Mustard Seeds

Scripture Reading

New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition Matthew 13

31 He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32 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.”

Kids to the Knowing Place

Introductions:

1. British Cycling

In 2003, British Cycling was in a sad state of affairs.

Since 1908, they had won just a single gold medal at the Olympic Games, and never come within sniffing distance of the podium in the Tour de Franc.

So they hired David Brailsford (how British is that name!?!) to be their new performance director.

And Brailsford had a unique starting place:

He asked the team mechanics to paint the interior of their trucks white.

Because Brailsford realized that a white interior would make it easier to spot dust particles.

And if you found the dust particles, they wouldn’t wind up in the chains of the bikes.

And that meant faster bikes.

And that meant winning races.

Putting together a whole bunch of 1% improvements in everything from more comfortable bike seats, to better gripping tires, to white truck interiors, the team improved drastically.

In 2008, they won 60% of the gold medals available at the Olympics.

They would then go on to win the Tour de France five times in six years.

2. Bobby the School Kid

Bobby was a 9th grader who had been referred to school counseling because he was constantly misbehaving.

Always late, always disruptive in class, sometimes made loud threats to other kids in the hallways.

Bobby had a horrible home life, so the school counselor knew that he had a limited sphere of influence.

The counselor gets Bobby at most for an hour a week, can’t fix his home life at all, and is more likely than not to be ignored.

Fast forward three months, and Bobby’s trips to the principal’s office had declined by 80%.

Not all the way, mind you, but 80% is the difference between being expelled and not.

What did the counselor do?

He found out that Bobby actually enjoyed Mrs. Smith’s class, and when he found out what was happening in Mrs. Smith’s class, he gave the rest of Bobby’s teachers three simple steps:

Greet Bobby at the door.

Assign him something to work on in class.

Always ask before the assignment if Bobby understood the instructions.

Those three things alone over the course of just three months dramatically corrected Bobby’s behavior, and kept him in school.

3. Miner County (See page 70)

In 1995, high school students in Miner County South Dakota were working on trying to save their community.

Like so many rural communities at the time, Miner County had been shrinking.

Youth especially were leaving as soon as they graduated from high school to go to college, and then finding higher paying jobs in other towns, leaving the county in a perpetual state of decline.

So the students got together, and discovered a problem: Half the residents of Miner County were shopping outside the county, driving an hour to Sioux Falls to shop in larger box stores.

And so the students started going to town hall meetings, county fairs, and business meetings with a simple pitch.

If folks would spend just 10% more of their money within the county, they would boost the local economy by $7 million.

Though, we should note here, the students didn’t make their $7 million goal.

After a year of the campaign, the County actually brought in an additional $15.6 million.

It turns out that the proposed change was so small, folks just kept right on going past their 10% commitment.

What I love about each of these stories is that they demonstrate what a small, tiny change can do to a really big problem.

We have a lot of big problems in our world today, don’t we?

The “Big” Problem

Climate Change

John mentioned in his sermon last week the issue of climate change and what it is doing to our planet.

For sure, what it’s doing to our planet should be a clue: What we’re facing is a global problem.

And look, I know this one gets shoved through the partisan political food fight, but I think that’s silly.

Caring for the planet is our responsibility as Christians.

We were charged with caring for creation from the moment we were placed on it.

Still, this is a massive problem.

We don’t have a solid answer to clean burning energy.

We don’t know how to get a grip on carbon emissions.

Our way of life tragically pollutes the world we call home.

And maybe the biggest problem of all the solve, about half the people in this country don’t agree with a word I just said!

What are we going to do with this big problem?

Church in decline

Look, I have gone over the numbers so many times in sermons past that I don’t want to run through them again or I’ll just be sad.

Our average attendance in the mainline denominations are down.

Giving across the board is down.

Folks who are even willing to identify with any particular religion are smaller than ever before.

This is a trend that has been going on for a while now, about 30 years or so.

What I’ve noticed among folks who have been paying attention to these stats is that there’s a kind of quiet resignation.

Since the decline is so dramatic, and since it’s been going on for so long, it just seems like there’s nothing we can do about it.

What are we going to do with this big problem?

Our broken hearts

How many of us have been struggling with a particular ailment of the heart?

How many of us carry a fair amount of greed? Always needing more more more?

How many of us harbor resentment toward those who have wronged us in the past?

How many of us struggle to forgive our brothers and sisters?

How many of us struggle to forgive ourselves for what creepy crawlies lie in our own past?

So many people I know who struggle with a particular sin have been struggling with it for years.

We get caught in these unbreakable loops of self-destruction than seem totally impossible to break free from.

What are we going to do with this big problem?

The bigger the problem, the less likely we are to act.

And I think sadly the biggest problem we’ve come across as people is the one that’s beating right beneath our chest.

Which, as it turns out, is fine.

Because there’s a subversive work going on just beneath our feet.

Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of Heaven is already growing in us.

It’s like this tiny little mustard seed.

Small.

Unassuming

Easy to pass over.

Easy to write off.

But at the same time…loaded with potential.

One of these little tiny seeds is capable of producing these.

These are pictures from our sister Mary Kapral.

Just a little tiny seed like this has the potential to turn into these fields of yellow.

Same thing with the Kingdom of Heaven.

Small, unassuming, easy to pass over, easy to write off.

But what happens if we notice the mustard seeds God has already handed us, the little changes and improvements that could come our way?

3% solutions

Noticing

There’s an old joke that I’m fond of.

One day Jeff’s wife told him that she was tired of going to church alone, and so she signed him up to be the greeter.

Jeff decided that she was probably right, so he went to the church prepared to be the best greeter they had ever seen.

The first person who came to the door, Jeff started regailing him with all the activities that were going on in the church.

Summer Camp

Trip to see Moses

Discovery hour schedule.

And when Jeff had finished, he asked this first visitor what he did for a living.

The visitor said “Jeff, I’m so glad you asked. I’m the pastor here!”

Now we might not be as bad as Jeff...

But the question is: How well do we notice those who are around us, even here in this building?

Do we notice when someone has gone missing for a little bit?

Do we notice when someone looks like they’re struggling with something.

Do we notice when our brothers or sisters are struggling with health issues?

Noticing all by itself isn’t going to do a whole lot.

It’s a mustard seed.

But I bet you’ll be surprised where noticing what’s going on in our midst would take you.

Single Use Plastic

In 2020, a friend and I decided we were going to give up single use plastic for Lent.

We produce 300 million tons of plastic each year world wide, which is roughly the same amount of weight as the entire human population.

About half of that is single use plastic, something we use once and then throw away.

So my friend and I decided that we were going to go out of our way to try to not use anything plastic that we would just throw away after one use.

Do you have any idea how hard this is!?

The minute you eat at a fast food restaurant, you’re sunk.

I started driving around with my camping mess kit in my car to try to be prepared.

You can’t get through the grocery store without coming across single use plastic.

Even as I write this sermon, with the benefit of hindsight, I am sipping coffee out of a Dunkin cup with a plastic lid.

First of all, our efforts were interrupted by COVID.

It turns out one of the easiest ways to avoid single use plastic is to not leave your house for 3 months or so...

But even then, as we went along we wondered if we could make it.

And we also had eyes to see things in a different, more unique way.

Maybe our ditching single use plastic for a couple of weeks didn’t solve the climate crisis.

Remember, Bobby didn’t make the dean’s list in our story from before.

He was just in the principal’s office about 80% less frequently, which is better.

But it did make the two of us more aware of what we were doing to our planet, and even changed some of our long term habits for the better.

3% more giving

Again, we should be worried any time I step up and do math from the pulpit.

But I crunched some numbers...

If you happened to notice in the bulletin last week, we had our financial report.

Right now we’re projected to have a $20,000 deficit this year.

If everyone who contributed to the church gave just 3% more...

If you give $100 a month you would just need to give $103 a month. (see how good at math I am)

If everyone did that, the deficit would be gone.

Just 3%.

Just line Miner County.

Or if we wanted to see just a 3% increase in attendance.

Again, I crunched the numbers, that would mean 5 new people regularly attending our service.

It doesn’t mean that everyone has to go home and engage in evangelism, the Presbyterian’s favorite word.

It just means five of us do.

Maybe a mustard seed sized change for you is to invite a friend to come hear this crazy new preacher we have in the pulpit.

Would that stop the decline of the church nation wide?

No, of course not.

But it would free us up to do some pretty spectacular things around here.

It would free us up to do the kind of ministry and mission work in our own communities that God is calling us to.

It would allow us to change the hearts and minds of our community.

A change of heart

Ahh…this like I said is maybe the toughest nut to crack.

Sometimes it feels like the perpetual cycle of sin and cynicism and anger and fear that we find ourselves in is insurmountable.

Some of us, if we’re really being honest with ourselves, think it might be easier to solve climate change than it is to break out of our own destructive behaviors.

Maybe for us, a mustard seed sized change would be to taste and see that the Lord is good.

Maybe for us, a mustard seed sized change would be a small piece of bread, and a quick swig of grape juice.

Because you see, they aren’t really just bread and grape juice, are they?

That’s what they look like.

Small

Unassuming.

Easy to pass over.

Easy to write off.

But what they really are, this bread and grape juice, they’re reminders of what’s true.

That the Kingdom of Heaven is already at work within us.

That Jesus Christ loves us for who we are, not what we’ve done.

That Jesus Christ has the power to transform us, to help us grow and flourish into Kingdom people.

And that work is already taking place inside of us.

Reminders

I am probably alone in this, but I’m a pretty forgetful guy.

So right as you came in the door today, you were handed one of these.

Inside is a single mustard seed.

And as luck would have it, the cheapest packet for mustard seeds I could get on Amazon also allows us to write on it.

I encourage you today, what is one small, mustard seed sized, 3% change you would like to see in the world?

Maybe it’s something we’ve covered here today.

Or maybe God’s been tugging on your heart strings along the way with something else that needs your attention.

Either way, write that 3% change down on this envelope, and maybe keep it on your dresser or in your wallet.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed.

Small.

Unassuming.

Easy to pass over.

Easy to write off.

But when it gets going, when it gets a hold of us…look out.

It can give the rest a weary world is looking for.