GRAINS OF MUSTARD SEED

 A SERMON FOR THE 24TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Have you ever been plagued by those feelings of helplessness, the thought that no matter what we do, we’re powerless to change anything in the big scheme of things?  Not despair, necessarily, more of a sense of resignation that things are out of our control, so let’s just leave it to God to sort out.  If so, today’s Epistle and Gospel are for you!

You may be forgiven for not having being struck with inspiration during the reading of these lessons.  They’re written in the style of that particular time, and can be a little obscure.  But as St. Matthew explains, our Lord was speaking in parables, “and without a parable spake he not unto them.”  Our Lord prefers that the truth is not so obvious that it would be impossible to dispute.  Faith must play a part, and so the truth doesn’t usually just whack us in the head with a sudden illumination.  Our Lord wants us to ponder over his words, meditate on them so that only with our effort accompanied by a leap of faith, we may come to a deeper understanding of what he means.

Not so the unbelievers.  They will not take that effort to think about what God really means when he says something.  They glance over the words and take them at face value for something they don’t mean at all.  They certainly aren’t prepared to make the necessary leap of faith.  The problem is that people believe what they want to believe.  Many people, even those who profess to be devout Christians, just read the Bible and interpret its words to mean what they want it to mean.  The only time they bother thinking any deeper is when the words obviously mean something they don’t believe, such as when our Lord tells them in no uncertain terms that his Body is the Bread of Life, and that if they do not eat it they will not go to heaven.  He even tells them he is not speaking in parables on this occasion.  But that doesn’t fit in with the Protestant denial of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist, and so they have to think hard to figure out how our Lord does not mean what he’s saying.

But to get back to those feelings of helplessness you might be experiencing these days, or indeed at any other time of your life, let’s take a look at that grain of mustard seed, what our Lord calls “the least of all seeds.”  We can apply this to ourselves, and if we look what happens to that grain of mustard seed, it should give us great hope.  For when it is grown, says our Lord, “it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”

Take as an example a saint like Francis of Assisi.  He approached the world with the idea of getting people to give away all their possessions and live a life of poverty and austerity, begging for every meal, and doing nothing else but pray and preach.  As ideas go, that one doesn’t sound like a winner, does it?  And yet it took off, and soon, this poor man of Assisi found himself the leader of a huge movement, one of the largest religious orders in the world, even today.  Truly a grain of mustard seed.

You can think of many others like him.  The Twelve Apostles, fishermen, tax collectors, not a very impressive group of men, on the face of it.  And yet they preached to the four corners of the known world, and set the scene for the conversion of all men to the truth of the Gospels. 

Yes, you may say, but the Twelve Apostles received the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, St. Francis was a holy man.  Who am I that I should compare myself to them?  You are who you are.  Like them, you’re basically a nobody.  But a nobody who has the potential to become somebody.  Holiness is not something that is miraculously dropped from heaven on a few chosen people.  It’s something that we have to work at, so that we may save not only our own souls but do as much spiritual—and natural—good as we can here on this earth, and for as long as we can.  There is nothing to stop any one of us becoming a saint.  Nothing to stop us from taking the truths we have learned and that we know, and spreading these truths first to our own children, and then far and wide to all we come in contact with.  We must use the tools of kindness, tolerance, a gentle persuasion, good example—all these methods and more to bring Truth to those who wander this world in ignorance of it.

St. Paul reinforces this idea in today’s Epistle to the Thessalonians.  He pushes them to continue their “work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope.”  He reminds them, and us, that “our Gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost.”  If St. Francis had the power to start a great and holy cause, so do we.  If the Apostles received the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, so do we at the sacrament of Confirmation.  Use these powers and don’t let them remain dormant, asleep within you.  They are seeds, like the mustard seed, that must be allowed to grow and become something great.  We are not powerless, merely forgetful sometimes of the power that lies within us.

As I mentioned last week, bad times produce strong men.  This is not the time to simply resign ourselves to whatever the future holds.  If the future brings attacks on our freedoms, on our civil rights, on our Constitution, then we must be prepared to fight, as Americans have always fought for these rights in our past.  And if the attacks are on our faith, our right to worship God as he has commanded us, then we must fight to the death if necessary.  Right now, we’re in a period of limbo, praying that recounts and lawsuits will somehow bring about a fair and just conclusion to the travesty of an election we’ve just endured.  But our response during what may be a long and protracted struggle must not be to shrug our shoulders and merely “hope for the best.”  We must pray fervently.  Right now, this is what we are called upon to do, and really, all we can do.  So let’s do it!  Let’s pray with hope, with trust in Divine Providence, and with a total confidence that God’s plan for the world will be fulfilled, that his will be done!  Only then can we sit back with the satisfaction of knowing that we played our part, that we did our duty.

For now, it is our prayers that are those little mustard seeds.  So without further ado, let’s go plant them!