SERMON PREACHED AT ALL SAINTS’, DUNEDIN NORTH
ORDINARY SUNDAY 17 (July 25th) 2020
READINGS
Genesis
29: 15-28
Psalm 105:
1-117
Romans 8:
26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
He put before them
another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone
took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it
has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of
the air come and make nests in its branches.’He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with[a] three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’
At the heart of the tiny parable of the mustard seed is Jesus’
belief in a fundamental unity between that which we already see, know,
experience, and that which is beyond comprehension. It is no accident that in
his careful construction Matthew emphasizes the absolute finality of the death
of Jesus: “so they went and made the sepulchre secure by sealing the stone and
setting a guard” (Mt 27:62). Sentence after sentence makes it clear that the
sort of analysis beloved of figures like D. H. Lawrence and others who
hypothesize that Jesus took a decent dose of Rohypnol and popped back to
consciousness after a couple of days’ black out simply do not wash with
Matthew. The same is true of all the gospel writers, but Matthew adds his
narration of a sealed tomb to emphasize that there can be no mistake.
The writers also emphasize that there was – I would add can be
– no witness to the resurrection. To be fair the term “witness to the
resurrection” tends to be applied to the whole Christian community in which
resurrection good news is proclaimed, but I refer here to the event itself,
breaking out of the limitation of human understanding, human intellect. In my
own churches I have found easter day to be the perfect time for holy riot – for
a somewhat un-Anglican joy surreptitiously to infiltrate the mysterious rites
of liturgy. The resurrection is both holy mystery and holy madness. The soldier
had to fall asleep, to be protected from the in-breaking in full of God’s
absolute, immeasurable majesty.
Which may seem to have little to do with a grain of mustard.
So many sermons focus on the tiny size of the seed, and the enormity of the
subsequent tree – they draw a contrast. As it happens neither the claim
that the mustard seed is the smallest of seeds, nor that the adult bush is the
greatest of shrubs, is anywhere near accurate. That minor detail we can easily
assign to the nature of the Incarnation: the glorious “carmen Christi”
or “hymn to Christ” of Philippians makes clear that the Incarnation involves a
renunciation, as it were, of superhuman, certainly infinite divine knowledge.
But let’s park that for a moment – accept that the black mustard seed is fairly
small and that the adult bush is a reasonable size – and that the teacher Jesus
was satisfied with that as an illustration of his point. As one conservative
Christian commentator delightfully puts it, “the context of Matthew 13 makes it
quite clear that Jesus was addressing a local lay audience, not an
international conference of botanists.”[1]
But was his primary point one of contrast?
Well maybe. But there is here, too, a point about continuity.
Organically, if you like, the mustard seed and the mustard shrub are one and
the same: the DNA is one and the same. This is not rocket science. But the
theological implications are not passé. The
parable suggests a total continuity, however improbable, between our
experiences of love, joy, hope, light and life, to name just some benefits of
human existence invaded by Christ, and some future, unimaginable state of
blessedness, an eschatological state in which the down-payments of our
relationship with God, experienced this side of death, blossom into the fulness
of God’s presence.
Which can, like much of Christianity, sound very pie in the
sky. It is. But it is not a pie to be ignored. As we see planet earth turning
into a plastics soup, as we watch the implosion of the American Empire, as we
witness surge after surge of Covid-19 simultaneously both ignoring and
enhancing human boundaries (ignoring our politics but certainly disproportionately
attacking the poorest and most vulnerable in sociological scales) we surely
want to know, to cling to the hope, to the belief that darkness and confusion
are not the final word in human or cosmic existence. We can choose to treat the
parable as rampant nonsense or as a naïve fairy tale, but Jesus, I suspect, was
wanting a better response.
And pie in the sky this could be if we were to pull up our
ladders of self-righteousness, to ignore the plight of vulnerable humans and
species, to reach no further than our own self-interest. Sadly the discourse of
much Christianity sounds as if that is its sole focus: my place in some sort of
eternity is assured, and beyond that who cares? A doctrine of judgement might
well remind us that we are not cosy, complacent chums of the Author of
Eternity. We mind be reminded too, by the next mini-parable of Jesus, that our
integrity as Christ-bearers is an essential aspect of our hope, our light, our
life: leaven without integrity simply destroys the loaf.
Where are we left with this? Matthew alone of the gospel
writers wanted to affirm continuity between the disciples’ pre-resurrection and
post-resurrection understanding of Jesus. They didn’t always get him, and
neither do we, but they were caught up into the unending journey of knowing
him. Part of the DNA-continuance implication of the mustard seed is the
knowledge of the continuity in Christ and Christ’s resurrection for those we
love and pray for: that in itself is good news. I could not have stood at the
graveside of the many infants and young people I have buried without a
fundamental belief that that resurrection (that no human could witness) is absolutely
God’s promise.
But of course, the other side of the parable is true, too: of
course there is massive contrast between seed and bush, and a silent mysterious
interaction between yeast and dough. Of course we are called to be, in
word and more importantly in action, bearers of the eschatological hope that we
proclaim each time we celebrate Mass together (1 Cor. 11:26). And of course we
simply cannot do this without the daily intervention, the daily invasion, of
the Spirit of God – the Spirit who is the guarantor of continuity between
present life seen and future life unimaginable. As one commentary puts it, “Our
parable is an invitation to contemplate these two things – the present and the
expected future, reality and hope – in the light of the mustard seed’s story.”[2]
It is to the infiltration of that Spirit of the Resurrected
Lord that we must surrender daily, to become the seed that falls and dies and
rises, to be the leaven that infiltrates, and to be now and always a people
that rumour resurrection hope despite and perhaps precisely because of the
chaos and darkness that we experience each day.
[1]
Daryl E. Witmer, “Is the mustard seed the smallest of seeds?”, online at https://christiananswers.net/q-aiia/mustardseed.html.
[2]
Davies and Allison, Matthew (Volume 2, Edinburgh: T. & T Clark,
1991) 416.
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