Ezekiel 17.22-24; 2nd Corinthians 5.6-10-17; Mark 4.26-34
The Lord makes a pledge through the prophet Ezekiel, today’s first reading, to
transplant a cedar shoot and make it a tree “high and lofty.” This is not merely
God’s method of forestry. Ezekiel is offering an image of hope. He’s writing to
the Israelites when they were in exile, taken from the familiar surroundings of
home, people worn out by violence, people whose leaders had failed them, who
experienced the collapse of so much that once made life dependable, people
wondering if their best days as a nation were behind them. In a troubled and
troubling time, they are looking for hope. That’s what Ezekiel offers in today’s
first reading. “I will take a small shoot and make it a noble cedar,” says the Lord.
In the Bible, cedar trees are the gold standard of trees. One of the psalms praises
the cedars of Lebanon as the Lord’s own trees, kept, and preserved by God.
Another describes how cedars themselves praise the Lord because their height—
50 feet, 100 feet—points to the heavens. Throughout the Bible, cedars are
admired for their beauty and strength. The wood was used as roofing, support
beams, and pillars for buildings. When King David built his palace, he made it a
house of cedar. Nobility and grandeur: that’s what Ezekiel describes. If God is
going to do something in the world to renew our faith and trust, shouldn’t it be
big, obvious, great? Ezekiel promises that people brought low will be lifted up by
the Lord, people whose hope had withered will once again flourish. “I will take a
small shoot and make it a noble cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it.”
In today’s gospel, Jesus then tells two short parables of his own about God at
work in the world, planting and growing. At first, Jesus sounds like he’s simply
echoing Ezekiel. Something that starts small grows into a refuge for all kinds of
birds. But Jesus changes one detail: the end result, the bit about what the thing
that small start turns into. “The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, the
smallest of all seeds. When it grows, it becomes the greatest of all shrubs.” Not a
hundred-foot-high cedar but something more like lilac bush. And with that,
Jesus shows us the presence and work of God in the ordinary and unexpected,
fine-tunes our vision to see how and where God is at work: not in a mountaintop
vista or royal palace; not a sold-out crowd in a popstar venue; nothing
commanding or overpowering but as commonplace as the garden in our own
cathedral yard.
Now, to be sure, there are times in the scriptures when God appears to people in
big and extraordinary ways: Moses on Mount Sinai with thunder, lightning,
thick cloud, and trumpet blast; Isaiah overwhelmed by the presence of the Lord,
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the hem of the Lord’s robe filling the Temple, pillars shaking, and angels singing
“Holy, Holy, Holy.” And don’t discount the possibility that you might sometime
encounter the presence of God in extraordinary ways.
The problem, though, is that if we’re only looking for God in big events, we miss
the small ways the Lord comes to us: the Lord’s still, small voice heard by Elijah;
a baby born in a manger who, when he grows up, tells about mustard seeds and
shrubs. We need Jesus’ parable about ordinary seeds growing in ordinary ways
because ordinary is where we live most of our lives. There aren’t any cedars
around here but there are plenty of shrubs. Jesus shows us how to re-direct and
re-focus our faith and even to repent of where we look for God: away from the
greatest to the least, away from the commanding to the commonplace, away
from the dazzling to the daily. “The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, the
smallest of all seeds that becomes the greatest of all shrubs so birds can make
nests in its shade.”
Duluth writer Kent Nerbaum, in a series of essays about fatherhood, writes
about the life of his father in a way that, I think, connects well with today’s
scripture readings. “My father was not an extraordinary man. There could be no
epics written about his accomplishments. He was no hero. But he was a good
man. Now for the last ten years, I have slowly watched him lose interest in life.
Today, he is withered. He is depleted and defeated by the losses that have taken
all sense of power from him. First, it was his loss of a job. Then, his loss of
physical strength. Then, his loss of any sense of usefulness. Now he believes he is
an empty shell.”
But Nerbaum believes something else. “I see his real strength. I see a man who
went for days without sleep to help people who lost their homes to fires and
flood. I see a man who worked two, sometimes three, jobs to give his children
Christmas presents, who always put his own needs last. I see a man who lived in
service to a vision of caring and sharing. He was a good man. In a small way he
was a great man. I can see this, but he cannot. Because for my father, and for
most people, there is almost an instinctive tendency to make false connections of
strength with force, or to measure strength in moments of power and drama. But
as I look at my father, I see real strength. Even as he loses power, he is strong.
Strength is not lifting more, carrying more, running faster, or working harder.
Strength is not a force. It is an attribute of the heart.”
The strength Nerbaum sees in his father, Jesus reveals in the parable of the
mustard shrub. This is where Jesus himself is found. The New Testament letter of
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Philippians, for example, points us away from power that is often, and all-too
easily, exploited and tuns us toward the Kingdom of God at hand in Jesus. The
Son of God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his
advantage but lived as a humble servant all the way to death on the cross. And
the cross, as the New Testament sees it, is itself yet another tree in the Bible, the
tree where the Kingdom of God is seen in its fullness. “Jesus bore our sins in his
body on the tree,” says 1st Peter. “By his wounds you have been healed.” Of his
own life, Jesus says that he is a seed that will fall into the earth and die, a seed
that grows and bear much fruit.
To a world that prioritizes success, power, and recognition, the Kingdom of God
offers a different set of priorities: humility, service, and faithfulness. For people
in Jesus’ time who were taught that the Kingdom must come as a dramatic
revolution and come now, changing everything instantly now, Jesus tells a
parable of tiny seeds slowly growing into shrubs, not cedars; shifts our attention
from temporal achievements to eternal values. ‘Smallest’ means that the gospel
will rarely be front page news; its standard method of operating barely visible to
the eye of publicity, but at work nevertheless. Isn’t that the very thing Paul also
is saying today? “We walk by faith and not by sight.”
In parables about seed quietly growing and a mustard-seed-sized beginnings
yielding God’s results, Jesus shows how God, high and lofty, has come near to us
and is found in the world. We don’t have to wait for God to show up in dazzling
experiences but can discover God in the daily. We can see God in the love that
sustains us day to day; in the strength that carries us through bouts of depression
or when our health fails; we can see God present in the joy of a toddler or in Kent
Nerbaum’s father. And we taste and see the goodness of the Lord in this Holy
Eucharist, a bit of bread and wine—a mustard-seed-sized meal if ever there was
one yet given as Christ’s very Body and Blood for our life, forgiveness, and
strength.
And when your faith seems small, mustard-seed-sized, or insignificant, you can
live in the assurance that God is at work through you. You can plant seeds of our
own in truth, love, and grace through repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation;
in anonymous acts of kindness for strangers and little deeds of love for people
around you. These are small seeds, to be sure, and you may feel life the farmer in
the first of Jesus’ parables not quite be sure just how all of it will work out. And
even as “we walk by faith and not by sight,” we can do the works that God has
given us to do in the trust that God’s work in our lives will bear fruit or love, joy,
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peace, patience, kindness; of beauty, strength, and hope—a place of refuge and
life in God.
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