First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scriptures: Leviticus 19:9, Matthew 13:31-33
November 2, 1997
Every small town should have an industry by which it is known. My town (when I am not here) is Elk Rapids. The industry by which my town is known is the mustard industry. That’s right, mustard. Plain old ordinary mustard. I suppose you could say that Elk Rapids is the mustard capital of Michigan. But who cares? Or who knows? I think the town fathers need to do a better job marketing our industry. We should have a Mustard Festival. My daughter, Julie, could be “Mustard Queen.” She could sit on top of a float shaped like a giant hot dog. She could wear a yellow dress.
Don’t laugh. There have been worst ideas. And worst festivals. Out near Pinckney (where Larry Van Slambrook lives) lies the little town of Hamburg….which is home to the Kohlrabi Festival. Except the woodchucks occasionally eat the greater portion of the kohlrabi crop. Which would be a great tragedy for the citizens of Hamburg, were they not a resourceful lot. Which they are. Meaning that in bad kohlrabi years, they turn to their second best crop….jalapeno peppers (which woodchucks abhor). And figuring that most outsiders don’t have the faintest idea what a kohlrabi looks like….well, you get the picture. ‘Tis said that you really can have a “hot time” in Hamburg in an off-kohlrabi year.
But Elk Rapids won’t ever stoop to such deception. For my town is not just any town. And my town’s mustard is not just any mustard. My town’s mustard is Bechs. It is “mustard with authority.” It says so on the jar. It also says so on a huge billboard strategically located on I-75. Somewhere in the vicinity of Bay City, you’ll see it on the east side of the highway….“Mustard With Authority.” I like that. It has a nice ring to it. It suggests that Bechs is mustard with a bite….mustard with a kick….mustard with distinction….mustard that is capable of making a statement. Try some.
But mustard is not usually thought of in such terminology. The chief function of mustard is to make something else taste better. It is an “add on.” Its chief claim to fame is that it is virtually calorie-free. You could build a diet around it. Lettuce has no calories either. You could put mustard on lettuce. Lots of mustard on lots of lettuce. You could eat it three times a day. But who would want to?
Mustard can be found in the Bible. But it is not a “big deal” in the Bible. In fact, the reason mustard is in the Bible is by virtue of its being such a “small deal”…. “small” as in “insignificant.” Jesus tells a pair of stories which play off the insignificance of mustard (or mustard seeds). The first, found in Matthew 17:20, suggests that if you have faith equal to a grain of mustard seed (which is not very much faith), you can tell a mountain to move from one side of the road to the other, and that mountain will move. The second story, the one just read, likens the Kingdom of God to a tiny mustard seed which eventually springs up to become a great lodging for all the birds of heaven.
We know that this latter story is a Kingdom story. Jesus says so. One translation reads: “How shall we find something with which to compare the Kingdom?” It’s a good question. How shall we find something with which to compare the Kingdom? I’ve thought about it a bit. I don’t know what comparison I would favor. But, given a zillion years and three or four computers, I don’t think I’d come up with a mustard seed. I think Jesus means to surprise us.
The seed’s insignificance is the key. The seed is small. Jesus calls it “the least of all the seeds upon the earth.” He’s wrong. There are smaller seeds. Still, his point is well made. Mustard seeds aren’t peach pits. Jesus means to say: “Look at this seed. You can hardly see it.” But there are some days when you can hardly see the Kingdom either. On some days, the Kingdom looks very small and very buried. But Jesus says: “Don’t miss it, just because it doesn’t look like much.” The seed’s insignificance is precisely the point.
But let me move you beyond “insignificance” to another word that begins with the letter “I.” The word is “inevitability.” The real point of the parable is that the seed grows up, and there is something “inevitable” about its growing. It grows into something bigger than all the vegetables. It grows into something bigger than all the flowers. It grows into something bigger than all the shrubs. It even grows into something that puts forth big branches….something that looks very much like a tree. Which may be pushing things a bit. But William Barkley suggests that a Palestinian mustard plant often grows to be taller than a horse and its rider. He also suggests that a cloud of birds hovering over a mustard plant is a common enough sight, given that the birds are drawn to the little black seeds the plant produces.
But there is an even better reason for taking the liberty of calling this plant “a tree.” It has to do with the fact that “tree” is often used as a biblical metaphor for “a great empire.” Jesus may well be saying: “You want to know what the Kingdom is like? It is like this tiny, tiny seed which becomes the greatest empire of all.”
Then, as if to drive the point home, Jesus expands upon it in this marvelous little story of the leaven. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, which a woman hides in three measures of flour, ‘til it is all leavened.”
Leaven, of course, is yeast. Yeast makes bread rise. About which I know little, given that my baking is limited to an occasional pecan pie. I have never baked a loaf of bread in my life. But my grandmother baked bread every Monday and Thursday. So I learned something about dough by watching my grandmother. Once you put yeast in the flour, it’s inevitable. It is in there working, hidden though it may be. In fact, this story goes the parable of the mustard seed one better. For while it is conceivable that a seed can be reclaimed from the earth (assuming that the sower can find it again after planting), the yeast can never be pulled from the flour once the rising process has begun.
Notice something else about this story of the leaven. Notice that the yeast is hidden in the flour by a woman. So what? So plenty! This is a Kingdom story. The Kingdom is God’s doing. Therefore, in this particular story, God’s surrogate is female.
What’s more, this act of leavening is no small thing. Three measures of flour (with “sata” being the word for “measure”) is a bushel of flour, for crying out loud. We’re talking 128 cups of flour. We’re talking 16 five-pound bags of flour. And once you get done adding enough liquid to make all that flour come together, you’ve got over a hundred pounds ofdough on your hands.
“And the whole was leavened by this little bit of yeast.” Meaning that eventually….and inevitably….the Kingdom will permeate and penetrate everything. It’s a given.
But more than that, the Kingdom is already in the mix. It’s been there from the very beginning. There has never been a time when it hasn’t been there. It is small, but powerful. It is small, but working. It is small, but rising. It is small, but permeating the whole.
You want another image? I’ll give you another image. Take a vessel of clear water. Add a few drops of concentrated dye. Initially, the drops are isolated, seemingly without effect. But slowly, and inevitably, the water is colored.
You want still another image? Consider oleo. When I was a kid, oleo was white. You bought a pound of it. Which was the only way you could buy it. It didn’t come in those individually-wrapped, quarter pound rectangles. And when you bought this pound of white oleo, it came equipped with a capsule of yellow food dye. Some of you remember that. In fact, let’s take a poll. How many of you remember that? More than I would have guessed. Anyway, you had to split open the capsule with your thumb. Then, with the back of a wooden spoon, or with your hands….usually your hands….you worked the color into the oleo, a whole pound at a time. The brick of oleo was so big. And the capsule was so small. But once you started working it in, the oleo could never be unyellow again.
Jesus said: “The Kingdom is like that. It’s already in there. It’s in the dirt. It’s in the dough. It’s in the water. It’s in the oleo. The Kingdom is not some future world that God has waiting in the wings as a backup, once this one is finished. The Kingdom is something that is already at work, right here in this world.”
But having said that, let me press on. It has probably not been lost on you that all this talk about seeds, yeast and baked goods has something to do with this year’s finance campaign. “Plant More Than You Harvest” is our title. It’s an agrarian theme….a down-home theme….a soil-based theme. It assumes that there is going to be a planting, and that there is going to be a harvesting. Both of which are God’s work. Both of which are our work. And if both parts of the work are done well, it’s going to make a difference. It can’t help but make a difference.
There is Kingdom stuff growing up all around us. The fact that we don’t notice it much, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Our job is to work at noticing it. That way, once we notice it, we can enhance it rather than stomp on it.
We can’t (from scratch) create the Kingdom. Which is sobering news. But we can’t (in and of ourselves) stop the Kingdom. Which is wonderful news. And once we find Kingdom seedlings….or Kingdom saplings….or Kingdom cuttings….or Kingdom leavenings….we are called to put a shovel to them, or an oven around them, so that they have half a chance to become more of what they already are, so that they can do more than they are already doing.
And when the field produces….when the tree yields….and when the bread rises….we are supposed to remember that the gleanings are not entirely ours to pick and can, wrap and freeze, clutch and hoard, or bank and invest as we see fit. Instead, we are supposed to plow some of the gleanings back into Kingdom business, or share them with those the Kingdom is for (which means everybody, don’t you see, including those who can’t tell the Kingdom from a mustard tree or a loaf of bread….and especially for those who find their lives treed and who have no bread).
What am I saying? I’ll tell you what I’m saying. In fact, let me be blunt in saying it. I am saying that God is doing some amazing work….whether we can always see it or not. And I am saying that we are reaping one hell of a harvest….whether we can always appreciate it or not. And I am saying that if we are be unwilling to shoulder the work and share the profits, we miss the whole point of the exercise and, in the short run, gum up the works something terrible.
This is the way God means for the world to work. I could preach this in spades (from any one of a hundred passages). But so as to balance today’s New Testament parable with an Old Testament counterpoint, let me turn to the Levitical mandate that undergirds our campaign:
When you harvest your field, don’t harvest clear to the border. And when you pick your grapes, don’t strip the clusters right down to the nub. And when you shake the fruit from your trees, don’t shake it all down. And the stuff that falls on the ground, don’t pick it all up. Leave some for the hungry, the wayfarer and the stranger.
In time, that mandate was expanded. Now, the Bible suggests that when you harvest anything (grapes…. grain….cucumbers…. kumquats….stocks…. bonds…. lottery winnings….commodity futures) some of it needs to go elsewhere than your closet or cupboard. That’s because it’s not all yours, even though it feels like yours (because you planted it, worked for it, wagered it or invested it in the first place).
One of the local pizza makers….one of the big three pizza makers (who are in a cutthroat fight for my business)….has upped the marketing ante to an all-time high. They are now telling me that if I don’t like crusts….don’t eat crusts….leave my crusts on the plate like so many sparerib bones after I suck the meat off them….I won’t have to pay for crusts anymore. They’ll eliminate the crusts. That way I can have double cheese, Italian sausage, mushrooms, peppers and anchovies right to the edge. But God says: “Not in my bakery, you can’t. Not in my vineyard, you can’t. Not in my field, you can’t. You can plant to the edge. You can bake to the edge. In fact, I half expect you to. But when it comes to picking and consuming, you can’t go to the edge. You have to stop short of the edge. Because that’s the way my world works.”
What’s more, that’s the way you work….or are built to work. Within every soul is an instinct to give. Those of you in the balcony have an instinct to give. Those of you on the main floor have an instinct to give. Those of you in the choir have an instinct to give. And all the people who slept in this morning, meaning that they can’t be found anywhere in the building, have an instinct to give. Blunt that instinct and another will take over. Call it an animal instinct if you like. Which is very basic….very helpful….and very necessary. For animals. To be sure, some animal instincts will preserve us in the short run. But very few animal instincts will serve us in the long run.
In a moment, I’m going to bring this exercise to a close. The choir is going to sing a song. Then we all will sing a song. And you are going to stream for the exits. But as you pass through the narthex this morning, somebody is going to do something with your hand, other than shake it. Somebody is going to put a loaf of bread in it. A good loaf. A tasty loaf. A pretty good-sized loaf. Better yet, a free loaf. There’s a loaf for every man, woman and child in here.
So don’t look a gift loaf in the mouth. Take it home. Open it up. Eat it. Enjoy it. Put a little egg and cinnamon with it and make yourself some French toast. Stop and get a little sausage on the way home to have with it. But resist the temptation to ask: “I wonder how much dough they blew on all that bread?” Yes, we paid for it. But get past that. Or get over that.
We bought it from the people at the Great Harvest Bakery. That’s the place where they give you a huge slice of bread (with butter, jam, olive oil, whatever) every time you walk in the door. Free. In fact, they’ll even give you a couple of free slices. You can make a meal out of the bread they give away. Which some people do. But a lot of others question the bread give-away program. In fact, so many people seemed bothered by this, that they had to post a letter, entitled: “What’s the gimmick? Why the free slices?”
· Do people sometimes come in for the slices without buying the loaves?
All the time.
· Do the bakery people care?
Don’t seem to.
· Do they look at you funny?
Never have yet.
Instead, they explain:
Some people think a business is just to make money, so naturally our bread board is confusing. But we are in business for two reasons. We are in business to make money. And we are in business to have fun. Either one alone wouldn’t be enough. The day we stop making money….or it stops being fun….we quit.
The bread board is our fun. The cash register is our money. So you see, when you’re at our bread board, you’re keeping this whole thing going….just as much as the people at the cash register. People are happiest when they make other people happy. As bakers, we’re happiest when we see people eating our bread, right when it comes from the oven. Some people worry that we don’t know what we’re doing. Trust us. We’re far from going broke.
I am not a shopper. But I love going in their store. That’s because everybody really does seem to be having a good time. And it smells so good. But, more than that, it feels like church (on one of the church’s better days).
So, following the benediction, waltz right on out of here. Belly up to the bread brokers. Take your loaf. Eat your fill. Give ten percent to the birds, the ducks or your Catholic neighbors. And sometime, before too many suns have set on your tomorrows, ask yourself: “What is that crazy old fool in the pulpit trying to tell us?”
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Note: As always, when I turn to parables, I am especially indebted to a pair of authors…. William Barkley, who does a most traditional thing….and Robert Capon, who wouldn’t know what the word “traditional” means, but who unwraps the Bibl
