“Do We or Don’t We”

sermon on Jeremiah 11:18-20; Mark 9:30-37; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a

A mallard and a blue-winged teal. That’s a pair-o’-ducks. An obstetrician and a urologist. That’s a pair-o’-docs.

A contradictory statement that is yet true: that’s a paradox.

These Bible readings today have paradox. For example, on one hand, I could preach them to you. But maybe I don’t want to. It’s a both/and, of “do we or don’t we?”

It’s like saying “look on the bright side” may, indeed, be helpful, positive thinking to reorient your perspective. But that could also be a slap in the face, feeling like it ignores real negative things you’re going through. In a sermon, therefore, you’re unlikely to hear me tell you to look on the bright side.

Jeremiah sure doesn’t seem to look on the bright side, and I might not tell you to take his outlook, either. In these few—seemingly nasty—verses, Jeremiah is praying against his own people, praying because he’d been hurt, praying for God’s retribution, retributive violence as his vision of justice, to pay them back.

Several parts of these verses echo words of the prophet Isaiah that we hear on Good Friday—“a lamb led to the slaughter…cut off from the land of the living” (Is53:7-8)—and during Holy Week, the words are applied to the crucifixion, to the death of Jesus. But it’s hard to imagine Jesus—who preached loving our enemies—wanting Jeremiah’s retribution, praying for violence against those who hurt him.

That may be reason for me to suggest against emulating Jeremiah, to say that you should want reconciliation and shouldn’t pray for pay back. Generally, I guess I would hope for that.

But this sort of prayer abounds in the Bible, and it may fit for you. It may fit because of your own suffering or abuse. Maybe you’re still hurting and can’t bring yourself to want something good for those who hurt you. It may fit how you need your own restoration.

In these days, it may relate to those resisting vaccines and such, for having caused others enough sickness that they should get what they deserve—and I can’t say whether for you that means they deserve to get sick or to be forced to get vaccinated or what.

With hopes for wellness, in Jeremiah’s prayer, even as he’s praying for destruction of his people, it’s because he wants restoration. That may seem a backward way to go about it. And that’s a paradox, life through death, gain through loss, reconciliation by hatred.

Next—in the Gospel reading—is less of a direct paradox, but still has some yes and some no to it, and I hope we’re able to hold onto both sides seriously. Jesus places a little child in the center and tells us to welcome children as if we’re welcoming Jesus himself.  

Our first reaction: we like welcoming children. But a side note paradox: we should maybe flip the image, keeping it in Jesus’ own context, where he could be saying he has no more status or stature than a voiceless, disregarded, helpless child. We might want to see God in power and glory. Instead, as Wendell Berry observes in a novel, “Those who wish to see [Jesus] must see him in the poor, the hungry, the hurt, the wordless creatures, the groaning and travailing beautiful world” of “ordinary existence,” reshaping our view of greatness.*)

But back to our first reaction about gladly welcoming children, I suspect many of Advent and the MCC are prepared to congratulate ourselves for feeling like children are celebrated here and seen as important and allowed to be themselves. I appreciate the ways that is true, including from the great event that Andrea Olson organized Wednesday especially for children, as we continue to welcome Cheyenne Larson, who is in a staff role specifically focused on children and their families. We delight in typical children’s programming—as they sing songs or play instruments at Christmas, as they cry at baptisms, as they tell stories after the Boundary Waters, as they reflect on their faith and appreciation of the MCC in Confirmation faith statements, as we’ll get to hear again in a couple weeks. We like these things, partly because we think kids are adorable—able to be adored. I celebrate all that with you.

But for the paradox, what about the both/and, the yes and no? We do and we don’t.

For one odd version, if we are asked to put children in the center, right now children certainly aren’t. Even more than the rest, children are scattered into their own homes, not welcomed here or present for worship. Yet we’re also doing this worship format somewhat out of concern for children and their health risks in gathering. So that’s a paradoxical question of whether our children welcomed and centered or not.

If we really want to be welcoming, we must continue to ask how we connect children to or with Jesus. I’ve been especially worried about them through these long months. Online worship is not particularly welcoming for our children’s participation (even less than the rest of you), and that risks that they have fallen to the side.

In general, we must ask more than inviting children into what adults are already doing, but celebrate them for them, treat them with respect, hear their voices, understand their needs…and put those needs even before our own. Maybe we should be—at least in part—asking THEM what they need, not deciding for them. (Which also means that if children really were centered, I wouldn’t be using third-person terms, but, kids, I’d be talking more to you. I apologize.)

For the adults, I’d invite you to find ways to support our children—the cards some of you have written, and prayers, and your offerings funding Cheyenne’s ministry, but also dreaming of what more we may do and be together.

One more paradox comes from the last verse we heard from the letter of James: “Draw near to God, and God will draw near to you.”

I don’t much like the letter of James. I’m not sure it needed to be in the Bible, because it’s not very much about God and even less about Jesus. It’s got all these rules and instructions about what you should be doing, and very little to say about what God is doing. In this verse, God at least is mentioned.

Again, it may be a commendable effort, an encouragement to commit to worship services, promising a way to connect to God and find God closer to you. You could also seek that in prayer life, in Bible reading, in spiritual practices, in small groups, or acts of service that you find more godly. I’m not going to tell you not to make a point of being in worship, to devote yourself to it. Nor any other devotion, or volunteering for church, or maybe being quiet in nature, or in loving community.

But, in the perhaps paradox, I’d say the verse from James puts the emphasis in exactly the wrong place. The starting point isn’t with you. God’s entire goal is to draw near to you. God became incarnate in Jesus in order to get closer to you in your human life and reality. Not only the pious parts, not just for one churchy hour a week, not because you try to draw near.

God wanted to—and wants to—draw near in all your moments, such that there is no place you can go apart from God.

God is with you as a child, as we’ve heard from Jesus, and also when you age, and even beyond death. God is attending to you in your suffering, as we heard from Jeremiah, but also when you are the enemy causing the suffering, or when you’re doing just fine. God is with you throughout your spiritual journey, which isn’t a trajectory toward a destination, it simply means your life, because every moment of your life is sustained and held by God, and so every step you take is spiritual. Wherever you are, God draws near to you.

Maybe that’s a paradox: nowhere you go can take you away from God.

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* from Jayber Crow, cited in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter, p174

lectionary 28b creation care commentary

22^nd Sunday after Pentecost in 2018

 

Isaiah 53:4-12

Psalm 91:9-16

Hebrews 5:1-10

Mark 10:35-45

 

From top to bottom this week, the lectionary readings seem ready-made for sacrificial substitutionary atonement. This is the view that Jesus died for your sins, that his righteousness is offered as recompense to cover the debt of your sins, a sense of justice that must be retributive, and—most centrally—that a perfect Father demands satisfaction so that you need not be condemned eternally, but since somebody’s gotta pay for it Jesus died vicariously in your place. Built partly on one reading of the Christ Hymn of Philippians 2:5-11, God the Father sends the Son expressly for this purpose, and Jesus was so obedient to this command that he suffered even to the point of death on the cross. (I would say that’s a misreading, much preferring the sort of perspective that it is about love for humanity, like partially described here from David Fredrickson: https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=146.) This substitutionary satisfaction view has become the dominant sense (in American Christianity, at least) of the whole reason for Jesus. It has even become the default understanding, where any other theological perspective is inherently viewed with suspicion.
As a reader of a care for creation commentary, I suspect that you might not fully endorse such an atonement theory. In a model that mainly deals with eternal consequences, life in this world is mainly relegated to a tally sheet, keeping a record of how well you’ve done, or noting that no matter what you’ve done, meaning this eschatologically significant rupture of relationship with God. Given that it deals with and focuses on Jesus’ death, it seems to be a matter for after-life and doesn’t seem to connect much to actual relationships and interactions of our lives on earth now. For that regard, I’d simply guess that most people invested in caring for creation are not as directly concerned with Jesus paying for our sins. (Maybe someone could do a survey to find out just how much those two categories mix?)

 

So what are we to do with these readings, if they seem to scream a perspective of internal, spiritualized ledger sheets? Here’s some of the litany for the week:

–Jesus said, “The Son of Man came…to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45)

–He “was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole” (Isaiah 53:5)

–He was “stricken for the transgression of my people” (Isaiah 53:8)

–“It was the will of the LORD to crush him with pain” and “make his life an offering for sin” (Isaiah 53:10)

–“The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53:11)

–Jesus “was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (Hebrews 5:7-9)

 

So how to confront these readings, or how to hear them in a way that isn’t about Jesus forced to serve as a vicarious satisfaction in substitute for you and your death demanded by a vengefully righteous God? Is there room for care for creation, or is that all is lost and we must look to heaven (or, perhaps more palatable to us, the new creation yet to come)?

 

In his review of the alternatives to this dominant atonement theory, Mennonite and nonviolent theologian J. Denny Weaver points out “In ‘God of the Oppressed,’ James H. Cone, the founder of the black theology movement, pointed out that the dominant Anselmian doctrine posed atonement in terms of an abstract theory that lacked ethical dimensions in the historical arena. Consequently, it allowed white people to claim salvation while accommodating and advocating the violence of racism and slavery” a criticism also leveled by feminist theologians, among others (“The Nonviolent Atonement,” p4). This begins to take seriously our human relationships and God’s actions in society, even as we who care for creation insist that this must be broader even than some multiracial and gender-inclusive anthropocentrism.

 

One way to approach these readings comes from Girardian theologian James Allison, who has posed the question “Who sacrificed who to whom?” The answer should not be so directly presumed that God insisted on killing Jesus for God’s own sake. Humanity was and remains too steeped in the practice of doing violence to each other. The death of Jesus, in this Girardian view, was a rupture designed to break the perpetual cycle of scapegoating and violence. Allison, who takes seriously the notion and practice of sacrifice, can remind us that this is about life being able to continue on, about God entering the creation and being restored in right relationship. (For some of those historical reflections on sacrifice, where it is clarified that in traditional sacrifice God was sacrificing God-self for the sake of humanity and creation, a “divine movement to set people free,” see this essay: http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng11.html.)

 

In spite of how readily these Bible passages might be enlisted for the purposes of the retributive violent atonement models, it also is readily apparent that the goal is about life. It is not a story of a God whose will is suffering or punishment or death. Rather than terms or pain, notice Isaiah’s efforts for healing, wholeness, prolonged days, and life. One phrase in particular that jumps out is “by a perversion of justice” (53:8). Clearly any of the suffering or pain cannot be seen as right, the afflictions and oppressions cannot be labeled as divinely intended, when that is a perversion of justice. It is when the system is broken that pain and suffering prevail, not by the system God designed and intended and planned.

 

I’m averse to saying that we have to learn the perfect submission or that our suffering will make us perfect in that way that Hebrews perceives it. But the brutality of Isaiah may make more sense through a perspective of self-sacrifice. It seems vitally significant that suffering is not something that one is told to endure, but that one chooses for oneself. This is not the oppression of groups of people explained away, the abuse done in relationships excused, the subjugation and disregard that takes advantage of others. No one may be told to suffer, to confine them by telling them to learn obedience to that way. Rather, this is chosen. Following Cone’s criticism mentioned above, rather than masters justifying their enslavement of others, this voluntarily takes the place of a servant. This is a slavery opted into for the sake of love and in service of life. With Isaiah, the prophet sees himself as the suffering servant (and is not predicting the fate of another, much less saying what God will do to Jesus).

 

Here is one explanation from Terence Fretheim: “At the very least, we must say that the suffering of the servant is reflective of the suffering of God; in the giving up of the servant for the world, personal self-sacrifice is seen to define God’s purpose here. But even more, as the servant is the vehicle for divine immanence, we should also say that God, too, experiences what the servant suffers. This consequence is something which God chooses to bring not only upon the servant but also upon [God]self. While God does not die, God experiences in a profound way what death is like in and through the servant. By so participating in the depths of the death-dealing forces of this world, God transforms the world from within; and a new creation thereby begins to be born.” (“The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective,” p164-65)

 

For this perspective of God’s efforts for life over death, one of the most useful aspects of this Gospel reading is as a corrective to the dominant and domineering readings of Genesis 1 that give license to the abuse of creation. When God offers the instruction for the humans to “have dominion over the fish of the seas and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28), dominion has much too frequently been interpreted as permission to do whatever we want. I believe it is helpful to consider the word “dominion.” It ties to the Latin “dominus,” for Lord.

 

Similarly, the word in Genesis 1:28 in the Septuagint or Greek version of the Old Testament includes Kyrie—which we know from “Kyrie eleison, Lord have mercy.” Although the term Jesus uses is the exact same word (katekyrie) for “lord it over,” we can see that he advocates and leads us into a very different kind of dominion. Though we might be more apt to be “like the nations” (in Jesus’ phrase from Mark 10:42), our own practice of lordship should not be to “lord it over” as tyrants, but should follow the model and example of the one we name as Lord. As disciples of our Lord Jesus, we see that dominion is about service, that greatness is found in being a “slave of all” (10:44). That is more representative of the kind of God we have. God is not one who is so far above us that we must fear threats. God is not so distant from us that we can’t even begin to hope to be so proper and holy that we could gain proximity. Our God comes to strive on our behalf, to offer God’s own self for the sake of our lives and ongoing goodness of creation.

 

Since this is what it means not just for John and James but also for us to be associated with Jesus, to share his baptism and receive from his cup, then we find our place separate from the “great ones” (with the depictive Greek phrase “megaloi”) who claim authority over others. It almost can feel like a Godzilla, stomping through the city and across a landscape, leaving a wake of destruction, entirely careless for what it has abused. We, instead, are called to serve, even to enter into the suffering Jesus has been describing and is moving toward in Jerusalem.

 

This is likely what is meant by the term “ransom,” in a paradoxical or ironic way. Similar to Luther’s paired theses in “The Freedom of a Christian,” that a Christian is “totally free master of all, subject to none; and totally bound slave of all, subject to all,” Jesus frees you in order to serve. “The term [‘ransom’] referred to the price required to redeem captives or purchase freedom for indentured servants” (Ched Myers, “Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus,” p279). Jesus frees you from slavery to the tyrannical overlords, in order that you may be slave not just to their whims but “slave to all.”

 

Further, we recognize that sometimes giving life should, indeed, be perceived as in line with God’s will. Parents give up and restrict their opportunities and options on behalf of their children. A firefighter will freely risk her own wellbeing, maybe even sacrificing to save others from a burning building. As a dog owner, I know that it means I’m up in the middle of the night and out for walks in the cold. As a gardener, I’m rubbing sore back muscles and fighting sunburn and swatting mosquitoes so that I can care for those vegetables and flowers. Some labor is referred to as “punishing,” even though we might only be subjecting ourselves to the work. That seems a better and more life-giving view, and more appropriately tied to a God who created and sustains out of love, than one of obedience and being stricken for transgressions.

Servanthood over Dominance

sermon on Mark 10:35-45; Isaiah 53:4-12; Hebrews 5:1-10
A Dorothy Day quotation to frame the day:  “What we would like to do is change the world–make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute–the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words–we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”

I know people who just can’t believe in God, some of them are even in my family. I’m sure you can relate. There are folks who just cannot embrace the notion of an ancient grandpa-figure perched up on a cloud with a great big beard.

Or maybe it’s less of the feeble old guy they can’t quite imagine, and instead they have trouble with descriptions of a stern and vengeful God, the ultimate authoritarian trying to control and manipulate, eager to smite any who refuse to obey. That idea just doesn’t work for some people.

Or, to geek out a bit, from the original Star Wars movie maybe Han Solo speaks for macho atheists. Luke Skywalker says to him “You don’t believe, do you?” And Han Solo, the swaggering starship pilot replies, “Kid, I’ve flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff, but I’ve never seen anything to make me believe there’s one all-powerful force controlling everything. There’s no mystical energy field that controls my destiny.” That sort of rationality-focused, science-y explanation claims there’s no obvious facts and so that must prove there’s no God or divine influence.

Any of these images of God can indeed be tough to swallow. But that’s small potatoes. With that refusing to believe in God, what proves really objectionable or bizarre isn’t so much trying to conceive some vision of the invisible or version of the supernatural. Much worse is what Jesus has to say today: to be great you have to serve?! The best thing is to be enslaved?!

Thinking of those non-believers, this stuff seems like the really difficult thing to grasp. Way harder than just trying to believe in God, this is what’s complex, confusing, even offensive. In fact, it’s not just hardcore disbelievers who have trouble comprehending this. It’s for many in power in our society, and those who try to take advantage and get ahead, and those who are trying to get a leg up, and people who are seeking some small acclaim and recognition. You know, people like you and like me. This seems not at all what we expect or want or would think to choose.

Jesus says God doesn’t demand or even want our worship, but is all about service. And that couldn’t have surprised us more if he had claimed that God were a massive Tyrannosaurus Rex who’d come bursting out of a volcano and ravage the earth to swallow up everyone who had ever used a swear word. In fact, that’s actually more in line with what we imagine God to be. Not the dinosaur part exactly, but the one who is mighty and merciless, keeping track of our wrongs and holding to account, who has power over our puny, insignificant, little lives. If we were trying to guess our way to God and blessing, we’d get this completely backward.

To put it in more human terms, think about those we look up to and those we think of as pretty great. Think even of those terms—looking up to someone versus looking down on them, being great is mastering your abilities, being better than your opponent. We’re trained to think of power as “power over.”

To put more flesh on this, let’s zero in on one person: the President. In these days of politics and fierce debates, an old rarely used term is of “public servant.” That title seems in line with what Jesus is commending, the important role of assisting people. Now think about that title of “public servant” with another frequent notion that the President is the most powerful person on earth. Would we say that power is because of being the Commander in Chief over the military with the most nukes and highest firepower and biggest budget? Or is the President powerful in regards to being so responsible for the care and wellbeing of so many people, both citizens in this country and those in need around the world? Jesus seems to say that one of these is the right type and role of power, which means the other is not.

But these words from Jesus on servanthood don’t affect only our views of or expectations for political leaders. It hits closer to home, too. Next Sunday, a half dozen of our 10^th graders will be affirming this faith we share. They’ve put in the hard background work of the Confirmation program and will be looking forward with an understanding that this faith shapes our attitudes and behaviors, our worldview and what we do with our lives. But are we actually interested in that for these young adults, whom we’re preparing to send out from here?! Isn’t what we normally plan for them to be successful and achieve their dreams, to go to college and do well?

How do we square any of that in the frame from Jesus? We can continue to strive for wisdom and education and a degree, but it’s with the question of how what we’re learning will be able to benefit others. The shared benefit is the same for what we consider a good job. And to do well isn’t just about how big of a paycheck to expect, but is then further backed up with how wealth and income is released, is given away, is a tool not for self-gain but for helping others. Even notions of career advancement or security aren’t analyzed in isolated individualism.

Now, before we claim it’s too counter-intuitive and that our minds don’t work that way, we should notice natural ways this does occur. Mothers cradling babies, caregivers in times of dementia, nurses responding amid sickness, firefighters encountering danger and risk, teachers who forsake salary for students, stopping for an accident, giving blood, offering forgiveness, listening, all of the volunteering that radiates out from this place—these are a few among many obvious examples of un-coerced serving, of responding to a calling, of living out vocations that are about striving for the greater good.

More broadly, recall trees that give us air to breathe, soils that filter groundwater, the pollination of plants by bees (who, in the words of the Easter Vigil service, are precisely labeled as “servants” who give us candle wax and so follow the will of God). So we can observe how giving away our lives for others may be an obvious or, indeed, natural part of our identity. God-given, we might say.

But we also probably find it is countercultural, since we’re surrounded by settings and stories of aggression and violence and competition, in awe of celebrities while denigrating those in prison or on welfare. We buy into that dominant version of our economy and we hypothesize wildlife is “red in tooth and claw.” We may feel that’s what shapes most of what’s around us. And Jesus himself says that we know the way of the world is for rulers to lord it over and act like tyrants.

Not so among you, he says. And not so for him, either. He is Lord not as master but as servant, not as high and mighty but stooping to serve and wash feet. With that, we should notice this isn’t only a rigorous expectation for our lives. It’s not only to redefine cultural standards. It’s not just challenging us to examine how we live. Most fundamentally, this is not counterintuitive or countercultural but counter-theological. It is against faulty statements about God.

Even within our Bible, this still, small voice of lowly serving continues calling out against those others threatening to overtake it and drown it out. Take, for example, our Hebrews reading that marked Jesus’ suffering. It rightly proclaims that he came to know our weakness and cry with us in the face of death and even that he was willing to die for our sake. But Hebrews labels this as a result of “reverent submission.” That subverts the whole thing Jesus actually came to reveal among us. Rather than wanting to give himself for our sake, that verse tries to say Jesus only did it because he obeyed when his big bossy heavenly Father told him he had to do it. That undoes the whole notion of servanthood, again trying to put some ultimate divine master in charge. What Jesus says today argues with that claim from Hebrews. Jesus calls that wrong, a bad understanding, not the truth about God! He embodies and reveals for us God’s motivation not out of fearfulness but because of love and devotion.

The same problem shows up in our Isaiah reading. It’s an amazing passage that we use on Good Friday, words we apply to Jesus as one who suffered on our behalf, “crushed for our iniquities,” wounded because of our sin, a punishment that strives to be for our healing and wholeness. That’s very fitting with how Jesus describes serving, of laying down our lives for each other.

But the Isaiah reading slips in a phrase that undermines it, the insidious assertion that “it was the will of the LORD to crush him with pain.” Again, that is wrong. Out of a hard but beautiful reading on willingness to suffer and intercede for the sake of others and trying to make bad situations better, with all of that gets added one lousy phrase. But to crush someone is not the God of Jesus. That is not God’s will being done. That is not how the Spirit of the Lord is operating.

That’s the final word for today: in the all-too-many times when the world seems to be about dominance and oppression, or about hurting someone before they hurt you, or about getting ahead at any expense; for the perspectives that even pop up in faith claiming that God is removed from any sorrow or suffering, much less that God takes sides with the mighty and against the weak or that a terrible thundering God goes about causing pain and destruction, over and against all of that comes Jesus and this amazingly beautiful and caring truth of the God who shaped the world for loving service, a God who serves, who gives God’s own self for you, for the sake of life, through death, and beyond.

Hymn: Will You Let Me Be Your Servant (ELW #659)

For the Birds

Sermon for 14 June 15

Mark 4:26-34; Psalm 92:1-4,12-15; Ezekiel 17:22-24
[We think of Jesus’ parables as explanations, but the mustard shrub kingdom is more of a riddle or joke]
Jesus is using horticultural imagery, but if you’re thinking you need to dig out a botany textbook, you’ll miss his punchline that this is all for the birds.

That joke from Jesus came after you already had a heads up in the Psalm. Sure, it’s good news that you still bear fruit in old age (though that could include its own off-color humor). There’s also the line that you’re full of sap. Yup, you are sappy. The Bible tells me so.

If you think these plant puns are corny (that was another one—did you get it?), if they ex-“seed” your attention span, or if you’re wishing I would just “leaf” all this alone, well then your ears are getting warmed up to Jesus’ parable today. It’s meant to be tricky or subversive, a riddle to catch you off guard and make you do a double-take.

So to start back at the beginning, if you think that this agricultural tidbit from Jesus is about how you can grow your faith, or about doing some church-planting (do you notice these are our kinds of terminology?), if you think Jesus gives some instruction to follow, then you’re missing out.

Admittedly, that could be disappointing. In the first part of his parable, Jesus compares faith to the sprouting of a seed. And he says there’s a lot that remains mysterious about that. You can put the seed in good soil and give it water and fertilizer and harvest it when its ripe, but you can’t tell it what to do or even really know why it’s growing and producing.

So maybe if you’re trying to grow your faith and make your life more fruitful, we can say that it’s good to be planted in the right place (like here at church) and to be well-tended (maybe we take that as personal devotions like prayer and Bible reading, or as elements of worship, that you are watered with the forgiving splash of baptism this morning with Braxton James and given nourishment at this table).

But what really makes faith happen? What leads to growth? How do you actually come to believe any of this? Well, that’s a mystery. We can’t force it or prod it or cause it. It’s God’s hidden work going on and ongoing in your life, through day and night. Just like nature, it’s so natural you can try to dissect it but never simply explain this miracle.

If that first part on how faith is produced is frustrating, the second part of the parable may seem absolutely absurd. We could hear this as Jesus describing what his goals are, as his mission statement. In that, it’s opposite to our lofty ambitions. As a counter-example, picture commercials on TV. We’re used to ads telling us the company or the product is the best, the most effective, the most efficient, the fanciest, the prettiest, the newest, the glitziest, the toughest on the market.

Jesus skips that pile of baloney. Instead he goes for something small and obnoxious and problematic. He quite literally and essentially says that his kind of work is annoying, that it gets in the way. It undoes what you were trying to do.

Some of that notion comes through with the background of Ezekiel. Jesus is spoofing on that passage we heard. The prophet used the image of a mighty cedar tree, towering and resilient, an enormous trunk and beautiful bows stretching to the heavenly heights. This is a typical biblical image for kingdoms: strong, rigid, majestic. So as your sights are set on what is biggest and best, this grand tree, Jesus says that God’s kingdom (of course) must be exactly like…a shrub?! A weed. Even worse is the bad company. The mustard shrub invites sparrows to take up residence, birds that gobble up the growth of the good plants.

Or, to tweak Jesus’ imagery, recall instead having a taste of a really pungent mustard, brown with horseradish or the spicy mustard at a Chinese restaurant that makes your nose wrinkle and your head burn and your eyes water. Jesus is giving that sort of image of the kingdom of God.

The obvious problem is that we want it otherwise. We don’t want the dab of spicy mustard kind of kingdom. We want the kingdom to be a delectable cut of steak or a succulent strawberry, just exactly ripe, or to be some premier caviar. We want God to be so elite and exclusive and special as a Dom Pérignon champagne, but instead Jesus arrives with a gallon jug of wine that Ruth Circle buys exactly because it’s the cheapest stuff at the grocery store.

A passage in Isaiah that we hear on Good Friday highlights this absurd notion. It says, “Who has believed what we have heard? For he grew up like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; he was despised and we held him of no account.” (53:1-3)

This unappealing mustard shrub-y guy is the God of the cross, finding his way into the least expected and least desirable places of life. Jesus shows up in the smallest seeds, the littlest moments of your life and the worst places. He takes up residence and takes over. He begins to crowd out the other stuff that you thought was pretty and attractive. He begins if not to overpower at least to distract from all of that other baloney that claimed to be the best and biggest and brightest.

So if you were thinking that God would come straighten out your life, to make everything just right and orderly, to really bless you with all kinds of great stuff, to fulfill your advertising wish list, to be the sort of mighty kingdom that makes all others bow and tremble, well thank God you don’t have that sort of God.

Instead your God provides a place for all the pests, for the troublemakers, for the sick and those seeking refuge, and all the bad company. A God, then, for you, who is with you in common life and not just waiting for exceptional, rare moments, insisting on perfection. A God who is not reserved, but is popping up all over the place to be found exactly where needed, a God in whom you can home to roost. This whole church thing, after all, is for the birds.

Hymn: Tree of Life and Awesome Mystery (ELW #334, 1-3 & Lent3)