Wild Trust

“Wild Trust”

Sermon for Celebration MCC- Naples, FL

June 17, 2012

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

Would you pray with me? “God, we know you by many names, and yet all of them fall short of capturing all of who you are. Our words fail us. We cannot put you in a box because you are the Great Mystery who breaks through all boundaries. But we remember that Jesus addressed you as Abba, Father. So on this Father’s Day, we remember the positive qualities of all the people who have been father figures for us. Even if our biological fathers have treated us as less than your children, we know that you remain the loving, warm, caring, providing, gentle Eternal Father in whom we put all of our trust. This day, Grandfather God, open our hearts that your word may enter in and give us rest in you. In the name of all that is holy we pray. Amen.”

Who here has ever planted a seed? It may seem like a silly question since many of us had gardens growing up. I know I did. It wasn’t a very large garden, but when I was a kid in the suburbs of Maryland we grew cherry tomatoes, various kinds of flowers, and we attempted to grow other things such as sweet peas but they didn’t quite work out. My family came from Iowa where the soil is dark and rich. My mother’s family was all farmers. They would take me out to one of the family farms and I would feed the pigs and laugh at their flatulence. (My female cousin was not amused. She would say, “It’s not funny. It’s gross!”) I would chase after the geese as my mother chased after me. One day my uncle even threw me on a small tractor by myself when I was only seven years old and told me to drive. I had no clue what I was doing. I inevitably crashed into the cornfield.

When my parents and I moved to Maryland when I was three years old, they realized something- the soil was not the same. Instead of rich black soil, our backyard just had red clay dirt. The only thing that seemed to grow well in it was crab grass and weeds. My parents thought it was the strangest thing that we had to BUY dirt in order to grow anything. “Buy dirt?? That’s like buying air!” they would say.

I think that’s what the disciples would have said too. Unlike many of us who live in suburbs or cities today, they lived in an agrarian world. Their whole existence revolved around agriculture. It was common knowledge when to sow and when to reap, what to plant when, how much water and sun exposure was needed for each plant, and so on. So Jesus uses the parables we heard today (called the parable of the growing seed and the parable of the mustard seed), meeting the people at the root (so to speak) of their life experience.

What we can’t immediately tell from reading this passage is that the parable of the mustard seed is actually a joke. What the text doesn’t tell us is that the mustard seed they speak of is a weed. So the punch line of Jesus’ joke is right up front: a man takes a mustard seed and plants it in the ground. That’s like saying someone planted a dandelion seed or a crabgrass seed. (My parents used to hate it when as a kid I would run through the yard and kick up all the dandelion seeds so I could see them fly around in the wind). Mustard plants multiplied like crazy and were difficult to control. And when they grew into the large shrubs that Jesus describes, they obstructed planting other plants. Obviously, people do not intentionally plant weeds; they pluck them up (unless of course we’re talking about another kind of “weed” that is consumed by a large percentage of the US population, but even that is called weed because when left in the wild it reproduces quickly).

With this humor, Jesus is really saying something profound about the Realm of God here. In this parable, Jesus redeems the unredeemable. He takes as an example something that was considered an annoyance and highlighted its so-called “faults,” calling them assets. We can take several meanings from this. First, Jesus is embracing the outcast and the marginalized. He is saying, “You may be considered a weed, a nuisance in our society, but to God you are a unique and beautiful blessing. You give shelter to those who need it. You surprise the world with your wild growth.” In the words of God in the book of first Samuel that we heard today, “I do not judge as people judge. They look at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.”

Another meaning is that with a tiny bit of faith (which really is just another word for trust, not specific belief), a seed is planted in our spirit that is designed to grow like a weed. Imagine that we have built up different closets in our hearts, places where we know we can hide when we are afraid. A small mustard seed falls between the floor boards of each poorly built shack of a closet, takes root in the soil beneath, and soon enough breaks through the floor, branches out through every wall, and rips the roof right off! The Realm of God- the power of unconditional love, peace beyond understanding, and joy unspeakable quickly takes over all space within us. When that happens, we no longer hide in fear but rather rest in the branches of the shrub, as the branches are in truth the arms of God.

Perhaps for us the wild mustard seed is the all-inclusive gospel that we preach. We plant a seed with a friend or even a stranger, letting them know that God loves them just as they are and that rumors of an angry God are lies. And with fear moved aside, that seed springs up into a great plant within that person, producing more seeds to plant with others. The radical gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be stopped! It is subversive. It is counter-cultural. It is scandalous. It is indecent. Sometimes it’s even sexy. And stuffy religious types can’t stand it because it can’t be controlled. It can’t be contained by creeds and codes and rules. It’s too free for that. And what does this teach us? … It teaches us that the life of faith is not about keeping our fists clenched tightly onto the seed hoping that it will do something. The life of faith is about trusting that when we open our hand, and drop the seed into the soil, we give God the control. From then, we just trust God that the soil and water will prompt the seeds to grow, all in God’s time.

How many of us hoard our seed of faith, holding it tightly in case of emergency, in case of some tragedy that might happen that might require some more faith? The funny but sad thing about our crazy hoarding is that when those difficult times do come in our lives, if we have not planted, all we have is seed. And what in the world are we going to do with a handful or even a house full of seed? It is the plant that will serve us by giving us shelter, not the tiny seed. All we have done is put our faith in our own hands.

Or how many of us plant the seed but then get up in the middle of the night and mess with it, dig it up to see if it has grown any? Any middle of the night worriers here? I know I’m as guilty as anyone else J. We think that by worrying we can somehow control the situation when all we are doing is making ourselves sick. We struggle so hard to understand life, but I like what protestant reformer Martin Luther said, “If you truly understood a single grain of wheat, you would die of wonder.” In other words, we are trying to grasp what is not ours to grasp, but is rather ours to stand in awe of. Science and a healthy sense of curiosity are good, and a gift from God. But when our wondering turns to worrying, we have lost our way.

Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us this: “Trust in the LORD with your WHOLE heart and do not lean on your own understanding. But in EVERYTHING (somebody say, “everything”!) acknowledge God, and God will direct your paths.” (Some translations say God will make our paths “straight”, but that never really sits right in MCC J ).  I think trust is the greatest challenge of our lives. It comes back again and again when we take our control back again and again. We may keep praying, keep coming to church, keep living a religious life, but still hold onto control.

Again, I know I’m guilty of it. There was a time in my life when I was worrying all the time. I was unhappy with my job, and yet afraid to lose it. I kept asking myself all the “What if?” questions. “What if I lose everything? What if we can’t eat? What if my reputation is damaged? What if all my efforts have been a waste?” I expressed these concerns to a close friend of mine. He doesn’t profess any particular faith, but he respects mine and respects the work I do. So in response to what I told him, he said to me, “Aren’t you supposed to trust God?” That was my epiphany moment. With tears and snot running down my face, I laughed out loud because it was so obvious.

I had lost my patience with life, with God even. I had planted the seed, but I was digging up the soil every day to see what it was doing. And my actions were doing it no good. My friend told me to quit it, slapping my proverbial hand away from the soil. His tough love is just what I needed to awaken from my nightmare of fear.

In her devotional called Faith in the Valley, Iyanla Vanzant writes, “Trust is a decision we make within ourselves when we surrender control to God. If you believe you have been betrayed, used, taken for granted, or in some other way had your trust violated, decide now never to give up on people or yourself… Always remember, no matter what happens, or how bad you feel about it, or how much you don’t like it, God knows exactly where you are and what you need. If you realize that your Creator is in control, there is never a reason to not trust people or yourself. ALL you have to do is trust that God will help you understand the value of your experiences… no matter what they look like.”

We have been conditioned to so quickly put a value on the situations we are in. Waiting in line: negative. A hug from a loved one: positive. A visit to the dentist: negative. A vacation: positive. A rainy or cloudy day: negative. A sunny day: positive. The list goes on and on, stretching over our whole lives. What if we could do what Jesus did with that poor mustard shrub and see it for its beauty?

Of course, it’s not the easiest thing to do to “Let go and let God.” I remember a story Yvette Flunder (Presiding Bishop of the Fellowship of Affirming Churches) told about her Pentecostal upbringing in the Church of God in Christ. When she was a small child, he aunt would get her up in the middle of the night randomly to take her to the church and pray at the altar. She would get down on her knees on the kneeler and her aunt would stand behind her as she prayed. And what confused her is her aunt would first say, “Hold on, Yvette! Hold on!” and then she would switch to saying, “Let go, Yvette! Let go!” It was a bit of a mixed message. How can you hold on and let go at once!

But in retrospect, it now makes perfect sense to her. In order to let go of all our doubts and fears, our regrets and resentments, our hatred and our negativity, we have to hold on- instead… to the hand of God, in trust.

We wake up each morning with the decision of how we will focus our attention that day, with what lens we will view the world. A Course in Miracles teaches, “God and God’s miracles are inseparable. How beautiful indeed are the Thoughts of God who live in God’s light! Your worth is beyond perception because it is beyond doubt. Do not perceive yourself in different lights. Know yourself in the One Light where the miracle that is you is perfectly clear” (3:VII: 60).

Friends, don’t underestimate your ability to sow the seed in this word that will build God’s realm of unconditional love, one heart at a time. You are doing it here, and you are doing it beyond these walls. Keep sowing those seeds of love! Amen.