Sermon
delivered at St. John’s Church, West Grimstead – Sunday 14th June 2015
Ezekiel 17:22-24; Psalm 92;
2 Corinthians 5:6-17; Mark 4:26-34.
May
I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a
blessing to all who hear them. Amen
Anyone who knows me well will
also know that I am no horticulturalist. Some people, and I do envy them, have
wonderful green fingers, not only growing wonderful shrubs, flowers and
vegetables in their gardens but also on their allotments as well – such
gluttons for punishment in my world - and it always intrigues me to see how
well the plant stalls do at our fetes and local produce shows. For me, I need to keep away from those stalls
because anything and everything I buy ends up dead quite soon afterwards. I
have a massive number of empty plant pots in my shed, like tombstones, to
testify to this! I am the one person
who, in a glut year for runner beans managed to grow just five of them on the
four plants I bought, whose crop of tomatoes worked out at around £20 per pound
after all the plants, growbags and fertiliser had been bought – for me it was
better and cheaper to drive into Salisbury and buy a pound of them off the market
for 50p. My gardening experience is now
confined to mowing, strimming, weeding, burning and generally those more
destructive activities which I am rather good at. I have always left the creative bit to others
who know what they are doing. So don’t ever put me on a church flower rota
please! The gifts of the Holy Spirit don’t extend to me in that area! I am, however, slowly beginning to appreciate
the wild flowers in my garden – they do seem to do so well so I now leave them
alone – well that’s my excuse for not weeding in some areas. Having just sold my house and buying a
smaller one, I am delighted that the new garden is laid almost exclusively to
lawn and hopefully, somebody who knows what they are doing, will tend to my
potted plants and herbs leaving me to do what I do best – mowing and weeding
the lawn.
I know, this makes me sound
like an absolute Philistine - especially in this wonderful rural part of
England where I am preaching to a rural community, but I must be honest with
you - I hate gardening. However, my
failure at horticulture does not mean that I do not appreciate and love God’s
green creations. In fact, this year in
particular, I have taken to enjoying long walks and cycle rides in the country
and, at these more leisurely paces, I have really come to love and enjoy the
trees all around us - more so than I can remember. We are so lucky to live in a part of the
world which has, on our very doorsteps, such a wealth of forest and woodland –
the heart of the New Forest being literally ten minutes’ drive from here with
its massive and interestingly shaped oaks.
Today’s readings, and today’s
psalm (92) have references to trees and plants and, throughout the bible, they
feature heavily in the scriptural messages we find – from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden in Genesis to the wooden tree
(the cross) to which our Lord was nailed. Trees even get a mention in that
apocryphal book, Revelation. Let’s just
think for a moment at some of those other horticultural references we find in
the bible – the thicket or hawthorn bush which caught the horns of the ram when
Abraham went up to sacrifice Isaac; the
vine in Joseph’s prison dream; Moses’ burning bush in the desert; the cedar
trees from Tyre (Lebanon) used to build King Solomon’s Temple; the vine that
provided shade and anger to Jonah, the withered fig tree which did not bear
fruit in the gospel passages; the tree and its fruit in Matthew’s gospel; the
sycamore tree which Zacchaeus climbed to see Jesus; the tree on which Judas
Iscariot hanged himself; and trees have also feature in popular literature too
– the talking trees in Tolkien’s “The
Lord of the Rings” and the wintery trees in C. S. Lewis’s “The Lion, Witch
and the Wardrobe”. They are symbols of longevity, of strength, of beauty and
precious resources for us to use or abuse.
We can build or we can destroy with the wood they provide. Without
really trying, I found 48 references to trees in the bible showing their importance
both as actual or allegorical scriptural objects. Indeed, trees are often referred to as the
lungs of our planet – filtering out carbon dioxide and producing life vital
oxygen and we have seen the devastation which deforestation can inflict on our
world climate – not just the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil;
but also the removal of trees in the foothills of the Himalayas has brought
about increased flooding in Bangladesh where the River Ganges enters the flat
plains of its delta. Those removed trees once stabilised the banks of the Upper
Ganges and prevented excessive rainwater entering the river in its upper
reaches. Such is their massive importance.
So what is Jesus saying to us
in his parable of the mustard seed? And why use this allegory?
Well first of all I have to admit to being a
bit confused when I first read this parable many years ago. The mustard seeds I was used to as a child
produced those small seedlings which my mother would add to egg sandwiches –
cress - and in my limited horticultural knowledge mustard was really that
yellow paste made in Norwich which accompanies Wiltshire ham on the plate or
between two slices of bread! I had never heard of a mustard tree let alone seen
one. Having done a little research it appears that the tree which Jesus is
almost certainly referring to is the Black Mustard Tree whose botanical name,
for you experts, is brassica nigra –
a relative apparently of the cabbage plant. It grows mainly in the southern
Mediterranean areas, Middle East, Ethiopia and southern Asia and its seeds are
used in curries and other spicy dishes where the small seeds are dropped into a
pan of hot butter, ghee, and burst releasing their pungent flavour.
However, if the seeds are
allowed to grow in the ground then quite quickly they produce a woody stemmed bush
or tree some nine-ten feet in height – taller than a human – which would indeed
be capable of supporting wildlife – especially birds and providing shade to
anyone who sat under it in the hot arid climate. So Jesus’s use of this in his parable is
quite appropriate.
This parable is one of those
which appears in all three of the synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke –
and therefore must be an important lesson for us to receive from Jesus. He is
saying that from the smallest of seeds – and the mustard seed is indeed small -
can grow something which can provide life and shade – a bit like our English
saying – “from the little acorn the mighty oak does grow”. In the version read
this morning, from Mark, Jesus does not explain fully what he is getting at and
looking at the other gospels in isolation doesn’t help either. We simply have
the parable. What we do know is that he is comparing the Kingdom of Heaven to
this small seed and the other parables surrounding it likewise start with “The
Kingdom of Heaven is like…” so we must take all those parables together in
order to understand fully what he is saying.
Many people thought that Jesus had come to establish a kingdom in Israel
to overcome the Roman occupation but he is emphasising that the kingdom he wishes
to establish is a spiritual one. Indeed,
he is probably talking about the establishment of the church here on earth –
and indeed it grew rapidly in the years following his crucifixion and
resurrection and still exists today – but as well as providing shade and food
it could also be used by those who would seek to destroy it or use it for their
own evil purposes.
Many scholars take the view,
and I agree, that this parable, in particular, was directed at the disciples.
At this time Jesus’s church consisted essentially of those few disciples who
were following him – disciples who probably felt that they were at odds with
mainstream Jewish thinking. Indeed, we
know that after Jesus’s crucifixion they hid away for fear of persecution, not
from the Roman authorities, but from their Jewish elders. Jesus is saying that
though they are small in number, quite inconsequential in the context of the
total numbers of people in Judah at the time, nevertheless like the tiny
mustard seed they will grow into a major influence in not only the Holy Land
but the whole world – something large and significant. A prophesy of the
establishment of the church.
I take much comfort in
this. Look what the Christian church has
done in the world? Many organisations for the relief of poverty, oppression and
natural disasters, medical care,
housing, reconciliation and counselling,
have their origins in the Church – even Southampton Football Club
started life as a church football team – as did Aston Villa, Manchester United,
Everton, Liverpool, Celtic and so on. If
Jesus wasn’t right then how do we explain being here today in church [at a
church service] worshipping and listening to the word of God through the
gospels 2000 years on?
We are the today’s disciples –
we follow Jesus – therefore the parable speaks to us today just as much as it
did in the First Century. In this busy
world we might often feel that our Christian beliefs and values are under siege
and find it hard to keep the Faith. We
might feel small and insignificant whilst others around us prosper without our
Faith. Just look at the trees. They are numerous and fill our countryside –
each one of them started as a small seedling, then a sapling and finally a
mighty tree. God is so good and wants us to know that whilst we have him in our
hearts, we are never alone but are members of that wonderful forest which is
the Christian family. Just don’t give me
a chain saw!
Amen
MFB/58
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