Sermon: The Mustard Seed - 06/14/09

The Rev. Bill Adams
Second Sunday after Pentecost, June 14, 2009
St. Clement’s Episcopal Church
Rancho Cordova, CA

The Mustard Seed

Our Gospel this Morning speaks of the tiny mustard seed; Jesus gives us his enormously powerful sermon on the virtues of “littleness.” I wonder how many of you present here today remember the Leavenworth family? How about the Orr family or the Carroll Family. Anyone?

O.K., how many of you remember Fr. Bill Pearson? Most (if not all) of you probably don’t have any idea who I’m talking about. And that’s O.K., because most of them don’t know most of you either. . . and yet. . . though this may be hard to believe. . . they are members of your family. The Leavenworth’s and the Orr’s and the Carroll’s were all members of St. Clement’s Church, Rancho Cordova.

Now, don’t expect to see them among the photos and names in your new parish directory. You won’t find them there. But you will find them here in your now somewhat old at tattered Parish Register. They are among the first 10 names added to the brand new St. Clemen’t Parish register by Fr. Pearson in July of 1961. They attended the first services of St. Clement’s Mission at the “Copper Lantern Tea Room” ---- a fairly polite sounding name for a Tavern on Folsom Blvd.

It’s fairly easy to understand why their names wouldn’t jump right out at us. In the scheme of things, they might seem relatively insignificant. I mean Barna hadn’t written his famous books “User Friendly Churches”, or How to Grow a Church yet. And the Episcopal Church hadn’t yet released that pearl of a little book entitled “Sizing Up the Congregation.”

The Leavenworth’s and the Orr’s and the Carroll’s couldn’t consult the church growth experts at Fuller Theological Seminary by E-mail. . . Most likely, if you used words like “Internet” or “Cyberspace” in July of 1961, I’m certain they would have asked you from which planet you came?

It would be fun to listen to a cassette tape of some of those conversations that took place back at the Copper Lantern, except cassette tapes weren’t invented yet. That wasn’t to happen until the following year. But, if we could listen in, we’d probably find out that they really didn’t have a very clear plan of where to start. They knew they wanted to start a church in the Episcopal Tradition. . . They knew they wanted to receive the Sacraments of God in community, but they didn’t have a clue how it worked. . . Just a lot of scattered ideas.

But that’s O.K.----- remember what Jesus said in today’s Gospel? "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, and he does not know how.” ---- “AND HE DOES NOT KNOW HOW.”

Do you remember that nursery rhyme that goes, “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow”? Do you remember the rest of the rhyme? Well, if Mary were really an honest young lady. . . her answer should have been, “I DON’T KNOW”.

I don’t have a clue how my garden grows. "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”

The Leavenworth’s and the Orr’s and the Carroll’s and all the rest of those people who gathered 48 years ago in the name of God right here in Rancho Cordova, California demonstrated what I would call the greatest faith in existence. . . the faith that says with all certainty that if I plant a seed it will grow. It was a small seed indeed, but somehow they believed it would grow a church.

It all sort of reminds me of that old story about the woman who was walking by St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York while it was under construction. She asked one of the men what he was doing and he replied: “I’m laying bricks what does it look like I’m doing.” The woman walked on a little further and asked another worker what he was doing, to which the worker replied, “I’M BUILDING A CATHEDRAL”.

Even great Cathedrals have humble beginnings.

I don’t believe there’s a person here today who knows exactly from start to finish how a tiny little seed becomes a 12 foot mustard shrub. . . they don’t even have a complete answer at U.C. Davis School of Agriculture. . . .

But that doesn’t stop us from planting does it?

In 1961, some people planted some very important seeds. . . and they simply went to bed and rose again each day. . . in the trust that the seeds would grow. My dear friends in Christ. . . that’s real Faith. And we gather here in this community of Christ because they bothered to scatter those seeds.

I don’t know about you, but that kind of faith doesn’t come easy for me. Whenever I do a little planting I “sleep like a baby”; which means every two hours I wake up crying! When I was a kid growing up, I used to like to plant seeds, but in my impatience, I would dig them up every day to see if they were really growing.

It’s good news that Jesus gives us today! It’s good news that God is the Master Gardener and that we are not responsible for all the results. We are responsible only for our acts of faith!

I praise our most gracious and mighty God that someone back there in the heat of the summer of 1961 had the courage and the faith to simply plant and prayerfully trust, and graciously “let go”. They planted their seeds and the plant began to sprout, and eventually many came to rest in its shade.

And Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes a great shrub, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade”.

Did you notice that Jesus didn’t say “Sparrows or Doves come to take shelter in the shade of the mustard plant”, NO. . . He said simply, “birds;” birds of all kinds took rest there. Diversity is always to be celebrated in the church of Jesus Christ.

Conventional wisdom doesn’t tell us that great things come from mustard seeds. Conventional Wisdom gives us that old adage, “From the tiny acorn comes a mighty Oak tree”.

Why couldn’t Jesus have picked the Cedars of Lebanon for his metaphor? Why did he have to pick the seed of a common weed to illustrate his kingdom?

Isn’t it just like our God to choose the small and the insignificant to define his Kingdom? I forget who it was that said, “A weed is simply a flower that has fallen victim to prejudice”. Remember that the next time you’re feeling puny or second rate.

There was once a very little man. . . in fact he was only 5 feet tall and weighed 89 pounds. This little man applied for a job as a Lumberjack. The foreman, who was doing the interviewing, thought he would try to discourage the little fellow, and so he gave him an axe pointed out a hundred foot tall tree and asked him to chop it down. Within minutes the tree was flat on the ground. The foreman was amazed and asked him where he had learned to chop trees so powerfully. The little fellow said, “Oh I worked for a forest products company for a number of years in the Sahara Desert”. And the Foreman said, “But there are no trees to chop in the Sahara Desert.” ------ “Not any more”, said the little man.

And so it’s been 48 years and here we are perched on a new branch, and more birds than ever can find shade in its wings. And if we have faith. . . If we have the faith of a gardener, who simply says, I plant seeds and they will grow. . . then 48 years from now people will say of us, “They had so little to work with. . . but I thank God they were faithful.”

So. . . do you remember the first day you landed on the branch? Do you remember the first day that you sought shade and shelter under the shade of the tree called St. Clement’s Church? Are you thankful that it was here on that very parched and hot day? If you are. . . then whether you came 40 years ago or 4 days ago, give thanks to God for the Leavenworth’s and the Orr’s and the Carroll’s and all the other planters that God saw fit to put into his garden. For they scattered seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, and they did not know how”.

So let’s not look up today at the tall trees of our accomplishments, but rather let us look at each other. . . for Jesus is the Vine and we the branches. . . Let us remember that Jesus didn’t compare his kingdom to the biggest and the best, he compared it to the common and the ordinary. . . But most of all. . . Most of all. . . let us always be ready and willing to move over and to make room for some other weary traveler who needs to stop and rest on the branch.

So they too can say as we now say with such confidence, “Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place”.