Sermon: Greatest of All Shrubs

Texts: Hosea 14:1-8; Matthew 13:31-32; Luke 17:5-6

Date: April 17, 2005

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

As the poet said, "only God can make a tree,"
probably because it's so hard to figure out
how to get the bark on.
- Woody Allen

I bet Woody Allen never imagined his little funny would wind up as a sermon opener in an obscure church on an island way out west. I think his joke opens up a window onto an Extreme Truth, though the comic probably didn’t intend it. It’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on a tree. We could never accomplish it, not with all eternity to work on it. As soon as those words are spoken, you realize even if you haven’t thought of God all day that you are in God’s territory. Just look out the window at any old tree and wonder, “How did She do that?”

If making a single tree--getting the bark to stick somehow--is difficult enough, imagine the unbelievable complexity of creating the Kingdom of God. While you put the making of a tree and the creation of the Kingdom of God alongside each other in your mind, let me just state the painfully obvious: Only God can bring about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God—or the Kingdom of Heaven, as Matthew preferred to call it—appears when and where people live as if God reigns, God rules. It’s not a place, but a condition. The teaching of Jesus, much taken up with this subject, speaks of the Kingdom as both present and not-yet. Frederick Buechner puts it like this: “Insofar as here and there, now and then, God’s kingly will is being done in various odd ways among us even at this moment, the kingdom has come already. Insofar as all the odd ways we do God’s will at this moment are at best half-baked and half-hearted, the kingdom is still a long way off—a hell of a long way off, to be more precise and theological.”[1] To speak of the Kingdom of God being fulfilled or complete is to look forward to the day when everyone is living all the time as if God reigns—no more half-baked or half-hearted attempts.

The scriptures promise that one way or another, eventually, the Kingdom will be fulfilled, totally present on earth. Believers are to trust in that promise and expect that it will happen. We live in expectation. That’s important. But it is equally important to realize that it is ultimately God’s work to bring that about. We won’t be getting it done on our own. For Pete’s sake, we can’t even put the bark on a tree. The creation of the Kingdom is beyond our powers.

Is that a relief or a disappointment? The theologically correct answer is, of course, “a relief.” But there is a side to human beings—call it our inner empire builder—which would like to be responsible for making the world a better place and taking all the credit for whatever success is achieved. We’d like to be the “perfect church” which no one ever leaves once they’ve discovered it because it is sooo perfect. EHCC: the church known far and wide for its good work, intelligent, attractive members, overflowing bank accounts, short meetings, stellar educational and fellowship programs, awesome music, soulful prayer, stunning theology, picture-perfect building, breathtaking preaching, and absolute humility. Because of the youth ministry of our church, teen suicide will disappear from the island. We’ll share so generously that the food bank will no longer be needed. There will be no more letters to the editor with citizens sniping at each other because we will have mediated such conflicts between neighbors in our peace-making ministry. Our leadership in earth stewardship will result in English ivy being completely eradicated from the island’s abundant green spaces. Because of our housing ministry, poorer and richer neighbors will live side-by-side in mixed solar-powered housing developments constructed by “green” builders. We’ll get written up in all the leading Christian periodicals as an example of an excellent 21st century church. We’ll host seminars for other churches to come and learn from us which we’ll advertise with full-color six-page brochures. This will all come about because we will try so hard.

Admit it, isn’t there a little part of you that would like all that to happen on our watch? Is it possible? Not if we think such things will unfold because we try so hard. Is it possible? God only knows.

We have to keep coming back to that, God only knows, because we can’t even put the bark on a tree, much less become a world-renowned perfect church that will revolutionize island life as we know it. God only knows what might come about because of the ministry of our church. Our task, job #1 every moment of every day is not to try hard to be the perfect church but to put ourselves at God’s disposal. Put ourselves at God’s disposal. Every day. God is working to bring about the Kingdom; and one of the means through which that will be accomplished is, believe it or not, by human beings (who can’t even put the bark on a tree) making themselves available as God’s instruments.

This may involve caging up our inner empire builders in order to make room for whatever God wants to accomplish through us. The growth of the kingdom is so mysterious that we can’t know immediately whether God is calling us to be some handsome seminar-holding cathedral (with ample underground parking, naturally) or calling us simply to bump along trying to be a faithful smallish welcoming church in an uncertain time.

The biblical scholars who collaborated on The Five Gospels think Jesus was rejecting empire-building tendencies in imagining the Kingdom of God by choosing the mustard seed as one analogy in talking about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. The people whom Jesus was teaching probably would have expected or preferred God’s domain to be compared to something great, not something as small and insignificant. The mighty cedar of Lebanon, or the tree at the center of the world described in Daniel whose crown reaches to heaven and whose branches cover the earth—not some garden herb! Mustard seed. What can it become, best case scenario? “The greatest of shrubs.” It’s really kind of funny. That’s how the Jesus Seminar scholars read it, as Jesus deliberately using parody, understating the image for comic effect. The point is, “for Jesus, God’s domain was a modest affair, not a new world empire. It was pervasive but unrecognized, rather than noisy and arresting.”[2] The thing about the mustard plant is not that it towers at the center of the world, apparent to every eye, but that it springs up in garden patches all over the place, under the radar of various empires. It begins with the smallest of seeds, a seed so small it virtually disappears the instant it is dropped in the dirt. And then it becomes everything it can be—the greatest of shrubs, so magnificently shrubby that even the birds of the air come and nest in its branches. And it’s not just planted one at a time; these shrubs are popping up everywhere, if you have eyes to see. Some of them are planted on church acreage and some of them are planted in what looks to the naked eye like secular property. You know—Doctors Without Borders tents, Boys and Girls Clubs, courtrooms, AA meetings, music schools--places like that. Churches are by no means the only fertile ground.

But we are fertile ground, insofar as we put ourselves at God’s disposal, every day. We do have a slight advantage over more secular plots in that we live in expectation that God can do something wonderful through us when we are patient and available. Something fruitful, even if not showy or flashy. Fred Craddock tells one story that is about ministry in a farm community yet reminded me a bit of our island. This happened in Custer City, Oklahoma, population about 450 on a good day. In Craddock’s words, “There were four churches: a Methodist church, a Baptist church, a Nazarene church, and a Christian church (Disciples of Christ). Each had its share of the population on Wednesday night, Sunday morning, and Sunday evening. Each had a small collection of young people, and the attendance rose and fell according to the weather and whether it was time to harvest wheat and all of that.

“But the most consistent attendance in town was at the little café where all the pickup trucks were parked, and all the men were inside discussing the weather, and the cattle, and the wheat bugs, and the hail, and the wind, and are we going to have a crop. All their wives and sons and daughters were in one of those four churches. The churches had good attendance and poor attendance, but the café had consistently good attendance, better attendance than some of the churches. They were always there. Once in a while they would lose a member there at the café, because their wives finally got to them or their kids, and you’d see them go sheepishly off to one of the churches. But the men in the café still felt strong. “We are still the best, biggest, and strongest group in town.” And so they met on Wednesdays and Sundays and every other day, discussing weather and crops—not bad men, but good men, family men, hard-working men.

“The patron saint of the group that met at the café was named Frank. Frank was seventy-seven when I met him. He was a good, strong man; a pioneer, rancher and farmer, and a prospering cattle man too. He was born in a sod house; he had his credentials, and all the men there at the café considered him their patron saint. ‘Ha! Ol’ Frank will never go to church.’ I met Frank on the street one time. He knew I was a preacher, but it has never been my custom to accost people in the name of Jesus, so I was just shaking hands and visiting with him, but he took the offensive. He was not offensive, but he took the offensive. He said, ‘I work hard, I take care of my family, and I mind my own business. Far as I’m concerned, everything else is fluff.’ You see what he told me? ‘Leave me alone, I’m not a prospect.’ I didn’t bother Frank. That’s why I, the entire church, and the whole town were surprised, and the men at the café church were absolutely bumfuzzled when old Frank, seventy-seven years old, presented himself before me one Sunday morning for baptism. I baptized Frank. Some of the talk of the community was, ‘Frank must be sick. Guess he’s scared to meet his maker. They say he’s got heart trouble. Going up there and being baptized, well, I never thought ol’ Frank would do that, but I guess when you get scared…’ All kinds of stories.

“But this is the way that Frank told it to me. We were talking the next day after his baptism, and I said, ‘Uh, Frank, you remember that little saying you used to give me so much: I work hard, I take care of my family, and I mind my own business?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I remember that. I said that a lot.’ I said, ‘You still say that?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Then what’s the difference?’ He said, ‘I didn’t know then what my business was.’ He discovered what his business was—to serve human need. And so I baptized Frank. I raised my hand and I said, ‘In the presence of those who gather, upon your confession of faith in Jesus Christ, and in obedience to his command, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen.’”[3]

Now, what if a church stayed open for 123 years just so that someone like Frank could discover what his business was, and be there as a witness? Would it be worth it? What if a church opened the doors every Wednesday night and the fellowship that blossomed around the squashy cushions of the Singer Room couches kept one troubled teenager from killing himself? What if a church never got perfect or famous but some number of souls inched a little closer to the heart of God because of what they heard and saw here? What if a stranger sitting at our table on the last day of the month tasted divine love in the tuna hot dish served at Super Supper? What if a bunch of people in the year of our Lord 2005 opened their hearts and hands and offered up a whole heap of money so that a lonesome old man and a shy little girl could have a place to feel loved? Would it be worth it?

God, take our little mustard seed of faith and plant it here on holy ground; let us become, under the refreshing dew of your everlasting grace, the greatest of all shrubs, to your glory. It will be enough.

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[1] Buechner, Frederick Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC New York: Harper & Row, 1973, p.50

[2] Funk, Robert W., Hoover, Roy W. and the Jesus Seminar The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus New York: Polebridge Press, 1993, p. 484

[3] Craddock, Fred B. Craddock Stories Mike Graves and Richard F. Ward, ed. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2001, p. 67-69