July 27, 2008

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

Sermon:           “Here, There, Everywhere”

            Let’s turn to the word of the Lord.  Open your bibles to the 13^th chapter of Matthew’s gospel.  Together we’ll read verses 31 through 33 and then 44 through 52.  That’s on page   of the New Testament in the pew bible if you’d like to find it there.

            Here we join Jesus and his disciples beside the Sea of Galilee where such a big crowd of people have come to hear and see this man they’ve heard so much about.  Jesus even got into a boat there were so many people gathering on the shore.  He had no place left to stand, you see.  So, he’s sitting there in a boat while they all listened.

            The kingdom of heaven.  That’s what he was talking about.  The kingdom of heaven.  And folks wanted to know what that was all about.  What is this kingdom of heaven?  Where is it, exactly?  Who’s in charge with this kingdom of heaven?  And how do I fit into it?  That’s what they wanted to know.  Am I still going to be a peasant, or will I get out of this thing that keeps me poor?  And what about those Romans and the rather well-off Jews that don’t suffer a great deal under their authority?  Is the kingdom of heaven going to have anything to do with that stuff?

            Jesus talked about this kingdom quite a bit, you know.  But, what, really, is it?

            Turns out that describing such a thing is about as easy as describing God!  Can’t really be done.  “Well, it’s something like this.”  Or, “it’s a little bit like that.”  But, in the end it takes imagination, doesn’t it?  It takes a little bit of faith that something can be beyond your mind.  Listen to what Jesus said:

            He put before them another parable:  “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

            He told them another parable:  “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

            “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

            “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

            “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.  So it will be at the end of the age.  The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

            “Have you understood all this?”  They answered, “Yes.”  And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

            “Do you see Muhammad Ali?”  That’s what I heard a teacher asking a young student as they stood outside of that funky building downtown in Louisville.  She said to the boy, “do you see him?”

            This boy’s neck was bent backwards and his eyes were looking all around.  He was clearly frustrated.  They were at Muhammad Ali’s museum, you know.  Have you been there?  They’d come on a field trip, I gathered.  And the teacher was trying to show the boy what the man folks called “The Greatest” looked like.  He was looking right at the side of the building.

            He said, “where is he?  I don’t see nothing!”

            “Right there,” the teacher insisted.  “He’s right there.”  And the boy shrugged his shoulders.  So, the woman said, “come with me.  I’ll show you.”  And they started walking away from the museum a ways.

            Now, I drive past this thing every day.  From a mile away from the west you can clearly   see three different faces of Muhammad Ali.  Right there on the side of the museum.  Stand right next to it and you’ll never know what you’re looking at.

            So, I imagined that this teacher and her young pupil wandered far enough to the west until he said, “Oh!  There he is!  I see him!”

            It’s just a matter of how you look at it, you know.  You can miss it.  You can see it clear as day.

            And that must be something like God.  Must be something like the way God is in our world.  Must be something like that thing Jesus called the kingdom of heaven.  You can miss it.  You can see it clear as day.

            I was sitting by the bed of a man dying with cancer.  Whole body was eaten up with the stuff.  He had tubes in his arms.  Pumps and monitors were beeping away at all hours.  Nurses were in and out of the room.  There was a waiting room just full of family and old friends down the hall.  Death himself had pulled up a chair and was checking his watch for the time when he’d have to go in and visit.

            I’ll never forget it.  He wanted to talk to me about his final arrangements, you know.  And he said, “God is so good to me.  You see that cute little nurse they got me?”  I hear this from older men in hospitals all the time.  He said, “she looks just like my beautiful wife did when I fell in love with her.”

            “And that boy out there.  Hadn’t seen him in years.  My grandson.  He just drove 14 hours to be here with me.  I do love him so.  God is good, I tell you.  God is good.  And God’s walked all the way across heaven to be here, too.”

            Yep, you can see it clear as day.

            But, I was with another man in pretty much the same situation.  Family and friends had all traveled to be with him, you know.  Death had pulled up a chair in that waiting room, too.  He said to me, “Preacher, don’t you start in with God.  I don’t want to hear another word about God.  Everybody’s in here and they’re all saying ‘God this’ and ‘God that’.  They’re thinking about me and praying for me all the time they say.  But, I ain’t heard as much as a peep from God and this thing ain’t getting any better.”

            You can miss it, you see.

            Maybe that’s what Jesus was getting at.  When God’s at work in the world, you can just miss it, look right over it.  So, it’s something like a little mustard seed, isn’t it?  Sure doesn’t look like much.  And that’s what the kingdom of heaven can be like.  You’d never guess that something so small is really holding something so important inside of it.

            Like yeast.  You try to make a loaf of bread with just some flour and water.  It’ll make for a good pita, I suppose.  But, dash just a tad of yeast in there and the thing will rise up in the oven and become what you serve the guests before dinner.

            I guess we’re looking for something different, aren’t we?  If God’s going to do something, surely it’ll be big.  Won’t it?  But, Jesus has a different idea.  God’s busy with little things.  Kind words spoken.  A little help to somebody that needs a lift.  Little things.  And you can miss it.  But, you might just see it clear as day.  It’s here.  It’s there.  It’s everywhere.  And it’s not going to make the evening news.  It’s probably just going to be in the course of somebody’s every day.

            I had a teacher that took an apple once.  There in front of the class she asked, “how many seeds are in this?  If I cut it open, how many seeds am I going to find?”  And we shouted out some answers.  Four.  Five.  Ten.  And she cut it open.  “Look at that.  Five seeds.”

            “Now, let me ask you something else.”  And she took one of those seeds out of the apple and held up before us.  “How many apples are in this one seed?”

            You can miss it.  You can see it clear as day.

            I wonder what that might mean for a little church sitting somewhere behind a shopping center.  You can drive right past it and never know what’s coming out of it.  I mean, could God really be up to something really important in a place like that?

            It’s one thing, you know, not to be able to see what’s happening all around you.  You’re standing too close.  You’re too distracted to notice.  You’re life is just too complicated to think a little thing might be how God is going about the work of tapping you on the shoulder.  What you need is a big thing.  And what you’re getting is so small you can’t believe it matters.

            And then it’s another thing to think that you’re just a little seed yourself.  Don’t matter if you do a little thing or not.  It’s not going to change the world.  Right?  Just how many apples can one seed produce, anyway?  Truth is, you don’t know.

            Now, I knew this woman that was tough as nails.  She’d tell you what she thought, and usually you didn’t want to know.  Mean as they come.  Opinions like knives.  I once heard her say to another woman, and this was in the narthex of the church, mind you, “did you fix that ‘ole turkey casserole for the potluck today?  No?  Heavens, we’ll all survive then, won’t we.”

            But, I’ll let you in on a secret.  She passed away a few years ago, so I’ll answer for this some day.  For now, she’s not around to stop me.  I was standing behind her in line at the local convenience store in that little town.  There was a young boy buying candy bars and Cokes and things.  And the cashier rung it all up.  The total flashed on the register, and the boy started counting through his pile of quarters and nickels.  He was short.  Thirty cents.

            “Oh, for heaven’s sake.  Here’s your thirty cents.”  And that woman plopped down a quarter and some pennies.

            I said, “Dorothy, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

            “What?  Thirty cents?”  Then she squinted her whole face and stuck her finger right in my chest.  She said, “Preacher, I better not catch wind of another soul hearing of this or you’ll rue the day.”  She managed a little smile, too.  “Besides, I’m going to have to answer for my life before you know it.”

            You can miss it.  You can see it clear as day.  Those little things sprout up.  And they’re everywhere, aren’t they?

            But, maybe Jesus had his own little life in mind.  I don’t know.  You get the impression from this big ‘ole book that he was something larger than life.  But, that’s not really how it was.  The world just kept right along doing what it always did while he was born in a barn among the animals.  The world just kept right along doing what it always did while he gathered folks around the countryside.  Really, most folks had no idea.

            And when those people had him arrested and killed, could have looked like any other criminal that the Romans hung up on a cross to prove a point.  And so most folks walked by the place on the edge of town where ne’er-do-wells spent their dying moments for all to see.  There’s a thief.  There’s a thug.  Oh, and this one.  He’s “the King of the Jews”.  Just another idealist trying to get some attention.

            You can miss it.  You can walk by that cross and say, “hah!  He saved others.  He can’t save himself.”

            And then you can look at it from down below.  It was the guard, the Roman.  He looked up and said, “surely this was the Son of God.”

            You can see it clear as day.

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)