Proper 12 Sermon - BMT - July 26, 2026

Earlier this week, um, I was interviewed by a seminarian uh who for one of the projects in his class had to interview various ministers and ask them all kinds of questions to, I guess, get wisdom and perspective on what he's getting himself into by going to seminary.

And it was really interesting because uh one of the questions he asked me was, are you satisfied with your ministry?

Are you satisfied with your ministry?

Now, of course, I've been to seminary, so I know that this is somewhat of a trick question.

I can recall countless professors in seminary uh just hammering it into our heads, warning us do not find the satisfaction of your ministry in visible outcomes that you can measure and calculate.

That is, that they were telling all these wide-eyed seminarian students, uh, don't think that you're going to see all the harvest of everything that you sow.

Most of that you're not going to see, not in this lifetime.

And I was talking with this uh seminarian and reflecting on this with them, and it reminded me of something I heard many years ago from an authority and leadership.

It was in a book by an author from Ryan Holiday, and he was reflecting on what he was calling this exterior scorecard and an interior scorecard.

And he was using the example, I believe it was Alabama football in their coach.

And he was saying, he was watching this game, and Alabama is just slaughtering the other team.

It was really, if you're a Bama fan, it was awesome.

You know, they were miles ahead on the scoreboard.

And this author said, you know, he drove his, yes, I got we got Bama fans in here right now.

They they're loving this.

Um and he he brings his eyes down.

This author said he was looking at the scoreboard, he's miles ahead.

He brings his eyes to this sideline, he's looking at the coach, and the coach is losing his mind.

He's in complete outrage.

Because his players are playing terrible football.

Yeah, they're winning, and they're miles ahead, and they're going to win the game.

But this coach had a completely different set of metrics by which he was assessing what was actually going on.

And this coach was losing his mind even though they were miles ahead on the scoreboard.

And I think that this example provides something of an analogy to make sense out of what Jesus is speaking about when he talks about the kingdom of God.

What he's teaching.

You see, Jesus, we heard, is telling parables about this small seed that will grow and become a tree that even birds can nest in, and this uh yeast that's been hidden in a lump of dough, but it will eventually take over the whole lump.

And over the about the last hundred years or so, um, Christian scholarship and pastors and modern Christians, they've tended to read and interpret Jesus' parables about the kingdom here as though Jesus is teaching about progress.

That fundamentally what the kingdom is, is progress, that it will progress from the tiny seeds of Jesus' earthly ministry, and it will observably and measurably and quantifiably, it will just get large and large, and so much so that the kingdom of heaven takes over the kingdoms of this world.

But it's just a message of progress, right?

This seed that will grow into this tree.

And this interpretation of Jesus has often in our time been married and merged with other myths of progress, especially after the Enlightenment.

This story goes something like this that, you know, whatever problems we have in society or in the world on the planet, uh, what we need is to progress both economically, uh technologically, advance in culture, advance in ideas, advance in medicine, and eventually all the progress in these various fields will converge into an eschaton, right, that we've kind of achieved by our own ingenuity or cleverness or something like that.

This is kind of the modern myth of progress.

This is where we're headed.

And sometimes this interpretation of Jesus can get tangled up and all of that.

But if we understand Jesus' teaching here is simply speaking about the progress of the kingdom, this sits in a lot of tension with pretty much the rest of the New Testament.

Uh Saint Paul in his pastoral epistles, and then Saint John in the book of Revelation, they're very clear and they're very confident that the kingdom of God is going to be firmly and fully established and consummated on earth.

But they're also convinced that things will probably look in the future to be the complete opposite.

That actually things may seem to be going off the rails.

There may be times when actually it looks like Babylon is going to win, or that the world, the flesh, and the devil have, in fact, already won.

They'll see that the reality of suffering and persecution and the state of things, Paul will even say in speaking about the church, he says, in the last days in the church, people will be lovers of self, self rather than lovers of God.

They'll have the appearance of godliness, but deny its power.

This is how bad things will get.

And well, that sits in tension if what we understand Jesus to be saying here is that the kingdom of God is a seed and it's going to progress and eventually will manifest itself.

Instead, what we see in Paul and what we see in the book of Revelation, and I believe what we see in Jesus' teaching, is that the kingdom of God is an apocalyptic kingdom.

Now, the word apocalypse simply means unveiling or revelation.

It's the book of Revelation, the book of the apocalypse.

It's this unveiling of this final and decisive act in which God establishes God's kingdom.

This is what we're looking forward to.

We're looking forward to the apocalypse.

We're looking forward to the revelation of God's kingdom on earth.

It is to say that imagine, you know, a chessboard and you know, all the pieces, wherever they might be, you're looking at the board like, I don't know, who's got the upper hand, not sure how this is going to go.

The apocalypse is that moment when God's kingdom is revealed, and regardless of where the pieces are on the table, suddenly and immediately the world, the flesh, and the devil checkmate from God.

This is revelation.

This is apocalypse.

And this is the transition from the seed and the large tree in the kingdom.

That is, that the difference between the seed and this large tree where birds can nest that describes the kingdom of God is not this observable progress that we see, but instead it's the revelation of God's kingdom.

That is, in an instant, what appears right now to be small, in that moment will be revealed to be invaluable, durable, solid.

It'll be revealed fully.

And this is what Jesus is speaking about, especially, you'll notice in his parables, well, he's going to reference, right, when the Son of Man comes with all his angels and demons, or sorry, with all his angels separating the good and the evil, including the demons.

But that this is what Jesus is talking about in his parables, that there's going to be a moment in the future when everything has to negotiate God.

This is the apocalypse.

Well, what does this mean?

What does this mean about Jesus' teachings of the kingdom, the small seed in the hidden yeast?

It means that those things, precisely those things, that look to be to us right now insignificant, mundane, uh not valuable, that these things will be revealed to be at the very heart of the kingdom of God.

It is to say the small things.

But Jesus' teachings are inviting us into this world of small things, this world in which we have given ourselves over to mercy, given ourselves over to humility, to patience, to gentleness, to mercy.

These are small acts.

If you think of many of the saints, right, in the church who have been canonized by the church, most of the saints are not people who have done these extraordinary things, these astronomically big things, but often the saints are those who have given themselves to little things.

As uh Saint now Saint Mother Teresa said, right, we can do no big things.

Right?

She just says that.

Everybody, you it doesn't matter who you are when Mother Teresa talked, whenever she was still living, everybody listen.

And Mother Teresa just say offhand, we can do no big things.

We can do no great things, we can only do small things with great love.

And this is the image of the kingdom.

That the things in our life that seem mundane or seem so small will in fact be revealed on that day to be the fuel in the engine of the kingdom.

They will be revealed to be the brick and mortar of the kingdom.

I I know that like many of us, we might imagine, you know, as we're going to you know see Jesus as we enter glory, you know, we come to Christ, we imagine ourselves like, Jesus, look at look at this hospital we built.

Look at this nonprofit we established, Jesus.

Look at this big church, look how big this building was.

Look at these numbers, Jesus.

And I think Jesus will probably say something like, oh, well that's yeah, that's all wonderful.

Those are good things.

But you know what?

Uh and and then what I think will likely happen is we'll have a catalog of Jesus going over all the small things in our life.

And that this is going to show be the thread of uh the continuity between this and the kingdom.

That Jesus is going to say, like, yep, no, yeah, the hospital, great.

All right, big church, whatever.

Um, now I want to go with you through your actual life.

And and he may say, like, you know, that's that's great, but do you remember this this moment?

There's this moment when you were in the grocery store and you had a really stressful week that week.

Money was super tight, and you were trying, you're just working your way through the aisles, and you actually caught the eye of a stranger, and they just looked downcast, and you were busy, but you said, you know, I'm gonna go over, I want to, I just want to check in on them.

And you actually did.

You went up to them and you said, I don't know you, but you look like you're having a hard day.

Just want to check in, and they told you a little bit, and you couldn't do anything about it.

You were in the middle of the grocery store, but but and but then you walked away and you just said a quiet prayer in your heart for that person.

And Jesus will say, Yes.

Kingdom.

Or, you know, another scenario that there is this time this person injured you so badly.

What they said, and Jesus will say, it was wrong.

They shouldn't have done this, they shouldn't have said what they said or did what they did.

But they were completely oblivious to it.

If they were uh you know here today, they wouldn't see anything was wrong, and and and you, but you, they did this, and then you, in your heart of hearts, you forgave them without their even asking.

And in fact, you Jesus will say, You ask my Father to bless them.

That this is the kingdom.

This is the seeds in the present that will be revealed one day to be the brick and mortar of this solid, durable, beautiful kingdom of God.

And that what Jesus is inviting us into is a world in which everything that may appear right now to be so mundane, so small, so insignificant.

You know, I'm just caring for kids.

I'm just trying to get by at work, I'm just trying to, you know, catch some time with friends, I'm just taking care of my parents.

All these things, the entirety of our life, what appears to us is mundane and quotidian and insignificant, is suddenly by this kingdom is totally drenched and pregnant with the kingdom.

Jesus says in these parables that the kingdom of heaven is yeah, it's like a treasure that's been hidden in a field.

And and somebody, they sell everything they have to buy this field.

Right?

They sell off their home, their estate, their cars or donkeys, you know, whatever, and then they go and then they buy this lot.

And you say it's just a lot.

Like it's it's mundane, it's plain, it's you know, on the surface, like insignificant.

Yeah, Jesus says, Yeah, the kingdom of heaven is like doing that.

Because underneath it is this priceless treasure.

Yeah, underneath the daily routines, underneath the every time you go to a restaurant, like all these opportunities where the kingdom of God is just brimming over at the surface and calling upon us to lean into it, to enter it, to welcome it, to serve it.

And it'll look like, yeah, patience, Lord have mercy on me, patience with our kids or other people's kids.

It'll look like, yeah, overtipping the really bad waitress or waiter.

Like, yes, those are the moments where the kingdom of God is brimming in.

And these are those moments that will be revealed one day.

This is the brick and mortar of the kingdom.

May we all be a people who hear Jesus' teachings here.

May we all be a people who do and lean into the little things, to give ourselves away to situations, to people who are of no benefit to us, who don't lift us up in status or rank or ego, but we give ourselves to the little things, and that these little things will be revealed one day, as wild as it sounds, that what appears right now to be just a grain of mustard seed will be revealed to be this enormous tree.

Amen.