandson had been watching this drama from a distance. After the crowd had dispersed, he ran up the porch and said to his grandfather, “What kind of will was that?” The old grandfather answered gently, “It was the will of God, son---the will of God.”

It doesn’t always end that happily, and that smoothly, of course. In the movies you can compress time, you can control the plot; you can trim away all the loose edges.

But in a deeper sense, that’s the story of the mustard seed.... the power of God to change things.... the explosive, dynamic power of even a tiny amount of commitment can transform everything around it, and set in motion forces that only heaven itself will be able to record.

You may not know what the results of your giving God an opportunity will be, but God will know, and the promise of Jesus....His binding pledge is that your mustard seed sized faith, even that, can contribute to God’s ultimate victory.

What an investment. What a return. What a Lord!

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[1] Howard Cosell was an American sports commentator.  Dr. Pangloss was the pedantic tutor in Voltaire’s Candide.