Sunday
June 14
A Grain of Mustard Seed
By Marsh Chapel
Click here to listen to the full service
Click here to listen to the sermon only
Our little boat motor idled well and even carried the pontoon boat forward, but at a snail’s pace. All boats disappoint just like all dogs bite. The summer on our like is a series of boat breakdowns. I wondered. Old age finally taking the motor? Carburetor? Choke? Throttle wires? I am no mechanic. This usually means taking the boat out of the water and towing it 30 miles for repairs. The motor casing came off easily. In a few minutes, it was apparent even to a non-mechanic that a single connection, throttle to gas line, had slipped undone. Just as easily, without tools, it was reconnected. The motor purred, and purrs still. Small things, little things, can make a big difference.
We have no cable TV. We have no dish. We have no outsized antenna. We get what you get with today’s equivalent of rabbit ears, a free-standing antenna. Four channels not four hundred, and hardly anything worth watching. But we like the local news, some for content, more for delivery. One evening the TV stopped connecting with anything. And we worried again about another expense, task, day of home repairs. But it happens that in the wind the antenna sometimes moves, slightly. Just a little jiggle to the south, and all channels darken. Which means, as you guess, that a little jiggle north brings our motley four channels back. Small things, little things, a slight little shift can make a big difference.
Our out cottage, a broken down old fishing camp, built probably on weekends by one guy with tools, a six pack and a rod and reel, has a pump. On that well and pump depend cooking, eating, cleaning washing, showers and other forms of relief. It is outside, so subject to weather and other beings. The pump stopped one afternoon. I am no plumber, but I know a good one. We called him. You worry when your family needs water and you have no way to provide it. A new pump? Line problems? Dry well? What is wrong? But it was something very little. Ants had found their way into the electric box and broken the connection. Two minutes of expert attention, ants erased, problem solved. Small little things can make a big difference.
The dock itself is new, partly brand new. The dock is our island into the lake, our portal into boating, our entrance into swimming, our bridge into fishing, our outpost of land in water. It is just a wonderful territory in itself. But in order to get from the hillside down onto the dock, a makeshift staircase is required. It is a fraction of the size of the dock, a farthing compared to a pound. It is a humble set of six stairs in wood reaching out onto the majesterial dock. Without the stairs, though, the dock is useless. All the weight, all the space, all the expanse, all the expense of the four piece dock lies permanently adrift from the mainland without the simple steps. Small things, little things, make a difference, and open up the possibility of much, much greater things.
Back from the fishing camp, and a warm water pumped shower there, now out on the dock beneath the stairs, ready to board the boat for a motor powered rid, our 7 year old granddaughter caught something in her younger brother’s rhetoric. Brother said, “Eric told me yesterday that he would take me tubing behind his boat today’. Sister said, “I know that is what he said, but that is not what he meant.” There is a short, short way from birdie to bogie, from right to almost right, from what is said to what is meant. To be able to hear that difference is a spiritual gift, a small, little, powerful, spiritual gift. “I know that is what he said, but that is not what he meant!” Small things, little things, make a difference, and open up the possibility of real understanding
It is a Sabbath reminder for us. Little things can change the world. Think about the Archduke Ferdinand. Read about Asa Kent Jennings. Look again at the events in Boston of 1775. Recall the old lines: For the want of a…nail, shoe, horse, rider, battle…Read once more Barbara Brown Taylor’s A Preaching Life. Or return to read again Arthur Ashe’s memoir, Days of Grace. Remember when someone said something to you that intervened, helped, saved. Sometimes the best medicine is whatever gives you the courage to take one more step forward. You have the mind, heart, faith and voice to speak such an intervening word this week. You also have the mind, heart, the faith and will to hear such an intervening word this week. Will it make any difference? Small, little things, make a difference, and have the power of faith, like a grain of mustard seed.
A grain of mustard seed. Our Lord meets us today within his chosen realm of discourse and rhetoric. The realm of nature. The realm of story or parable. The realm of nature parable. Notice, as a clue to the intimacy of these words and Jesus himself, the odd phrase ‘birds of the air’. A redundancy, a connection it may be, to the Aramaic of Jesus’ own speech. What other kinds of birds are there, anyway? He taught them nothing, without a parable. Most of those, at least those not dealing with money and labor, are nature parables, like ours today. Jesus has used the memorable image of the tiny mustard seed before. ‘Truly I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move hence to yonder place’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you’. He has used the mustard seed before. He has used hyperbole before. He has used parable and nature and nature parable before. Our Lord meets us at the intersection of parable and nature today.
Faith is a little thing. It is not as easily measured as some other things. Faith is like a grain of mustard seed, in and through which, over a long time, great and big changes come. You may disregard such a little thing, at least for a time. After all, it is the smallest of all seeds. Faith is a little thing. Yet in the odd mysteries of secrecy and of growth, of growth in secret, of which nature and the parables of nature do remind us, in Jesus’ teaching, we are given again an intriguing hint of faith.
An old hymn, sung with sincerity, authenticity and a sense of irony, can give that kind of hint of faith, in worship. An anthem, true and fine, offered to the praise of God, out of a different time and clime, can give that kind of hint of faith, in worship. A strange story, of a boy become king on the credit of his ruddy cheeks and the spirit of the Lord moving, can give that kind of hint of faith, in worship. A cascading waterfall of tumbling words in ancient writ, a warning that we walk by faith not by sight, and that outward appearance is nothing compared to the heart, and that we see no longer by flesh only or by spirit only but according to the cross of a new creation, in which the old is gone and new is come, can give that kin of hint of faith, in worship. A friendly word on entry, a gentle greeting on departure, an example of another’s compassionate faith from another place in the pew, all can give that kind of hint of faith, in worship. Compared to the great assemblies of the age on the screen or on the stage or in the ballpark or on the green, a little mustard seed, a tiny little seed for the future, a moment in worship, come Sunday, must seem so very small. Yet it carries a hint of faith, which may be, some dark night, all that you need and all that you have to go on.
That difficult hour may be upon you today, or this week, or this summer. In decision, in change, in struggle, in loss, in despair. Faith isn’t faith, in a way, until and unless it is all you have to go on. Jesus meets us today with a word of hope. In a nature parable, in the chosen medium of his diction. Watch. Take heart. Look. Listen. You matter. You count. You are for real. You can do this. You can.
That difficult hour may be upon us today, or this week or this year. In Boston, we are still struggling through the trauma and consequences of April 2013. How could we not? The court verdict for the person responsible for the killings and injuries continues to reverberate in our collective conscious and unconscious. How could it not? In America, we are still struggling through and with shocking reminders of majority power and minority pain, sometimes bubbling to the surface of our shared consciousness by means of little things, like photos, like videos, like cell phone recordings. How could we not? We are not finished, but unfinished as people, and as a people. Across the globe we are still struggling with containment of conflict emerging from religious and economic and cultural difference. How could we not? These and other struggles can have the capacity to freeze us in place, to keep us from moving well and forward into an unseen future, unless we are freed up, given flexibility, creativity, and hope, through a tiny measure, an abiding sense of faith. Faith has the audacity to say ‘we walk by faith, not by sight’.
Difficult hours may be upon us today, or this week, or this summer. In decision, in change, in struggle, in loss, in despair. Faith isn’t faith, in a way, until and unless it is all you have to go on. Jesus meets us today with a word of hope. In a nature parable, in the chosen medium of his diction. Watch. Take heart. Look. Listen. You matter. You count. You are for real. You can do this. You can make a difference for good, in what you say, in what you do, in what you choose, in where you go. Sometimes, by the dominical saying before us today, it is the little things, these very little things, that are hints of faith, and that make, over long time, manifold difference.
A grain of mustard seed. Sometimes a bit of the future is hidden in a little change. In your marriage or family life, is there one small change for the better which might lead to a great harvest later on? In your work life, is there one small change you could engineer for the better, which might lead to a great harvest later on? In your community life, is there one small change which, by odd and untraceable influences, might make all the difference over the long haul? In your personal life, is there one summer alteration, one slight step forward, that might with the gathering momentum of time and season, pave the way for a peace that passes understanding, a meadow into which you can go in and out and find pasture, a joy that is closer and closer to becoming complete? Think about it.
With what may we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
For more information about Marsh Chapel at Boston University, click here.
For information about donating to the Chapel, click here.
Leave a Reply