Bitter pills & Mustard seeds

Oof!

Come in from a long day at work?

What’s your reward? More work at home!

Mowed the lawns?

Great! Now you can get started on that fence.

Done the dishes?

Great! Now get started on the laundry pile!

Finished your assignment?

Great! Now you can study for exams!

Got through a pandemic?

Great! Now you can start building up the lost momentum!

Crisis graph

At the beginning, this crisis pulled us together. Remeber when we were at the top of that hill? The streets were quiet, people were talking to their neighbours, the birds were singing and everyone was talking about the “new normal”.

Now, we see the long road ahead, we see how we have been worn down by two years of struggle, and that long road ahead just seems far too difficult.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow

Disciples have been listening to Jesus’ teaching:

“The Master commended the dishonest manager”

“You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts.”

‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’

“It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. 3 So watch yourselves.”

“Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”

These are hard sayings. They are bitter pills to swallow, and the disciples are struggling.

Disciples are beginning to realise that this is all too big for them to handle and they beg Jesus for more faith – enough faith to manage on their own.

“Increase our faith.”

“Help us through this hard time”

“This is too much for us!”

“it’s just not fair!”

How does Jesus respond? Does he praise them? Give them hope and encouragement?

No.

“Do you want a pat on the back? A reward for your hard work? You’ve only bneen doing what’s expected of you, so get on with it!”

It’s so discouraging!

I think Teacher of Ecclesiastes said it best:

“So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

What on earth is going on here?

Hard sayings of Jesus

o Luke 9 – Jesus predicts death, turns towards Jerusalem

o Day b day, chapter by chapter, we see the burden of Jerusalem – Jerusalem and the temple – Jerusalem and the cross – we see the burden of Jerusalem growing on Jesus.

o This is Jesus under a huge amount of stress, and he doesn’t float though it like a disembodied butterfly. Nd while he never fails to heal and teach and drag people kicking and screaming into the kingdom of God, He does gets ragged around the edges

o Gets more and more urgent, more and more difficult until finally, at the beginning of Luke 22, Judas agrees to betray Jesus

o Title of this chapter in the NIV “Sin, faith, duty”

We tend to skip through most of this

o Not the Jesus that we know well.

o Tend to edit these bits out.

o They’re uncomfortable, difficult, jarring.

· Always difficult. Tendency to harmonise it, or ignore it. Make it rhyme where it jars. Make it smooth where it is rough. Make it OK where it’s not.

o Either that, or we just ignore it. Preach from Timothy instead. That stuff is easier.

Bitter pills & Mustard Seeds

· The faith of a mustard seed.

· In other words, if you had the whole kingdom of heaven in your hands, then you might be able to sort this out.

· So far so good.

· Then we get to the difficult part. What does this teach us about the kingdom of God? How does this help us to understand the faith of a mustard seed? Well, I don’t know that there is and easy answer to this part.

· This is difficult. It always has been difficult. But if we only ever lean in to the things that are easy. If we only ever concentrate on the things that we understand or agree with, then where do we get to when life itself is difficult?

· Because there are times, aren’t there, when we feel like that servant who has been toiling in the fields all day, under the hot sun, or in the cold and the rain, and we just want shelter and sustenance and rest.

· But we don’t always get it.

· In those moments, Jesus is saying to us, I can’t promise you rest, but remember that you are not carrying the entire kingdom of heaven on your shoulders. It might feel like your faith, your resilience, your hope is even smaller than a mustard seed.

But here the thing: even in that tiniest speck of hope, in the tiniest ray of light is the hope of the fullness of the kingdom of heaven.

Every week we light the Christ candle. It seems like such a small, ineffectual light.

But the promise we hold to is this - that light, as small as it may seem in the dark valley, will grow and grow and grow until it fills the whole of creation with light and life.

The burdens of this world can seem overwhelming, too heavy to bear. Meaningless and a chasing after the wind.

But they’re temporary, finite, transitory.

Faith in Jesus, however, is a seed of the infinite. It’s transformative, and never-ending, and enlivening.

Faith however small, can blossom into something truly beautiful, and tranform even the heaviest of burdens into blessings that we never could have imagine.

“It’s not great faith you need, it’s faith in a great God.” - N. T. Wright

· It’s not all up to us, and it’s not all down to us.

The disciples, in their desparation, plead for more faith.

In the same way, we might plead with God to help us get through this difficult time.

Jesus’ reply - “You already have within you the seeds of faith, the seeds of hope, the seeds of love that I am using to transform your lives, and transform all of the into the beautiful creation it was always meant to be.”

There are bitter pills, but there are also mustard seeds. Which will we cling to?

· I know that these words don’t really resolve the words of Jesus in this passage. I don’t know that words can. I don’t know that words necessarily should.

· But I do know that we have rallied around during events that have shaken the world.

· I do know how hard it has been, with the changes that never seem to end.

· And I want to say to you “well done”. And I want to say to you “have a rest”. As we clean ourselves up, and prepare to serve our master’s meal, there is more work to be done, but the burden need not be carried on our shoulders alone.

Luke 13:18–21 NIV

Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches.” Again he asked, “What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

· There is work for us in his garden, but it is not us who will make the plants grow.

· Sometimes we feel overburdened, like we need to carry the world with our faith. The promise of the mustard seed is the exact opposite. It is the faith we are given, small as it may seem, that will carry us through this world, and this world into the loving arms of God.

“It’s not great faith you need, it’s faith in a great God.” - N. T. Wright

We can never put God in our debt.

Two types of “if” statement - contrary to fact, and according to fact. This “If” is the latter. “if you had faith (and you do)”

There is no place or time at which the disciple can say “I have completed my service; now I want to be served.”

Ecclesiastes 2:17–26 (NIV)

So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me.

And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless.

So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun.

For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune.

What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun?

All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.

A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God,

for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?

To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.