Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10,14-17; Mark 4:26-34
I want to begin this morning by telling
you what I’m not going to preach about, and why. If you’ve followed the national news this
weekend, you know we’ve come to a peculiar moment in which the interpretation
of scripture has become newsworthy. It’s not every day the attorney general
appeals to the Bible to defend public policy.1 Now, it’s tempting
for me to toss out the sermon I’d prepared for today and preach about using
scripture to defend one’s position on immigration. I’m not going to do that, but that doesn’t
mean we aren’t going to address the question, because we are.
For me to stand up here and tell you what
I think would make some of you happy and infuriate others of you. I’d get some supportive emails, and I’d have
several angry coffees. But the fact that
a sermon is basically one-way communication means that we wouldn’t really have
much conversation about scripture and public policy – and, worse, a number of
you would just go away quietly upset, the disagreement distancing your
relationship with the church.
So, instead, I’d like to invite you to a
conversation next Sunday, between the services.
We’ll use the presenting situation as a case study, looking at the
scripture that the attorney general cited, as well as passages others would
cite in disagreement. I’ll have some
things to say about those passages and about how to interpret scripture responsibly. And then, God willing, you’ll share your
minds and your hearts. If we need to,
we’ll extend the conversation to the following Sunday, as well. I believe this congregation – and the
Episcopal Church, at its best – can be a big tent, a contrast community to the
divisiveness of our nation and the predictable outrage of social media. If you agree, I hope you’ll come for the
conversation.
So, instead of politics for now … Happy
Father’s Day. And thank you for honoring
your heavenly parent as part of your Father’s Day celebration. For me, leading up to Father’s Day, I’ve had
baseball on my mind. As many of you
know, my father and I take a short trip to St. Louis each year to see a couple
of Cardinals’ games. You’ll have to
forgive me for the destination; I grew up in Springfield, watching both the
Royals and the Cardinals, never having to worry about issues of loyalty, at
least not until 1985…. We still have a
couple of months before my father and I head off for this year’s trip, with my
son, Dan, but we’re looking forward to it already.
I’ve also had baseball on my mind because
I was blessed to make a pilgrimage to Cooperstown, New York, when Ann and I
were out there to visit our daughter, Kathryn.
I’ve always wanted to go to the Hall of Fame and see the holy relics of
a game that, for me, captures our lives – and, if you’ll allow it, maybe even
our path to God. Baseball calls us into
the green pastures of ball field to find our lives and our hearts in all their
complexity, our virtues and our
brokenness. It’s a game we can easily
see ourselves playing; even old short guys with spare tires can imagine
ourselves blooping a single at Kauffman Stadium. Because all could play, we know all should be
welcomed to play, though our sinful tendencies made us slow to bring people of
all colors and backgrounds onto the field.
And the game itself is a showcase of humankind’s potential for glory and brokenness, side by side: walk-off
home runs and missed calls at first base in the World Series; chivalrous
commitments to excellence and records tainted with steroids; the perfectly
executed double play and the grounders that roll between our legs – and,
despite all the ways we fall short, there’s always the hope of “next year.”2
Anyway, the visit to the Hall of Fame was
one of the highlights of our vacation for me.
The only way to improve the visit would have been if my father had been
there, too – to see the shrines of the players we watched together, people like
Bob Gibson and George Brett, players whose passion and drive made them saints
in the church of baseball.
My father would never say this, but he’s
an all-star in his own right, in the world of collegiate debate. As an undergraduate, he and his partner won
the national debate tournament, not once but twice. When he served as debate coach at what’s now
Missouri State, he led teams to national titles often enough that they named
the program after him. But for my
father, what mattered most – and what my sisters and I would hear about when
former students told stories years later – was his consistent excellence as a
teacher and mentor, as well as his investment in the lives and the well-being
of his debaters. For my father, his
career wasn’t about making it to the hall of fame. It was about helping his students figure out
who they were and helping them make the most of what God had given them. Not surprisingly, the same was true, to an
even greater degree, for my sisters and me, as we grew up and for years
thereafter. Our father has been all
about sowing seeds and nurturing their growth, year after year after year.
At its core, baseball is also about being
the best you can be precisely where you find yourself, rather than achieving
success in the world’s eyes. A great
example of that is the movie Bull Durham,
about a minor-league catcher named Crash Davis.
He’s a very good ballplayer, excellent by minor-league standards. In fact, through the movie, Crash Davis is
flirting with the all-time home-run record for a minor-league player. Now, that sounds great, at first – but being
the best in the minor leagues isn’t exactly how a player wants to be
remembered. He wants to go to “the show”
and play in the cathedrals of the majors.
But instead, Crash Davis ends his playing days mentoring a young,
out-of-control pitching sensation, a kid who desperately needs to find both a
father figure and the strike zone. And
in the end, Crash Davis sends the young man on to the majors, while Crash makes
his exit as the minor-league home-run champ.
But the point is that redemption comes, too, as Crash finds love and purpose
along the way.
You may be wondering what any of this has
to do with our readings today. But think
about the parable Jesus tells about the mustard seed. Now, we find this parable in Matthew and
Luke, as well as the version we heard from Mark’s Gospel this morning. But Mark’s version is the most interesting to
me because it’s the most honest. Jesus
says the reign and rule of God is like a mustard seed: It may be tiny and seemingly insignificant;
but once it’s planted, “it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs”
(Mark 4:32). In Mark’s story, the
mustard seed doesn’t grow into an impressive tree, as both Matthew and Luke say
(Luke 13:18-19; Matthew 13:31-32). Instead,
that mustard seed grows into “the greatest of all shrubs.” It’s like being the minor-league home-run
champ – the king of the second tier.
But here’s where my father, and Crash
Davis, and Jesus all come together. A
good father, or a good role model, doesn’t insist that those who follow him
take precisely the same path he took. (And
thank God for that, because I’ll tell you, there was no way I was ever going to
compete in debate. I wouldn’t even take
public speaking in college.) Nor does a
good father, or a good role model, insist that those who follow him must
accomplish great worldly success in order to live a holy, purposeful, valuable
life. A good father inspires his
children to become the greatest of all shrubs – to bloom where they’re planted,
as the saying goes; to live into the fullness of whom God has created those children
to be.
I believe our heavenly Father takes the
same pattern to the ultimate degree. The
kingdom of God isn’t about a powerful
earthly nation, even though the ancient prophets saw it that way. As we heard in the reading from Ezekiel, the
prophets were waiting for Israel to become the greatest of all kingdoms in the
ancient Near East, the earthly manifestation of God’s power and glory, with
God’s own Son coming to rule as king.
But Jesus reveals God’s reign and rule coming in a different way: It begins like one of the smallest of all the
earth’s seeds, insignificant in appearance but stunning in potential. And God’s kingdom requires someone or
something to sow it, to take that stunning potential and place it in the good
soil that God has provided and prepared.
Then, once it’s sown, that tiny, insignificant seed grows up and becomes
“the greatest of all shrubs” – the minor-league home-run champ; the coach who
wins but whose passion isn’t winning.
That’s hope and success on God’s
terms: Learning to love the people
around you and the life God has given you, learning to live into the fullness
of whom you’ve been created to be, because that’s
what brings God’s kingdom to life in the here and now – your life. And I’ll tell you: When God gives us glimpses
of what’s coming next, the heavenly kingdom in all its fullness, our later
chapters of eternal life – those glimpses of heaven don’t come when we look at
our trophies or our bank accounts or our cars or our houses – or even our
plaques in the Hall of Fame. We get
glimpses of God’s kingdom when we
live as new creations in Christ: making the most of whom God has made us to be,
loving the world with the love that’s first transformed us, our lives offering
branches of nurture and sustenance for the birds of the air around us.
So, it may not sound like much of a
compliment, but – you are a mustard seed.
You bear greatness on God’s own scale.
So don’t miss your opportunity to be the greatest of all shrubs.
1.
Jacobs,
Julia. “Sessions’s Use of Bible Passage to Defend Immigration Policy Draws Fire.”
New York Times, June 15, 2018. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/sessions-bible-verse-romans.html.
Accessed June 16, 2018,
2.
See
Sexton, John, with Thomas Oliphant and Peter J. Schwartz. Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game. New York: Gotham
Books, 2013.
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