*This post was taken from my final Sunday sermon at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Asheboro, NC.
'Jesus put before the crowds 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 three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind.'
--Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-47
I wrote my first sermon in Asheboro at a desk built into the wall of a house on Middleton Circle in which I lived for just four months. I wrote my last sermon in Asheboro at the Black Powder Smokehouse, a barbecue place on Fayetteville Street that didn’t even exist when I first came here. In the eight years, two months, and one week between them, I’ve learned quite a bit, but one of the most significant is a lesson found right there in our Gospel this week: small things matter.
The first words out of Jesus’ mouth in the Gospels is that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near. If I asked you what is the Kingdom of Heaven I suspect most of you – most Christians, in general – would say that it’s the place we go when we die. Yet Jesus never talked about what happens when we die, instead he talked about the present reality, and in this case the reality of the Kingdom of Heaven being right here, right now, and at the same time still to come. It’s what we call an already-not yet. Jesus being in the world is evidence enough that the Kingdom is already here, and yet we also know that it is has not yet reached its fullest manifestation. And this Kingdom, according to Jesus, can be compared, not to something fancy or strong or clean. This Kingdom starts small and is unassuming, but with time, with patience, with love, it grows and grows. Small things matter.
Simple intentions, brief encounters at the right moment become, with time and care, the fruits of such a Kingdom. Jesus is a brilliant teacher because he uses metaphor and hyperbole and turns established ways of thinking on their heads – long before Rian Johnson did it to Star Wars or Zack Snyder to the DC Universe, Jesus of Nazareth was subverting expectations.
A mustard seed isn’t the smallest seed on Earth, nor does it grow into a tree. It’s tiny, yes, but it becomes more of a shrub and not exactly pleasant to the eye. Yet it is from this tiny, unassuming seed, that the Kingdom can grow, and it is to this unattractive shrub – not the mighty oak of empire – that the people will flock.
Yeast takes a while to be leavened, but three measures of flour is a lot. It’s going to take that woman a good long while to knead it all. Sometimes the Kingdom, Jesus is saying, requires time and patience. The New Interpreter’s Bible offers a modern day analogy for this parable: the Kingdom of Heaven is like a preacher who has a congregation of 25 in a city of two million, and keeps preaching until everyone hears the Good News.
A man buries something that he doesn’t even know is a treasure. It seems, at first, insignificant, but joy abounds when he realizes its worth, despite the fact that he did not even know that he wanted in the first place. So he digs it up and buries it again for the fun of finding it once more. How exciting the Kingdom must be, if it’s worth rediscovering over and over again!
A pearl so precious, so lovely, that someone would give away everything they had just to possess it. No material object could be that valuable, and no one would say that’s a sound financial decision. Except maybe Jesus.
A net is cast into the sea, and shimmering fish of all sorts get hauled in. Such is the Kingdom. Such is Jesus.
The smallest of seeds, the most hidden of treasures, and fish of every kind reveal God’s bounty. What a wealth of wonders the Kingdom is, and it’s all right here, in the smallest details. No, y’all, the devil isn’t in the details, Jesus is! Right there, hidden under our chins, so ordinary, so precious, and do you know what? – he keeps showing this Kingdom to us!
Pink bows that popped up all over town after the tragic death of our beloved Laura Lisk in 2016 led to a foundation set up in her name, to give opportunities to the very people whom she sought to love and serve in life. That’s a mustard seed growing into something mighty.
For folks to keep decrying sin of racism in our community and calling on those in authority to remove a monument that has too long been a symbol of hate, despite no actions from those authority figures and continued aggression from that symbol’s supporters, seems a daunting task. Why bother? Still, you show up, you stand in the legacy of Jesus and the prophets who cried out for shalom – peace - and hesed – justice - for everyone. That’s the woman taking all that time to knead the yeast until it is finally leavened.
On Easter Sunday this year, the rain kept us from being outside, so our kids had to hide their own Easter eggs all over this building. They then ran all over the place, again, with so much excitement re-discovering where they had put them. That’s the treasure so amazing that the man hides it over and over again in order to keep finding it over and over again.
In the past few months, I have resumed visits to the local prison, where I have recently been seeing a man incarcerated for murder for 37 years. He has written to our church multiple times, even before I came back from medical leave, and though no one had visited him in almost two years before I took him Communion in June, he longs to find a church home that can forgive him and welcome him, or visit him in case he is never granted release. Like the one who will sell everything for the pearl so precious, this prisoner longs for just a little love that he knows is the sign of the Kingdom.
In June of last year Good Shepherd lived into its call to love and welcome all people in a way it never had before by publicly celebrating the Holy Eucharist in honor of Pride Month and proclaiming the imago dei – the image of God – in our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, and intersex siblings. That’s the net being cast that brings in fish of every kind.
Small things matter. Little acts here and there build and build and grow and grow and before you know it, you’re smack dab in the middle of the Kingdom of Heaven. If you have eyes to see, behold the Kingdom is all around you! If you ears to hear, listen to sounds of the Kingdom – in the cries for justice, in the laughter of children, in the lonely groans of the shut-in. If you have hands that are open, receive the Kingdom – here and now at this Table and taste what Ignatius of Antioch called “the medicine of immortality!” in something as small as a cracker.
On this final Sunday of my tenure as Rector, Jackson Lafayette Hailey will finally get his cracker and so much more. He’ll be washed in the baptismal waters as Jesus was, made one with Jesus and with all of us, sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever. He’ll be given the promise of the forgiveness of sins – that whenever he makes a mistake, and he will, that he knows he can return to this place, to all of you, to our God, and be forgiven. What’s more, everyone here will be given a glimpse at the hope God gives us for the future. Nurture Jack, as you would nurture a seed, and help him along as the woman kneading the yeast, and remind him – and remind all of the kids in this place – that they are as valuable as that pearl, and that Jesus loves them like the man going after that treasure again and again, and that they have a place here.
With Jack Hailey, the newest member of the Body of Christ.
I’m a priest because someone did all those things for me in a little Episcopal church in the coalfields. We didn’t have programs that I could get lost in, we just had a faithful community that knew that the Gospel, the Good News, of Jesus and his love, was enough to change the world for the better. I believe that and have lived my life – and by extension my priesthood – as if all of it were real – the love, the grace, the redemption, the resurrection. My great-grandfather used to say that the most over-used word in the English language was ‘awesome,’ because it was so misused. I truly believe to know the living God in Christ Jesus, made manifest in the Eucharist, and shared with the people of God in this hospital for sinners is the most awesome thing in the whole world. How then can I not share that? How can you?
I may be leaving you, Good Shepherd, but the Church remains. I told our search committee eight years ago that we are all interims. At some point we all leave, even Joe Mitchell, even Jay Hobbs, Everett Thomas, and Barbara Cook. Church communities don’t live or die by their priests. It’s not about me. And it never was. It was, is, and always will be, about Jesus. I’m just one of those preachers who gets excited talking about him because I’ve known how he can change lives. I know the power of the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood to strengthen us as food and drink for our journey. I know that resurrection is real because I carry another person’s liver inside of my body thanks to God’s gift of medical science. And I know the depths of the love of God when I have seen the tears in the eyes of people told they were unlovable who realize, for the first time, that the song my beloved late mother sang to me is true that Jesus does love them. It’s real, this Jesus-thing we do. All of it. And it changes lives. If you have heard or believed nothing else in the last eight years, I pray you hear and believe that and hold on to that Gospel truth, no matter what changes may come.
You cannot stop the change anymore than you can stop the suns from setting. Shmi Skywalker said that when her boy went off to be a Jedi. The act of living is an embracement of change, according to Rioji Kaji. Other priests will occupy this pulpit. Listen to them. Ask them questions. Challenge them. Walk with them. Love them. And let them love you. As you do, remember that what starts small, God gives growth. What seems daunting, God fulfills through patience. What’s so precious, God puts right there in plain sight, which is that the Kingdom of Heaven is as close to you as your own human breath – ya…weh….the name of God, breathed by us countless times in a single day, and both the first and last sound we ever make.
The Good News – the Gospel - of this Kingdom that is so very close is that captives are free, the poor have hope, the hungry are fed, the lowly are raised up, and that all of them, all of you, are loved by God beyond the capacity for rational human thought, based on nothing you’ve done or left undone, but only because of God’s grace. Receive that Good News for yourselves, and then give it away, and just see what happens. It’s a small Church – the Church with a big C - so I look forward to finding out what the Spirit has in store for you; after all, she rarely makes a mistake.
I leave you, instead of goodbye, with one more pop culture reference, the salutation used in one of my favorite and most influential television shows, The Prisoner: Good Shepherd, Asheboro…be seeing you.
