Sermon - Small Things, Big Impact: Big Treasures Start Small

Well, we are starting a new series today called Small Things Big Impact.

We are looking at the Gospel of Matthew over these next five weeks and the lectionary scriptures there.

And today we begin in these parables that Jesus shares that Krista referenced and stole a little my thunder, but that's all right.

That's all right, because there's a lot here for us to look at and think about together.

Jesus begins here in verse 31 of Matthew chapter 13.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

He told another parable to them.

It's the smallest of all seeds, but when it's grown, it's the largest of all vegetable plants.

It becomes a tree, so that the birds in the sky come and nest and its branches.

He told them another parable.

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure that somebody had hid in a field, which someone else found and covered up.

Full of joy the finder sold everything and bought that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls.

When he found one very precious pearl, he went and sold all that he owned and bought it.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that people threw into the lake and gathered all kinds of fish.

When it was full, they pulled it to the shore where they sat down and put the good fish together into containers, but the bad fish they threw away.

That's the way it will be at the end of the present age.

The angels will go out and separate the evil people from the righteous people, and will throw the evil ones into a burning furnace.

People there will be weeping and grinding their teeth.

Have you understood all these things?

Jesus asked.

They said to him, Yes.

Then he said to him that said to them, Therefore, every legal expert who has been trained as a disciple for the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings old and new things out of their treasure chest.

This is the word of God for us, the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

O Lord, let the words of my mouth and the thoughts and meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight.

For you, O Lord, are our rock and our redeemer.

Amen.

He's got kind of a rugged face, a little bit leathered.

He's probably in his late 60s, early 70s in a real life general store that places like Mass General Store only try to mimic today.

And if you ask this guy for something, he finds it for you.

But then he pulls out something even better.

Because maybe you don't need the plunger you came in for after all.

Maybe you need the true fix to that continually clogged toilet.

The contemporary setting of this for me is the guy at Ace Hardware.

You know who I'm talking about.

He's been there for over 15 years through a variety of ownership mergers, even when they won't take the last ownership's coupon from you anymore.

And when I walk in and I need this particular nut and bolt that broke off of my whatever prefab thing I bought, I've got it in hand from this guy within 30 seconds.

It would have taken me 30 minutes to get.

And if I need to ask about the way to repair the thing that I've come in to fix, he's done it before.

And he walks me through just what I need to do.

Even though I spent 96 cents on that nut and bolt, I received priceless wisdom from the guy at Ace.

In the telling of parables like this, Jesus is like that old guy at Ace or the general store owner.

He knows his way around God's kingdom and what it is like.

But Jesus is also inviting his disciples to become like the general store owner as well.

He's inviting us to live inside of God's realm in these parables.

He's inviting us into their wisdom, not by giving a particular description of who each character is or what they symbolize.

No, he's inviting us to discover the wonders of the store and to become wise.

Jesus does this in today's reading by beginning each short little parable with these words, right?

Now we need to start and talk about that title, the kingdom of heaven, for a minute.

Because in Luke and Mark, when Jesus talks about the kingdom, he says the kingdom of God.

But when Matthew talks about it, he says, the kingdom of heaven.

But Jesus is not talking in these parables about what we should look for on the other side.

So when the kingdom of heaven is said by Jesus, we have to shut off the parts of our brains that immediately go to pearly gates and golden streets and cherubs with wings and harps.

That's simply not what Jesus is talking about.

A better way to describe what Jesus is talking about, and maybe a way that helps us, is saying the realm of God.

So Jesus is saying God's realm is like this.

And God's realm has become visible to us in the midst of this earthly realm.

When Jesus came to earth, right, he came announcing God's realm is in your midst.

God's realm is here among you.

So the wisdom that Jesus invites us to today is a way to see God's realm in the midst of our earthly one.

I like to liken it to Jesus giving us each a pair of 3D glasses.

And when we put them on, all of a sudden the world looks incredibly different.

We have eyes to see the world differently when we are able to step inside the realm of God in these parables.

So Jesus begins with this parable today of the mustard seed.

Many a preacher has tried to figure out how to hold up a small mustard seed and show you just how small it is.

And many a preacher has tried to make the point that God's kingdom starts as something quite small and somehow expansively grows bigger.

So the ministry idea that someone has begins small and God takes it and makes it big.

The disciples began as a ragtag bunch and look at the worldwide growth of the Jesus movement.

This is the common way that the mustard seed is viewed.

And then we take the parable of the yeast in a really similar way.

We understand the phrase, a little yeast goes a long way, and then we understand ourselves to be God's leavening agent in the world.

So Jesus, who pictures himself as the woman who is needing this dough, is using us as leaven in the world.

And then we quote Mother Teresa, we can do no great things, only small things with great love.

And that should be the end of our sermon.

Go and do likewise.

That sure seems to be what these parables are saying.

Except there's a little more to the story.

Mustard, like Krista said, was an invasive shrub in Jesus' day.

It was considered a weed like kudzu that just took over a garden.

So when a farmer was making his nice rows of plants to feed his family and to sell to market, if mustard began popping up, it would quickly be pulled out and thrown into the fire.

Because of how small that seed was, mustard would crop up even when the farmer didn't plant it intentionally.

The kingdom, God's realm, is like an invasive plant, Jesus is saying.

It's going to pop up where you least expect it.

And it's not some grand sycamore tree, it's more like a really big shrub.

But birds at least can make a home there.

And yeast?

Well, this is the first positive mention of yeast or leaven in the Bible.

In the Old Testament, yeast had to be cleared out.

It was a symbol of corruption.

And it made the whole batch bad.

Leaven could be deadly if used in the wrong amount.

But Jesus is describing in this parable just how expansive God's kingdom is.

The amount of flour that he describes the woman needing, it's enough to make bread for 150 people, like a large wedding feast.

Jesus is saying that God's realm is at times hidden and silent, awaiting its coming king.

So what do we do with that?

Jesus is not just telling stories, he is subverting what the images are supposed to mean.

Mustard was a nuisance to the gardener.

Leaven was a dangerous and unclean substance that had to be cleared out before Passover.

In his commentary, Theodore Wardlaw says it this way He says, The kingdom of heaven, like the mustard seed, invades the cultivated soil of our certainties and our boundaries and creates out of it all something new.

Hidden within what we think we see so clearly, it is subversive and grows up in unexpected ways until what we thought we knew is transformed by our surprising, invasive God.

So God's realm not only starts small, but God's realm is surprising.

This is why the Pharisees and the religious leaders could not grasp these parables.

They could not enter the wisdom of them.

They did not want God to be messing with their certainties and with their boundaries.

They could not fathom that God could be doing a new thing in the midst of the old.

And Jesus is saying to us, God's realm starts small and unassuming, and it'll surprise you.

In our scripture today, Jesus goes on to tell another pair of quick parables.

They're so brief that we almost lump them together.

In the parable of the treasure, someone finds a treasure in another person's field.

They cover it up, go and purchase that whole field.

Now I don't know who this person is.

Were they a field worker?

Were they doing the equivalent of mowing the lawn when they came upon this treasure?

Whatever the case was, right?

They dug a hole, they covered it back up so that they could own this treasure.

And then there's the merchant who was looking for the perfect piece of jewelry.

You can picture him going to every estate sale, looking with one of those little magnifying glasses that I picture jewelry people having, right?

And he's hoping to lowball the price and sell it at multiple times that price.

Scrupulous, we would call the merchant.

But then he found the perfect pearl.

And he sells everything he has to get it.

God's realm is worth everything we have, is what we initially learn from these parables.

You might stumble upon God's realm like the worker in the field.

That is some of your story today.

You might not have been seeking after God.

You didn't want to be in a church, but somehow you ran into God and it just clicked for you.

Others of you might have been like the merchant.

You're seeking hard to understand God's ways.

You're trying with your most diligent ways to follow, and it's just not working.

And then one day, Eureka.

It all makes sense.

It all clicked into place.

Once again, these parables elevate something that at first seems a little bit questionable, if not downright shady.

For the person who found the treasure could possibly be a thief of some sorts if he didn't go and tell the landowner about what was rightfully buried on his land, and then he goes and buys it and essentially is kind of stealing that treasure.

Likewise, a merchant was about as trusted as a door-to-door salesman.

You ever had one knock on your door and ask who your internet or cell phone provider is?

Right?

That's about the most trusted person you could find today.

I'm sorry if that's what you do for a living.

And Jesus is saying that God's realm is like that?

A thief and a merchant?

This realm of God flips the values on their head.

The thief gives up everything he has for this treasure.

And the merchant, he gets out of the sales game entirely.

All he has now is this pearl.

It was worth everything to him.

A treasure buried in a field and a pearl are both small things.

But Jesus is telling us when it clicks, when you start to see the world of God's realm like I'm inviting you to, it's worth everything.

So God's realm and receiving it requires a spiritual practice that we don't always love to emphasize.

Surrender.

At some point, when we get what following Jesus means for us, we hold our hands open to God.

We give everything in order to be a part of God's realm.

Perhaps that's why in other places Jesus says that it's hard for the rich to enter God's realm because it requires us to surrender quite a lot.

Jesus' fifth parable today doesn't sound like the others we've talked about.

The parable of the net sounds like a parable of judgment day, which in many ways it is.

But in the context of Jesus' teaching here, I think it's good to consider this.

The good fish who aren't thrown away are those who are listening to Jesus.

They are entering the wisdom of the parables and allowing themselves to see and to live inside of God's realm.

Friends, here's the problem with preacher stories when it comes to talking about God's realm and giving you examples of it.

Right now, I should usually come and provide you an example of a normal person who ended up doing great things for God.

Us preachers hope that using these stories will inspire you that God can use you.

But sometimes I find the opposite to be true.

When I hear those stories, I sometimes end up saying, Well, I can't do anything that big.

And when we say that, what do we end up doing in response?

How do we live in a changed life from that point?

Well, we don't.

So I don't have a grand story that could be turned into a documentary for you today.

Instead, I'd like you to remember whose realm it is that we are selling everything for.

It's God's.

It is not yours.

So what would happen today if everyone here committed to changing one small thing?

Maybe.

Maybe for you you could pray for one specific person each day.

Maybe it's someone who God has laid on your heart, a person who desperately needs your prayers.

Could even be an enemy.

Maybe you commit to not looking at your phone first thing upon waking up in the morning.

You might recognize that it puts you into a spiral from the outset of your day.

Maybe you reach out to a friend who seems down, who you haven't heard from in a little while, or you got scared about something they posted somewhere, and it feels a little uncomfortable to put yourself out there and reach out to them.

Maybe you connect to a ministry that you feel particularly called to that focuses on refugees or on children or people with special needs, or the incarcerated, or those experiencing homelessness.

Maybe you delete an app that takes you down a rabbit hole, even into sinful patterns and behaviors.

Maybe you schedule an appointment with a therapist because you know deep down that you need that little extra help right now.

That was not a list of things for you to go and do.

It's a sampling of one small thing.

One small thing that you could choose to do.

So we're going to pray in the silence of this space.

God show me one small thing.

I want you maybe to open your hands in front of you.

As we open ourselves up to God, God show me one small thing.

Help us have ears to hear.

Eyes to see.

And the strength and the will to do that one small thing you call us to do.

In Christ's holy name.

Amen.