Mustard Trees

³¹He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; ³²it 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."

³³He 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."

^{Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52}

⁴⁴"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.

⁴⁵"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; ⁴⁶on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

⁴⁷"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind;⁴⁸when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. ⁴⁹So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous ⁵⁰and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

⁵¹"Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes." ⁵²And 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."

So every Spring, Dan and I continue our crusade to eliminate our need to do any sort of lawn care. Well, it doesn’t really start out that way. What really happens is that after a long winter of gray skies and frozen pizzas, we get this itch to plant things, to see stuff grow, to just walk out our back door and pick fresh raspberries and sun-warmed tomatoes - even eat them right off the vine. So each year, we set our sights on adding to our garden. Every May we move the t-posts and stretch out the chicken wire a little further to accommodate just one more tomato plant, and then just one row of asparagus, and then, heck, while we’re at it, let’s try blueberry bushes this year. Needless to say, we’re running out of lawn. The three strawberry plants we planted two years ago have now taken up the whole flower bed and wandered out past our fence and into the front yard. The raspberry bush we planted last year has tripled in size and sprouted up three new extensions. And we really only wanted one zucchini plant and one yellow squash, but when they come in packs of four, well, you might as well plant them all and see what happens. Well, what happened is that we’ve got a whole freezer full of shredded zucchini, and I’ve tried so many different yellow squash recipes that I’m thinking about trying yellow squash sorbet next.

But here’s the thing - we really don’t spend that much time gardening. Neither of us would describe our thumbs with any shade of green. We stick the plants in the ground, throw some worm castings over it, give it some water now and then, and get back to reading about Process Womanist Theology, or the “shared cultural milieu of the Gospel of John and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” and appeasing our toddler’s newest fascination with trucks and vacuum cleaners. We just let them go, and yet, and yet, they still take over our lawn and fill our countertops and freezer with produce. It’s overwhelming, really, but in a fun, melting-ice-cream-all-over-your-fingertips sort of way. And I’m sure our neighbors think we’re crazy, and maybe shake their heads a little at our tiny farm in the city.

And that’s sorta how I feel when I try to thread all of these parables together in today’s Scripture reading. The images and their implications are overwhelming, maybe even a little overgrown, and so much can be said about each parable individually that we could be here all day. But don’t worry, I’m just a seminary student, so I won’t make us do that.

Instead, what I want us to do is to hover over these stories, and see how they are all planted in the same field, how, when these parables are sewn together, or sown together, they make a kind of narrative, a pattern of responding to the kingdom of God that is both present here, now, as well as in the future. I want us to see the narrative arch that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew presents to us when we thread these parables together. The kingdom starts small, invisibly even, but when we see it, or when we know it’s there even if we don’t see it, our response should be one of both joy and discernment.

This list of parables is Jesus’ response to the disciples’ confusion. They don’t get why more people aren’t coming on board with Jesus’ message. As good, observant Jews, they’ve been waiting and looking for the Kingdom to come their whole lives, and now that it’s here, now that they see it and feel it and can almost taste it through their encounters with Jesus, they don’t understand why everyone else isn’t seeing it too. They’re trying to juxtapose two incongruous facts: the “smallness” of Jesus and the disciples’ ministry and the “great” expectations of the future - the fact that a scrubby son of a Jewish carpenter and his mentally unstable cousin - along with twelve or so equally scrubby fishermen, tax collectors, and joe six packs - are going to be the beginning of this paradigm shift that centuries of Jews have been waiting for. This collection of parables is an invitation to contemplate these two things - our present circumstances as well as our hopes and expectations of a future that God has promised us.

And of course, Jesus explains things in a way that turns everything on its head and, if we’re paying attention, completely confounds us. The kingdom of heaven isn’t going to come in a grand whirlwind or from a lightning bolt from the sky. No, Jesus tells us, the kingdom starts small. Its beginnings look insignificant, and maybe even a little precarious - like a mustard seed, like leaven. Through these series of parables, a vital truth is revealed about God’s kingdom - that, to quote Dale Allison, “a humble beginning and secret presence are not inconsistent with a great and glorious destiny.”

So, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field,” and “The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour.” When it comes to gardening, or making bread, or the beginnings of the coming of the Kingdom, it’s easy to screw it up. So much can so easily go wrong. That’s why we place ten or even fifteen tiny seeds into the peat pots in the spring, hoping to get one good tomato plant out of it. And if your water is too cold, your yeast won’t activate. But if it’s too hot, the yeast will die. If you accidentally forget about your sourdough starter, and find it dried up and crumbled in the back of your refrigerator, you have to start all over again. Someone can tell you that you don’t belong in a church, or that you’re not good enough, or that you’re not “spiritual” enough, and the hopes of the Kingdom could just whither on the vine.

And yet. In each of us is a part of the divine spark that sent entire planets into being. The end is held in the beginning. A little bit of the old leaven is needed to make new dough. And all the potential, the entire future of a tree is held within that one seed. Again, our buddy Dale Allison writes, “For Matthew, the kingdom exists now; and it is an ‘eschatological sphere of salvation, which breaks in, makes a small, unpretentious beginning, miraculously swells, and increases; as a divine “field of energy” it extends and expands ever farther.”

But let’s not forget about the scandal of it all. This is Jesus after all. Jesus not only takes the expectations of the Disciples and turns them upside down, but he completely reverses the clearly defined codes and limits of Jewish life. But for us to understand this, we need a little bit of a botany lesson as well as a little bit of an Old Testament lesson. According to Jewish codes in Leviticus, “You shall not sow your field with two different kinds of seed.” Seeds need to be properly separated. You don’t mix the wheat with the corn, or the barley with the oats. But the thing is, it is the nature of the mustard seed to spread and take over, to cross boundaries, to do what my raspberry bush is doing now by fraternizing with the tomatoes. If you tried to plant one nice, neat little row of mustard bushes, they’re so resilient and persistent, they’ll soon spread and take over the whole field. So hold that idea in one hand.

And in the other hand, consider that in the Old Testament, it’s trees, not bushes, that are symbols for God’s reign on earth. The book of Daniel, the book of Ezekiel and even Psalm 104 all refer to giant trees where birds find shelter and places to nest. “A tree in whose shade animals or birds find shelter and sustenance is an Old Testament image of a powerful kingdom sheltering the nations.” But Jesus changes this up. He says that this planted mustard seed “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.” Mustard plants don’t really become trees. According to Pliny the Elder, an ancient Roman botanist who wrote a Natural History - a sort of ancient encyclopedia of nature - most mustard bushes grow to be about four feet tall. These are bushes, not trees. So why does the writer of Matthew choose to call it a tree? Maybe Matthew was a horrible botanist who didn’t know his ragweed from his sea weed. Or, maybe, and perhaps more likely, Matthew, an ever careful writer, chooses the word “tree” on purpose, to emphasize that this is something that we’ve never seen before, something beyond our expectations. God’s kingdom is one made up of mustard trees. As Bernard Brandon Scott calls it, these trees are an “unnatural malformity of mythical botany.” And in these overgrown bush/tree hybrids is “recognition that God’s mighty words [and works] are among the unclean and insignificant.” It’s not a giant cedar or a majestic oak, but the tiny shoot of Jesse, a lowly carpenter’s son, a torn up man hanging on a cross of rotting wood, or a bush that barely grows four feet high - these are the ways the kingdom of heaven comes to earth.

The planting and growth of a mustard seed is a scandal on many levels. It’s a scandal for planting this seed where it will certainly “corrupt” the other fields, and a scandal for becoming a tree - something completely unexpected for such a humble plant. Or, think of the scandal, the shock on the faces of the disciples when Jesus suggests that a woman is one who can facilitate the coming of the kingdom in the simple and domestic realm of baking bread.

Jesus again restructures, adjusts, and sometimes even obliterates our expectations. The kingdom is like a seed, or the leaven needed for bread. We want the quick fix, the immediate answer, or if we have to wait, we at least want something majestic and lasting and big. But this isn’t how things work, says Jesus. The kingdom must be planted, and when planted, it is buried, it is hidden, and then it must germinate and grow. All of the potential of the kingdom is in that tiny seed, or contained in that yeast, and that potential is huge, life-changing, unexpected and welcoming.

The coming of the kingdom begins with a hidden presence, and it’s first growth is vulnerable, small, weak even...maybe even threatening.

But Jesus says to the Disciples - give everything you have for it anyway. And so we continue with our narrative of parables. If the parables of the mustard seed and the yeast tell us that the kingdom of God has humble, even scandalous beginnings, the parables of the treasure and the great pearl tell us to give up all that we have to attain it - even if it seems strange, or radical, or ridiculous or even a bit scandalous.

Jesus says, “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.” Or again, it’s like “a merchant in search of pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all he had and bought it.” The value of the kingdom goes hand in hand with our appropriate response. Give everything you have, because it is worth everything you have.

And I can hear you all, right now. You’re thinking, “whoa, whoa, Jenn - I go to Sixth, I’m a Presbyterian, one of the “frozen chosen,” when did you get all Fundagelical on us?” Give up everything? That’s just irresponsible. That’s not only crazy; that’s just dumb.

But let’s stop and think about this for a minute. Don’t we do this all the time? Don’t we make decisions about what we’re going to give our lives to and what we aren’t? This is where our parable of the nets comes in. 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.”

Don’t we give our whole lives to our children? Or, wouldn’t we, if we were asked to? Don’t our jobs demand this from us, even if we resist? Don’t we watch television commercials and think, “If I just had that new car, or bought that kind of mayonnaise, or used that kind of deodorant or had that degree everything in my life would be so much better?” The question is, how do we sort through what is life-giving and what needs to be thrown out? Does what you give your whole self to give you your self back? Does it give back more? What is worth giving of our whole selves? And what isn’t? Jesus tells us it’s the stuff that surprises us, the stuff that seems a little bit scandalous, the stuff that seems hidden that will give us our lives back, and ultimately, bring the kingdom of heaven here on earth.

Jesus tells us that when we find that hidden, vulnerable, pervasive thing that brings in the kingdom, it’s worth everything we have, and that means making some choices. That means that when we gather up everything that life has to offer into our nets, we’re going to have to throw out the things that don’t bring about the kingdom. We must sort through what gives us life and what takes life from us.

Jesus says, the Kingdom is worth it, even when it’s hidden, even when it looks like a weed, even when it needs to be carefully tended to, even when it disrupts our neat little rows of order, control and routine. And when we give everything we have, we don’t leave with nothing. We leave with our arms full of life, nets full of fish, loaves and loaves of bread, and acres of mustard trees. And more than that. We leave with an idea of what we thought was impossible is now possible - bushes become trees, fields become treasure, a speck of dirt becomes a pearl.

Thanks be to God.

Get Out.

John 10:1-10

"Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers." 6 Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. 7 So again Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

Ok, true confessions. I have a line item in my monthly budget just for coffee drinks. Yup. I am ashamed to admit that I set aside a little bit of money every month for those gloriously overpriced steamed-milked, cardboard sleeved, caffeinated cups of deliciousness. And I’ve become such a coffee snob that there are only a few places that I will risk venturing to purchase these java delights, - and another confession - Starbucks is one of those places. Oh, Starbucks. And I know all the evils - the corporate dominance, the globalization, the oppressed coffee workers in El Salvador and Kenya. But, I justify to myself, if I’m going to spend five dollars on a cup of coffee, it had better be just the way I like it, every time. I have risked the hard-earned Lincoln-note for disasters called coffee, and I have learned my lesson - if you want to be safe, go where you’ve always gone.

And don’t companies and corporations rely on this? Isn’t that why chicken nuggets are always the same shape and when I say I’d like a “triple-grande-nonfat-one-pump-vanilla-caramel-macchiato,” it always tastes the same? And don’t we like that? Don’t we like that when we order a Big Mac, it doesn’t really taste like beef, it tastes like, well, a Big Mac? Don’t we like it when we know what to expect, know what will happen, and can invest in things that have guaranteed outcomes? Put your money in a Prudential account, because they are “like a rock.” Or if you want to know the “way forward” send your money to JP Morgan Chase. Don’t we like going into the same grocery store and knowing that our Cheerios will be right on the second shelf in aisle four, waiting for us? Don’t we come to this place, this sanctuary, often not really wanting to hear a new word from God, but wanting to have our own opinions reinforced? We feel comfortable and safe in our predictable, fenced in sheep pens.

I went to college expecting a predictable outcome. I’d put in four years, take out some loans, and come out with a degree that would get me a decent job that was also emotionally and spiritually fulfilling, pay off the loans, pay the bills, get dental insurance, and three weeks vacation.

A friend of mine voted for Obama, expecting an end to all war, expecting fully funded schools, and the eradication of all racially motivated police brutality.

Well. I ate the Snicker’s bar that “really satisfies,” and guess what, I got hungry again. I “obeyed my thirst,” drank a Sprite, and got thirsty again. I went to college, and then to grad school, and then to some more grad school, and here I am, still paying full price for my dental cleanings. We invested our money in JP Morgan and Citibank and The Bank of America, and we all know how that turned out. My friend who voted for Obama is so disappointed that he claims he will never vote for a mainstream party ever again. We believed the slogans, but they were - some of them quite literally - thieves and bandits, or maybe just people and corporations as lost and as hopeful and as naive as we are.

In our lectionary reading today, Jesus has just come back from breaking all the rules. Jesus tells the story of the sheep and the Shepherd in the context of being in trouble, big trouble. He has healed a blind man on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees are scandalized. He has debunked one of the most important precepts of the Jewish faith at the time. And what is the result? A man can see. The pious leaders are shocked. And everything is turned upside down.

The poor beggar is the one teaching the teachers, and the One who breaks the rules on the Sabbath is called “Lord.” Everyone believes that Jesus has gone off the deep-end, strayed far outside the normal constraints of his societal definitions.

And, Jesus, the one in big trouble, has the gall to step even further beyond the boundaries by being tough - really tough - on these Pharisees. He says to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” Now, it’s important to emphasize that Jesus is hard on the leaders, the ones with power, the ones who have the resources to define for all the Jews who belongs to the fold and who doesn’t. They are the ones who create the slogans and enforce the rules. And Jesus’ conflict with these powerful authorities - the powerful men who construct and enforce societal boundaries - is central to the plot of the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John focuses on the purposes of God, which include “the end of hierarchical and exploitative socioeconomic structures, which are replaced by communities of new power relations expressed in service and love.

This Gospel is about the end of all oppressive social structures secured by gender, ethnicity, cultural traditions and social status.” Jesus’ mission won’t fit into a slogan, can’t conform to a cookie cutter belief system, and demands a radical shift in our allegiance.

By Chapter 10, Jesus’ confrontations with the elite of his culture have reached a tipping point. “He attacks the Jerusalem leaders ... as “thieves and bandits” who steal resources from the people and threaten their well-being” “He challenges the leaders’ power and societal order secured in alliance with Rome”.

And how does Jesus explain his actions and his purpose? Through a metaphor, a story. We have a cozy sheepfold, surrounded by a fence perhaps, or more likely walls of stones, and enclosed by a gate. There’s a gatekeeper and a shepherd and sheep, and those who try to sneak in to the sheepfold by jumping the fence.

To those listening, as soon as Jesus said, “Shepherd”, Ezekiel 34 might come to mind. They’d set up a dichotomy between the powers of those who rule their present reality, and the Power of the One God who rules all. They would compare those with the power to define and construct their reality as Jews and humans, to the One who made The Reality itself. And Jesus is directly accusing these people and these social structures who are abusing their power of being thieves and bandits - of promising one thing, but delivering another, of taking more than their fair share of resources, and leaving the sheep with nothing. Thieves and bandits are those who deceive, who defy, who slyly convince, and maybe, just maybe, are those who do it without the sheep even realizing it. If the sheep take a moment to hear and recognize their voices, the sheep aren’t deceived; they know the sound of the true shepherd’s voice when they hear it. But, are these thieves so sneaky, so deceptive, and have access to advertising budgets worth billions of dollars, so much so, that the sheep are tempted to accept what they claim to offer without even having to hear their voice? Are we so used to expecting regularity and sameness, predictability and assurance, that we don’t even realize who we’re following? Who are our bandits and thieves in our day?

Who should we consider to be false shepherds in our lives? What are the Powers of our day offering us, and what do we believe because of their influence?

Jesus uses harsh language here. He calls them as he sees them, thieves and bandits. These are serious accusations. But I want to encourage you not to put words into Jesus’ mouth. Jesus does not call them evil; only deceptive. He does not call the situation hopeless, only pointless. The Powers that try to define our identity are only as powerful and as harmful as we enable them to be. To see this, we need to look again at the analogy.

The thieves and bandits enter the sheepfold, but there is no mention of them exiting or leading the sheep anywhere. In order for the sheep to go anywhere, there’s only one way out - through the gate. So the thieves and the bandits are stuck inside the sheepfold, with the rest of the sheep. Going nowhere. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a sheepfold; as a city-kid, I can tell you that I never have. But I do remember the yearly field trip that my parents would take us to the State Fair when we were kids, where farmers from all over the state would come to show their livestock. My brothers and sisters and I were in awe of the pigs and ducks and cows and sheep, and we were presented with a challenge that we were not used to dealing with - a veritable maze and obstacle course of mounds of hay, piles of wool, and well, let’s just call them warm land mines that would mark our tennis shoes as “city kids” for weeks after. And imagine the smells and sounds of these temporary homes for the livestock.

I’d guess that is similar to what a sheepfold would be like. But the sheep would be gathered together in one place, trampling what little vegetation there would be into a slush of mud. The sheep would feel safe there, but they’d hardly be nourished.

And that’s why the shepherd would open the gate and let the sheep out to the pasture to graze, get a little fresh air, encounter new things.

The thieves of our day would be just as happy if we never went out that gate - if we just spent our days looking down, pawing at the mud, and consuming plenty of red dye number 40 and mono-sodium glutamate.

But. The pasture is Out There.

Jesus says that he came to offer us abundant life - but that life is not in the sheepfold with the thieves and the bandits. It’s out there. Out there with the wolves, and the hot sun and the occasional thunderstorm. Yes. But out there with the cool breeze, the clean water, the nourishment that will bring us life.

There is pasture OUT THERE. Abundant life is OUT THERE.

The faith community at Broadstreet Ministry in Philadelphia did a strange thing when they decided to refurbish an old church in the middle of downtown Philadelphia. They tore out all of the pews, and put in chairs. They turned the chairs in the opposite direction - away from the pulpit and the choir loft - facing out - out towards the city - the place where the homeless sleep, where children go hungry, where gun violence destroys the future of their teens. But also where they met Andre, a formerly homeless man who now works in a halfway house to help others get out of homelessness. Also where the sides of buildings covered in murals attest to the creativity of Philadelphia’s people. Where Jesus has said there is life. They turned their chairs to face Out There.

We want to stay in here - where there are familiar slogans and the food tastes the same and everything is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Where we don’t have to do the work of defining ourselves - because the Powers of corporations and political structures and cultural assumptions will do it for us.

Do we want to be satisfied? Eat a Snickers bar. Do we want to feel “worth it?” Try L’Oreal products. Do we want to “get more?” Get a T-mobile cell phone. Do we want to feel valued among our peers? Get a PhD and a 4.0 or drive a Mercedes and make a six-figure salary.

And these aren’t inherently evil things. They’re just things that are tools, sometimes useful tools - but if we let them, they can claim to define us, claim to offer us things that they can’t really give us, and can make us feel complacent, completely content pacing our hallways, staring at the floor, wearing out the ground below us. That’s not life; that’s just existing.

Following God is not easy. There will be stones that trip us up, thorns that will tear at our ankles, and a wilderness that will make us seem lost. We’ll encounter painful relationships, we’ll fail, we’ll lose some money and trust someone we shouldn’t. But, God promises abundant life - not a safe life, not a secure life, not a comfortable life - a life of joy and belly laughs and deep deep feeling. And God promises to be with us through it all.

But in order for us to experience this abundant life, we have to step out of that pen and get into the pasture. May we all choose to follow the voice of the One who can lead us to an adventurous and abundant life.

Let it be so.

Thanks be to God.

** Quotations taken from "John: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist" by Warren Carter