Pentecost 2 B

Ezekiel 17:22-24; Psalm 92:1-4, 12-15; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10 [11-13] 14-17; Mark 4:26-34

Good Morning. We have moved into a time in the church the Methodists actually call kingdomtide. It is a time in the church year when we get to hear all about God's vision for the kingdom, about what it means to be living as children of God in the kingdom of God, right now. So today we start out with some stories about different kinds of plants and how they relate to the kingdom. And I want to talk about that more but first we're going to start out voting on something, don't worry it will be quick and painless.

We are going to vote on how you might describe the kingdom of God. Remember this is God's reign in the world now and in times to come. Our texts provide two choices today, the kingdom can either be described as a mighty cedar tree majestic, towering over the land, giving shelter to the birds and homes to other creatures or it can be described as a mustard plant, which is really a bit of a weed in the middle east, grows all over the place, isn't very big or very pretty...Those are your two choices, mighty tree or weedlike bush, how would you describe the kingdom of God?

Who votes that it be described as a mighty tree?

Ok, now how many of you would vote that it be described as the bush?

Hmm, okay we'll talk more.

Let's talk about the mighty tree first because it won the vote and because it is a classic example of the kingdom of God. In order to talk about that I want to tell you about a tree, In the bible they talked about cedars because they were the mightiest trees in the land but the mightiest trees here are sequioas so let's talk about one of them for a minute.

There is a a certain tree in California, a beautiful tree, not unlike all of its neighboring trees. This tree has been growing since Jesus walked, when Jesus gave his sermon about seeds and tiny plants growing this tree was itself a tiny plant. But now it is so big that you could build a small home in the base of it. A few of its neighbors, you might have seen this or even been to visit have actaully had the center of the trunk at the bottom cut out or they have split naturally at the bottom, so that cars can drive through them and the trees are so darn big they live even without that part of the trunk. But that is how big they are, cars can easily through their bases and they get almost 40 stories high, nearly 400 feet tall, as tall as skyscrapers.

Now this tree is amazing too because it is so big and so tall and so old, there it has an entire ecosystem in its canopy. They have been sending teams of people up into these trees to study the life that they harbour. The people actaully have to get into the trees like mountain climbers and when they do they find organisms that have never been seen anywhere else. There are things that happen within the kingdom of this tree, new life that sprouts that could never be found anywhere else. Whole systems of life are supported by one tree.

This tree that I started telling you about has been threatened with fire more than once but here is the thing these trees are almost magical, almost perfect creatures, parts of creation, they are fire resisitant, have you ever heard of that? A type of wood that is fire resistant? Well they are, they have almost no resisn so they don't burn. Once when there was as great fire in the city of San Francisco, you know how there used to be great fires in cities and the fire was fianlly stopped when it got to a line of buildings framed with lumber from these redwood trees, they just wouldn't burn.

The kingdom of God is like this, indestructible, filled with life, brimming with life so much so that things happen in it that could never happen without it, peace is made, people are healed, families are mended, the lonely are loved, the broken are cared for. The kingdom of God is like a mighty, mighty tree, you were all right!

Except...If you go back and you look at your text Jesus voted for the bush...for the mustard plant. He said that the kingdom of God is like this, it is as if someone sowed tiny, insignificant little mustard seeds and without their knowing how, up sprung a bush, or a tree...It depends a little on how you translate, this, it can either say bush or tree.

But we know what a mustard plant is and they really know what a mustard plant is where Jesus lived! It is farmed sometimes, but it is also a weed. They strugle in places to keep it under control because it grows up anywhere, anytime. Wheter someone has planted it or not. That is kind of the way with weeds, they grow like crazy. It is a bit of a shame that we can't turn the way we think about weeds and worthy plants around because it sure is easier to grow the ones that we don't want.

You know, just decide that dandelions are prettier than roses, that kind of thing because weeds will grow anywhere! Anywhere. I was walking along Green avenue this week looking at the work that has been done and I noticed in the places that they had to tear up lawns where the town easement is they planted grass seeds and those are starting to grow, slowing popping up in the bare earth but oh, the weeds! They're already partly grown! Weeds are amazing, nothing can keep them down, you can plant them just by walking around because their little seeds cling to your shoes and plant themselves in the places that you step.

I've seen weeds growing sideways out of boulders on hillsides where you can't even figure out where the soil that they must need is. I've seen weeds crop up in tiny cracks in heavy pavement where nothing else will grow. I've seen weeds in the desert and in the frozen places far north in the middle of winter. I've even seen weeds that have been underwater for a whole season live to tell about it when waters have receded. I've seen weeds grow where destruction has happened, filling broken places that no one wants to go with their little gold and purple and white flowers.

And I've seen weeds planted just because a person has walked along a path in their daily life.

Jesus says the kingdom of God is like the mustard seed, easily planted by the careless hand of a child, or the daily walk of elderly woman, or the rough but friendly play of teenage kids or the mindless tossing of seeds plucked from a stem as you walk along. By the offhanded remark that you are praying for a friend, or that you have a church that feeds the hungry or that you are going to quilt with the church folk on Wednesday or teach Sunday School on Sunday, or have dinner with a great friend you first met in worship. Little seeds planted by daily walking with Christ. They grow like weeds, by the power of God in places that we never knew they could and never would have tried to plant a mighty tree.

Now here is the peculiar thing, like I said before in the text from mark and in other
places the distinction between the mustard plant and a tree is not very
clear. It sounds like Jesus is claiming that a huge tree will grow from
a dandlaion puff so to speak. That that mighty redwood will grow like a mustard seed grows, not over 2000 years, not from a carefully cultivated trimming that is planted in just the right spot and grows only by the most careful tending but like a seed cast to the wind that falls on soil and takes root.

I don't think Jesus was mistaken about horticulture when he called what grows like a mustard seed a tree, I think Jesus was telling us that it is our job to plant tiny seeds and trust that they will grow into the kingdom of God, mighty like a redwood, tall, filled with new life all of the time, indestructible and as persistant and unstoppable as a mustard plant.  Amen

Baccalaureate June 2009

Readings:
Psalm 103: 1-5
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8
I Corinthians 13
Beatitudes Matthew 5: 3-10

For everything there is a season, a season to fight and be frustrated and season to be still and peaceful. A season to hug tight all of those people around you, a season to let go and have some space, a season to plant fruits and vegetables and flowers in the ground and a season to pull them all up an enjoy what they bring into life. A season to learn and study and a season to graduate. A season to mourn about endings and a season to rejoice in new beginnings.

Everything has it's season. That is what we hear from the wonderful lesson that some members of the senior class choose for tonight.

And I think that is a lovely sentiment. I really do. I like the idea of this I do but I also have an observation about seasons. They overlap, and they intersperse and as I stared out the window of my gym the other day (the first day of summer I think) knowing it was barely 50 degrees out and pouring down rain mixed with hail to the point that it looked like sleet I thought to myself hmm...seasons are a little bit more malable than we give them credit for.

Sometimes you know it is meant to be winter but the sun is shining and it is 60 out, sometimes you know it should be spring but the ground is frozen solid. Sometimes you know that you should be thrilled to be moving to a new chapter in your life but you are scared stiff about leaving home or sad because you aren't leaving to go to the college that you had hoped for. Or you know that you should be sad to leave home and friends and familiar space but all you can do is focus on the accoomplishment that you made in graduating and dream about the things to come and the new things that you are starting. That season about mourning and rejoicing, dancing even, is one of the trickiest ones. For most of us, graduating seniors, parents, grandparents and siblings alike this season, right now, is a little bit of both.

So what do you do with that?

I have an idea about that I got from a tree once (different tree than the one a few weeks ago Trinity folks).

There was a tree that I knew once, I say I knew it because it was a huge tree outside of the second story apartment that I lived in as a graduate student. It was so close to a not very big apartment and it was so big that sometimes it seemed like an extension of the apartment. I could see it out of the living room, the dining room and the kitchen windows. In fact if I sat across the dining room table from the window, it was kind of as if the tree was sitting with me at the table. I knew that tree. I watched that tree, closely. I moved into the apartment in the late summer and it had huge white flower petals here and there, some of the blossoms had dropped to the ground, others were hanging on so I thought, if I thought anything about the tree, we didn't know each other so well at the time, that soon the petals would all fall off and it would only have its pretty big waxy green leaves.

Then I noticed about a month into living in the apartment, one day sitting across the dining room table from the tree, that there were still a few white petals on it. As it started getting colder and colder and still there were leaves and petals on the tree. It was like it was never going to get done blooming. I remember seeing snow on at least a few petals and feeling a little warm even though (and many of you will learn this, the apartments that you take as a young person not too far out of high school are never well heated or well cooled). But it filled me with warmth to look at dead, coldness of late fall and to see something blooming. It was hopeful.

But that was a hard winter for me. I was far from home, far from friends, excited about what I was doing but really just not sure that I knew where I was going in life or how I was going to get there. I stared pretty absentmindly out my windows, a lot, pretending that I wasn't tearing up from time to time. And one day while doing this I noticed my tree, sitting there with me. I noticed first that it had stopped blooming, completely. The few rag tag petals that had held on all year had finally fallen off and being in not a great mood I said out loud to myself and the tree, I'm glad that you finally figured out what season it is. It is winter, it isn't the season to bloom, it is the season to be miserable like the rest of us. Now, tree, you look like I feel!

Just as I said this though I realized that there was something that might have actually pushed those last petals off. There were buds on this tree. Huge buds, in the dead of winter in the middle of January in the cold, cold, city of Philadelphia. Way before anything else was thinking about putting buds on, my tree was getting ready to bloom. There was never a day in this tree's life, never a season that wasn't filled with hope. I'm not going to lie and say from that day on I was perfectly content because of the example of the tree but I did have a fleeting thought that started to grow in me about seasons.

There is a season for everything, a season when you know just where you are going and a season when you aren't sure, a season when you are filled with joy but scared, a season when you are excited and proud of yourself beyond belief but you have doubts. A season to graduate and do new things and a season to stay put and work on what is at hand but never, never, never is there a season without hope, never a season without life, without abundant life in God.

Our new testament lesson talks about being blessed by God. About all of the different people who are blessed and all of the different ways in which they are blessed and all of the different times that they are blessed. It is a good mirror to the Ecclesiastes text about seasons. It says that you will be blessed. In great times, when you are on top of the world, able to spread peace you will be blessed. And in positions of power when you are able to be merciful to the people that you meet, you will be blessed and when you have no doubts so that you can walk confidently you will be blessed.

And you will be blessed in the not so good times, when you are hungry and need to be fed, you will be blessed, when you mourn and need to be comforted, you will be blessed, and when you have doubts and need to feel the hope and love of God, you will be blessed. Never will there be a season when you are not loved and therefore blessed.

This time in your lives is a huge landmark for you and many things are changing, everything is exciting and I (and we) are so excited for you but we are also here to tell you that there is one thing that isn't changing today and won't ever change and that is God's love and hope for you. Through all the seasons and all the landmarks, all the joys and excitements, you will always be blessed and beloved children of God, whatever you do, wherever you go, whatever great accomplishments you make, whatever new people you meet, whatever you discover, whoever you become, whatever the seasons of your lives bring, you can always find hope in the fact that you will always be blessed and beloved children of God. This is Good News, thanks be to God. Amen