HOMILY: "Looking at the Thorn, Seeing the Rose"

A Meditation on the Parable of the Mustard Seed (Luke 13)

Sunday, February 23, 2025

1.

I pulled into our driveway Thursday night and parked in my usual spot.  And as I climbed the steps to our back porch, I noticed in the neighbors’ window the striking silhouette of their Russian Blue, a stately, dignified beast of a cat, perched on a cushion by the window, peering out into the driveway we share, disappointed I imagine that it was I (and not my neighbor) who was home for the night. 

It turns out that my neighbors hopped a plane—a day or two before—for a winter escape, someplace warm and dry, and appointed a friend from around the corner to come by a couple times a day to check in on the Russian Blue.  So there she was—in a lonely house, emptied of its usual banter, sweet frivolity and teen-aged angst.  Waiting for a sign of their return.  Hoping for a hint of a reunion.  

I waved at the Russian Blue, though it wasn’t really me she ached to see that night.  And then I just stood on the steps for a few moments, watching her watch me, admiring her devotion and vigilance, and then wondering (because I am what I am) if the moment itself might be a kind of a metaphor or maybe even a parable.  Maybe, maybe the kingdom of God is something like a family cat in the window, pining for her beloved’s return, aching for the hand on the nape of her neck, ready to climb into the lap of a late-night reader, eager for the silly human sounds that silly humans make in the silly human routines that make a home a home.  Maybe the kingdom of God is like a Russian Blue, pining for her beloved’s return.

As I tell this story to you now, I’m reminded of that other parable, the one where the father spends months, maybe years, waiting by the kitchen window for the wayward son.  So many of Jesus’ stories—the little ones, the longer ones—revolve around a conflict or a ruptured relationship, and introduce the possibility, maybe even the promise, of reconciliation.  Some kind of reunion.  And being a great storyteller, Jesus so often leaves it to you and me to fill in the gaps, to wonder what happens next, to imagine ourselves at the heart of a divine drama healing broken families, restoring fractured friendships, making peace among the frightened and fearful of the world.  

Jesus’ parables aren’t, after all, terribly preachy.  They hint at deeper truths, but require you and me to dig in and figure them out.  They dance around notions of love, justice, accountability and grace—but insist on our capacity to feel pain, and seek peace, and then work out in our own lives the requirements and gifts of discipleship and faith.  Jesus isn’t interested in robotic orthodoxies or simple-minded proof-texting of ideas and commitments.  Jesus trusts his friends, and the crowds that draw near every day to listen, to dream a little, to consider strange and unexpected metaphors, to meet fictional characters of Jesus’ own making and find in them curiosity and inspiration.  

2.

We’re going to spend a couple of months, between now and Easter, exploring just a few of Jesus’ parables and the faith they might stir up in you and me.  And today we’ve got just the two.  The first about two men who go up to the temple to pray.  And the second—in which Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed.  Just one.  Just one mustard seed.  That someone takes and sows in the garden.  And as it grows, it becomes a great bush, and some of the birds make nests in its branches.  

Let’s start there.  Let’s start with Jesus’ mustard seed. 

Could it be, my friends, that God’s passion is invested in every grain of sand, in every falling snowflake, in every mustard seed sown in every garden?  Could it be that God’s beauty is hidden not only in the phrases of Bach’s great fugues, and not only in the swirling strokes of Van Gogh’s greatest works, but also in the simple melody you sing to yourself in the shower?  And also, in the kind card you send to a friend in a tough time?

Mustard Seed Icon

And if that’s so, if Jesus is onto something with this mustard seed thing, maybe that means I pay a very different kind of attention to everyday occurrences, and the way the clouds roll across the winter sky, and the banter of undergraduates as they shovel snow out back, and the way the young man at Hannaford says “Have a great day!” as he’s bagging my groceries.  Maybe it’s my calling, even my vocation and yours, to watch for God’s passion, God’s invitation in the tears a friend cries in a moment of confusion, confession or even rage.  Maybe it’s our calling, our great privilege, to watch for God’s holiness in the way a drunk stumbles down Central Avenue in Dover at ten in the morning; to listen for God’s prayer in a flock of geese winging over Durham at noon; to sense the wonder of God’s creativity in the devotion of a choir, or a pianist, or the old woman at the bus stop who hums to herself until the bus comes at last.

  

I wonder if the gist of it all is that the healing energies of God are present in every breath we take, in every seed we sow, in every day that dawns and every ray of light.  I wonder if the gist of Jesus’ parable is that we don’t have to wait for huge shifts in geo-political trends to feel hopeful and grateful and bright with wonder; that we don’t have to wait for big headlines and great revolutions to recognize God’s passion for reconciling communities and tenderness in togetherness and joy in music and art and poetry and love.    

The great Sufi and poet Rumi wrote this: “Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing.  It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day.  Lovers are patient,” Rumi wrote, “and know that the moon needs time to become full.”  The moon needs time to become full.

If the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, you and I can set aside despair and doom and choose patience and joy and hope instead.  We become seers—as Rumi says—looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day.  If the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, you can watch for divine mercy even in the midst of cruelty and chaos; and you can trust that in the simplest things, the tiniest things, the ordinary breath you draw in an ordinary moment—God is sowing seeds, preparing the beds, planting new possibilities for reconciliation and justice.  “Lovers know that the moon needs time to become full.”

The mustard seed is tiny, as tiny as a seed can be.  But it grows—often imperceptibly and mysteriously—it grows into a great bush, Jesus says; and in that great bush, God’s creatures make their nests and find their shelter and raise their young.  It’s in the tiniest of seeds, the most ordinary miracles, the simplest tasks—that the moon becomes full and the divine works her ways of grace, and healing, and peace.

The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.

3.

And still, still it’s hard to live with this kind of patience.  Still, it’s hard to watch so carefully and pray so boldly and live so hopefully.

At yesterday’s “Prepared to Serve” event in Pembroke, I offered a workshop around some of the work I’ve been doing with advocates for peace and human rights in Palestine and Israel.  It’s obviously work that compels me, by turns heartbreaking and inspiring, and it’s clearly a matter of discipleship for me.  So I put that workshop together with some effort, organizing materials and offering the 12 or so participants a chance to see some of what I see and participate in the work to end American profiteering in genocide and dismantle Israeli apartheid.  It was, in a lot of ways, a really rich session.

About half-way through the 90-minute session, a friend and colleague spoke up.  She said, “You know, this is all moving testimony and these are detailed and heart-breaking materials.  But really, what difference does any of this make?  All the words, all the resolutions, all the letters and petitions?  In the end, what difference does any of this make?”  

I know this colleague well, she’s brilliant and smart and brave.  And I know that she asked her question not to demoralize, but to articulate something of her own frustration, something of her own experience.  That so much of what we do these days seems small.  That so much of what we do these days seems insignificant.  How do we continue to care and organize and make ‘good trouble’—when our witness seems so woefully inadequate to the size and scope of the terror, so woefully inadequate to the needs of the suffering and frightened we serve?  Again, I know her well, and she’s wrestling with all of this—in her own church, in her own ministry, in her own heart.  

Immediately, though, I thought of two men, one who lives half-way around the world, and the other who lives downstairs in our own church building.  You’ll remember that we invited my friend, Zoughbi Zoughbi, to preach on a link from Bethlehem in January.  And you’ll remember that he spoke from his heart, from his painful experience within the Palestinian community: he spoke of their sense of isolation, and their commitment to care for and love one another, and their steadfast hope that the world might step in to help.  

Well, I heard from Zoughbi, just two days after he preached here.  And he said that our invitation, and his freedom to speak to you, to offer words of gospel hope to you, had given him a much-needed boost of love and energy and even perseverance.  It was, for Zoughbi, a mustard seed moment—just a sermon, just a single sermon on a simple Sunday.  But he told me that that moment, that that connection, had been planted in his heart—and that he was confident it was even then stirring in the depths, growing in his spirit, to become something necessary, something holy, something like hope itself.  The kingdom of God, Jesus says, is like a mustard seed that someone takes and sows in the garden; and it grows and becomes a great bush, and the birds of the air make their nests in its branches.

And what about Antony?  What about our life with Antony, our commitment to him and his family so far away?  

This afternoon, twenty or twenty-five of us will participate in a training to prepare ourselves for witness and care—should Immigration Officers at any point come to detain and deport our friend.  Now he is one man.  He is just one man, among millions and millions of immigrants in similarly vulnerable circumstances this winter.  But I would suggest to you, my friends, that Antony is one man who has catalyzed and inspired a whole community to do brave things, to do good work, to do God’s work—in standing lovingly with neighbors seeking asylum, with immigrants doing their best for their families and futures.

And Antony’s faith has drawn not only this congregation, but friends and partners all over New Hampshire to care for his safety, and to care for the safety of so many like him.  You see, he’s a mustard seed man.  And his one life, sown so deeply and so completely into the life of this congregation, takes root in our lives and grows and grows into something that offers hope and sustenance to so, so, so many others.  Antony, our mustard seed man.

4.

So yes, I understand my friend’s question.  And I sympathize, I really do, with the fear and frustration so many of us feel around the immense human needs, around the great democratic crises of our time.  

But this morning, I hear Jesus saying to us, to the church: God is at work in the darkness.  Like a mustard seed in the garden.  God is on the move in the confusion of our time.  Like a mustard seed in the garden.  Pay close attention, Jesus seems to say, to Zoughbi Zoughbi in Bethlehem, and to Antony right here two floors beneath us.  Pay attention to their voices, to their needs, to their steadfast commitments to family and friends.  Note that God’s passion is at home in their hearts.

And so it is that God is planted deep in our hearts too, like a mustard seed.  And we have only to watch, to believe, to trust in the stirring of that seed beneath the icy crust of a New Hampshire winter.  One breath becomes a symphony of resistance.  One man becomes a catalyst for courage and solidarity.  And one little parable becomes a sign of who we are, and the one who goes before us.

Amen and Ashe.