The following sermon was delivered by Andrew Geery on Sunday, June 17, as part of the Father’s Day service developed by the Men’s Fellowship of the church.  Andrew is a leaders and an active participant in HCC’s children’s program. Other parts of the service unique to the Father’s Day presentation can be found under the News and Events section on this site.

By ANDREW GEERY

“Miracles”, someone once wrote, “are a lot like meatballs: no one can agree what should be in them, where they come from or how often they should appear”. We often think of miracles as something that Jesus did — healing people, turning water to wine, walking on water, raising the dead. And Jesus also talked about miracles, specifically the miracle of what he called the kingdom of God, often using parables.

In the parable of the growing seed, which Phil read this morning, Jesus, firmly planted in the Jewish tradition, reaches back to the first chapter of Genesis.  There is so much happening in Genesis during creation — stars are created, land springs up and is separated from the water, animals and plants are made — that we sometimes forget that the account of the sixth day ends with the making of human beings.

Listen for the word of God to Genesis 1, verses 26 – 30 from The Message translation (emphasis added):

God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them

        reflecting our nature

    So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea,

        the birds in the air, the cattle,

    And, yes, Earth itself,

        and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.”

    God created human beings;

        [God] created them godlike,

    Reflecting God’s nature…

    God blessed them:

        “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!

    Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air,

        for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.”

Then God said, “I’ve given you

        every sort of seed-bearing plant on Earth

    And every kind of fruit-bearing tree,

        given them to you for food.

    To all animals and all birds,

        everything that moves and breathes,

    I give whatever grows out of the ground for food.”

        And there it was.

Listen again to the parable of the growing seed — again using the Message translation:

“God’s kingdom is like seed thrown on a field by a man who then goes to bed and forgets about it. The seed sprouts and grows—he has no idea how it happens. The earth does it all without his help: first a green stem of grass, then a bud, then the ripened grain. When the grain is fully formed, he reaps—harvest time!”

Like the account in Genesis, Jesus’ parable affirms two foundational aspects about God and our relationship with God.

First, as the creator of the universe, God is the ground and foundation on which we live and create. We are like bakers in the kitchen of God. We make our cookies and muffins and bread. And it is hard-work and it is delicious. And the ingredients — the flour, the sugar, the eggs — and the equipment — the bowls, the spoons, the oven — are provided by God. For all of our pride in our creations, which are indeed wonderful, nothing is possible without the kitchen, created by God, independent of us. 

Second, God gives creation to human beings to take care of and use. God doesn’t create the bakery and make us stand outside. God invites into the workshop, to be like God. We have not earned this. Rather it is a gift of God. The man who scatters the seeds falls asleep. The seeds don’t need the man to sprout. But when the grain has ripened, the man harvests it.

Like the mustard seed in the following parable, this may seem small and insignificant. And as one thought among many thoughts or as one belief among many beliefs that may be true.

But Jesus is not telling us to think or believe this; what Jesus wants us to do is below belief. Jesus is telling us to live this, to change the very orientation of our life, to live in a world created by God, to live as creatures made in God’s image, to live with the responsibility of caring for creation and to accept the world as gift from God.

For a number of years, I have had the privilege of playing softball on a team with players with a variety of softball abilities. A number of the players are what I would characterize as “hard-core”: they play at least ten games a week and they often have their own special equipment, bats and gloves and bags. You might think these people would be the best players on the team but they’re not. In fact, they’re very much like the rest of the team: some of them are very good, some of them are middling and some of them are just getting started. The difference, however, is in their orientation to the game. While some of us have thoughts like “am I good enough to play?” or “should I even be doing this at all?”, their orientation by contrast is simply that they are softball players, and they just live into that reality, regardless of how good they are.

We sometimes call this “unshakeable faith” and then we get hung up on the meaning of the word “faith”. Jesus is not calling us to believe anything; Jesus is calling us to live in a certain way.

It’s like our cars for many of us. We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about them or how they work. Rather, we just expect them to be there and to start and to take us where we want to go.

If we can do this with our cars, take them as foundational, as givens in our lives, what could we do if we lived, not believed, but lived as if God created the universe and gave it as a gift to us?

As I watched the martial pageantry in Singapore this week, I was reminded that this orientation of Jesus to God is as small, as seemingly inconsequential, as the mustard seed. There are no flapping flags, brass bands or massive missiles. Instead it is a way of living. 

In Dr. Seuss’ book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the Grinch sneaks into Whoville early on Christmas morning and steals all of the presents, taking them up to the top of Mt Crumpit where he waits to hear the howls of disappointment and despair from the citizens below.

“That’s a noise,” grinned the Grinch, “That I simply MUST hear!”

So he paused. And the Grinch put his hand to his ear.

And he did hear a sound rising over the snow.

It started in low. Then it started to grow.

But the sound wasn’t sad! Why, this sound sounded merry!

It couldn’t be so! But it WAS merry! VERY!

He stared down at Whoville! The Grinch popped his eyes!

Then he shook! What he saw was a shocking surprise!

Every Who down in Whoville, the tall and the small,

Was singing! Without any presents at all!

He HADN’T stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME!

Somehow or other, it came just the same!

And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,

Stood puzzling and puzzling: “How could it be so?”

“It came without ribbons! It came without tags!”

“It came without packages, boxes or bags!”

On this hot and steamy Sunday, that’s a pretty good summary of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is here, right now. Live your life that way. That’s all you have to do — it is both that big and that small. Small in that it doesn’t require any special display — no special clothes or buildings or equipment; big in that the discipleship it is calling us to is life-changing for both us and the world.

The parable of the mustard seed points to the flip-side of the idea of the world as gift; namely, how are we to respond to this gift from God.

God creates the world good, including human beings, and gives it as a gift to us. As we know, however, this world that was created good has been severely perverted: children separated from their parents on the border, people of color unjustly imprisoned or executed by their own government whose job it is to protect them, people without food and shelter in a land of plenty.

The roots of this evil, of the fallen nature of the world, are in the lack of response to God’s gift of creation. The response to being the heir of a world created by God should be gratitude. And gratitude should look like: humility, care and wonder.

Sin springs from a lack of gratitude, leading to separation, exploitation and self-righteousness.

This lack of response to God’s gift is also something that Jesus talks about a lot. Consider the parable where a master entrusts three of his servants with money. Two of the servants invest the money and make more money; one of the servants hides the money and does nothing with it. What does God call us to do with the world gifted and entrusted to us, Jesus asks? Make it more like the kingdom of God or do nothing? 

In the parable of the wedding feast, the people invited by the king to the happy occasion of his son’s wedding can’t be bothered to show up. The ones that do show up, can’t be bothered to wear clothes befitting the celebration. What kind of people, Jesus asks, can’t respond to an invitation to a feast? What kind of people, provided with privilege and opportunity and good fortune, pull up the ladder after themselves?

The parable of the Good Samaritan is about people who do not understand God’s gift and the response God requires of us because they fail to see God in the suffering of the robbed man. The Good Samaritan, despite not having the religious education and trappings of the religious figures, responds with gratitude by helping. Just as God welcomes you, how can you do anything, Jesus asks, but welcome the stranger, the immigrant and help those in need?

There are two parts to the kingdom of God. 

First, there is the gift. And the gift is amazing and wonderful and awe-inspiring. It is the mountain-top.

Second, there is the response to the gift. God and Jesus are about action, about creating the creating the kingdom of God in the here and now. “You will know them by their fruits”, Jesus says.

Today in the fourth Sunday of Pentecost we remember that after the wind blew through the room and the apostles spoke in tongues, they got up and went back into the world, spreading the good news of God. 

After Jesus is transfigured with Elijah on the mountain, he and the disciples come down off the mountain and go back to preaching and healing. 

And when God hears the groaning of the Israelite slaves in Egypt, God does not say, “Obey the unjust laws of the land, heed your masters.” God does not say, “In the next life, things will be better”. God does not say, “Contemplate how wonderful I am and you’ll feel better”. God says instead, “I will set you free”.

A lot of what passes for religion mistakes the means for the ends. Prayer, for example, is where you start, not where you end. You pray for the courage to do what is needed, you pray for the wisdom to know how to do it and you pray that what you do may be effective. In other words, you pray to get started. Jesus warns: “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others”.

A lot of what passes for Christianity specifically is fake piety. It is the noisy gong that sees the world in terms of insiders and outsiders, saved and sinners, the deserving and the undeserving. This could not be further from the reality of God’s gift.

What does gratitude for God’s gift look like? I think it has two parts: refusal and action.

First, refusal. We cannot accept what the authorities, principalities and powers of the world say is the way things have to be. We must name the separation of immigrant families on the border as injustice. We must call out the state-sanctioned violence against people of color, whether in the form of incarceration or killing. We must decry LGBTQ violence and bullying.

“I am in Birmingham”, Martin Luther King, Jr wrote, “because injustice is here… Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid. Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Second, action. One reason we often fail to act is that we don’t think one person can have much of an affect. What can I do?, we think. The parable of the mustard seed shows us that this is not true: small ripples turn into big waves.

Perhaps most importantly, the accomplishment of the kingdom of God is not our responsibility. God will ultimately bring about the reality of the kingdom. Our job is to scatter the seeds. To simply do something. The rest we entrust to God. 

Once the seeds are scattered, the roots grow down and it is not clear what, if anything, is happening. But the power of the seed and of the soil and of God is always at work.

When my grandfather was a little boy, running around the neighborhood playing hide-and-go-seek, he hid beneath a flower box hanging from a window. Quickly standing up to run for home base, he sliced his head open on the sharp metal bottom of the flower box. The neighbors took him to the hospital where he was told that his head would require stitches. My grandfather’s one request was that the procedure wait until his father could be there. And so a messenger was sent to the courthouse where my great-grandfather was a judge. “Judge Stewart,” the messenger said, “your son has hurt himself and is in the hospital and is asking for you!” And my great-grandfather was able to clear his calendar and go to the hospital to be with my grandfather.

Such a simple, everyday, commonsensical story. And this is my prayer. May all people be so comforted. May all people be allowed to respond as they are called to. May these small seeds go forth into the world and may they be the seeds of change that produce the tree of life, hope and justice. Amen.