"The Tallest Shrub" given July 30

 In our Gospel Reading this morning, Jesus is still preaching on what had to be one of His favorite subjects. Our Lord is once again speaking of it in terms of a mysterious time in the future. And yet it is at the same time a spiritual state which is already being born and built in the hearts of His followers--the Commonwealth of Heaven--the New Jerusalem--the Eternal Sabbath-- God's Reign.

Jesus is fairly warmed up to His subject and is throwing parables and similes and metaphors at His listeners left and right. Indeed, at this point Jesus has told them that the Coming Realm is like so many things that some of His listeners must have wondered if even Jesus Himself could keep up with them all!

The Heavenly Realm, says Jesus, is like a pearl of great price. It is like a treasure hidden in a field. It's like a bunch of fish in a net. It is like a grain of mustard seed.

Come again, Jesus? I'm not sure I got that last one.

I said that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard seed. It is the smallest of seeds--but when mature, it grows to be the tallest of the shrubs.

A shrub, Jesus?

Yes, a shrub. That's what I said. It gets to be maybe four or five feet tall. A shrub so tall that even birds can perch in it's branches.

Birds, Jesus?

Okay, granted small birds. Still, it's quite impressive when stop and think about it, says Jesus.

Jesus has hooked our interest with all those nature parables about the Divine Sower and the seeds growing by the side of the road and the wheat and the weeds growing up intermingled. He builds us up with the comparison to nets full of fish and the pearl of great price and the treasure hidden in a field, and then He leaves us with the image of a shrub. I suspect that our Lord was having a good time pulling His listeners'--and our legs a bit.

The truth is, the mustard seed isn't really the smallest of seeds. But the legends of the Palestinian people always referred to it as such. It must have been an everyday saying, I suppose. As quiet as a mouse, as big as a house, as small as a grain of mustard seed.

Jesus used that saying, and pointed to a fact that they all knew very well, how large the bushes of the mustard plant can grow. It's the tallest shrub, our Lord solemnly assures us, possibly having to work hard in order to keep a straight face.

By the way, I'm pretty sure that no one actually cultivated mustard plants in ancient Paletine. Irregardless, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all repeat the parable of the mustard seed.

Luke, in his triumphalism, says the seed grows up to be a tree. Matthew and Mark are probably a lot closer to the original way Jesus told it. It's the smallest of seeds, and yet it grows to be the tallest of shrubs.

Our Lord is doing more than just having a bit of fun in His choice of sermon illustrations. If you think about it, Jesus may ve been saying something about the miracle of growth. But I think Jesus is saying something about our overly grandiose expectations of the Divine Realm as well. We're so infatuated with the big, the gaudy, the showy. We're cnstantly looking for flamboyant hvests in the church. We want flashy results and we want them now.

We're more intereste in trying to build churches with thousand member choirs and full orchestras and marble floors and pulpits carved out of cedars of Lebanon filled with people just like ourselves than we are in building nurturing communities. The institutional church is too often more willing to spend months and years at a time studying the causes of slums than it is in swinging a hammer at a single Habitat for Humanity project.

We're more interested in publishing a book on the causes of homelessness than we are in providing shelter for a single solitary bum on a cold night. The truth is, we're too often more interested in growing in numbers than we are in faithfulness. We'd rather build crystal cathedrals and TV stations than places where people can feel loved. We want to think that little itty-bitty mustard seed is going to grow up to be a mighty tree some day. But the plain fact is, there just ain't no such thing as a mustard tree.

We want impressive results. We have convinced ourselves that if anything significant is being done in God's name, it has to be big. Jesus calls us in this parable to think small as well. Tiny seeds. Unimpressive shrubs.

Maybe our Lord is impressed when a big-time evangelist gets to spend the night at the White House. But this parable suggests that He's more likely to be impressed by the native American lay pastor living in an unheated trailer in South Dakota who has never seen the White House, much less talked to the President because she's been too busy preaching and visiting shut-ins for the past thirty years at a little mission church at a remote cross-roads in the middle of a Reservation.

Maybe Jesus is impressed by a rich suburban congregation of several thousand members with a huge full-time staff and an enormous budget that gets spent on programming for all ages.But the parable suggests that Our Redeemer is more impressed with a small town church with a limited program, trying to make budget, that is never-the-less strugling to pay their apportionments, striving to be in mission, and keep their doors open, and looking for ways to minister to those in need in their community.

The church of Jesus Christ is not in trouble when the world criticizes her as small and ineffective. Christ's Coming Realm is not imperiled by society's indifference to it as insignificant. The church is however, in trouble--deep, deep trouble--when she tries to measure her success by the standards of this world. Christ's Kingdom is imperiled when the church allows herself to be judged by the world on the basis of wealth and power and influence.

We are not called by Jesus to be a tree in the middle of the town square. We're being called to be a healthy little bush by the side of the road. We're not called to take over the world. We're called to be an example to the world. We're called to be light, and salt, and leaven, and above all, to make a witness.

Some might say that's false justification. Some might accuse me of trying to make a virtue out of what is now our present reality. Some would claim that I'm in effect copping out and saying "we never really wanted to be a tree anyway". But I'm not so sure.

The current shrinking status of the mainline denominations may well be an opportunity for fidelity rather than a sign of failure. Fidelity to the Gospel is, after all a gift from God, not a result of what we as believers and as a church do or fail to do.

We North American Christians have been flogging ourselves a lot over statistics during the past seven or eight decades. Maybe we need to start seeing our coming place in society as a gift, rather than a failure. Maybe we need to regard our current membership and political declines as opportunity rather than curse. Perhaps our situation is even providential, since it just may allow us to recapture that "loyal opposition", "in-the-world-but- not-of-it", minority status that is intrinsic and necessary to being in true witness and mission.

Maybe we need the humbling knowledge that we are not at the center of the world, not even at the center of our beloved faith. Perhaps the church of Jesus Christ needs the vitality and energy and integrity of leadership that poor and third-world peoples can bring to her in the current millennium.

If History teaches us anything, it ought to teach us that the world being what it is, whenever the church has been faithful, the world has always characterized her as being small and insignificant. The truth is that whenever the church has tried to be a mighty tree in the world, we have lost our soul. Every time we have danced to the tune of power and prestige and sheer size, we have ended up burning heretics and LGBT folk at the stake, blessing wars, fighting crusade, torturing and massacring Jews and other so called "unbelievers", and generally sold our birthright to the powers and principalities of this world for a lousy envelope or two of Mrs. Grass' instant cream of pottage soup.

Most of you can doubtless recall a time in your lives when the mainline churches in North America were large and powerful and influential. You can recall times when people were practically pounding at the doors to get in. Maybe you look upon those years, when budgets were easy to meet, and sanctuaries easy to fill, with nostalgia. Some of you, I'm sure have been to some of those big, right-wing mega-churches and thought to yourself, "Gee, it's too bad that we can't bottle what they have here and bring it back to here to Lindenhurst."

But the fact is, that the energy and enthusiasm and encouragement that you and I require in our ministry here in this place where God has planted us, can't be found in a bottle.

It can be found in your hearts—and mine.

And perhaps we shouldn't always be looking for encouragement and growth in slick plans, or in neat new programs with cute graphics, or in trying to utilize high-pressure salesmanship tactics instead of simple acts of caring, honest sharing of our faith, and a courteous invitation to a neighbor.

Certainly there's room for a rebirth of enthusiasm in the Gospel in our churches. Certainly we need a renaissance of hope and unity and direction in our denomination. But these things can only come if we remain true to ourselves and true to our understanding of the Gospel message.

The mustard seed reminds us that the ultimate basis for our encouragement in the faith, the heart of our hope lies in recognizing that, although the beginnings may be small, and the results can seem to be comparatively insignificant at times, so long as we have been faithful, there will be a Harvest. Thank God, it's not up to us. We are simply called to sow and believe.

It is the Lord of the Harvest who gives the growth. And though it will not necessarily be the growth that we expect, never-the-less it will be growth. There will be a harvest, even though it may not necessarily occur at the times, or places, or in the mode we have planned. And though it may well be a shrub instead of a tree, Jesus says that it will at least be the tallest of the shrubs. And that's, after all, a miracle.

The harvest will, never-the-less, come. Amen.