Good morning, Friends! Happy Mother’s Day!
I like Mother’s Day. I think, over the years, I’ve done almost as many sermons for Mother’s Day, as I’ve done for Christmas and Easter. I know Mother’s Day strictly speaking isn’t in the Bible, but “Honor your mother and your father” is certainly one of the Ten Commandments.
There are plenty of mothers who are honored and remembered in the Bible, starting with Eve and going all the way to Mary, who was Jesus’ mother.
So, it’s OK for us to give all the moms a round of applause today! We love you, we honor you, we OWE you all, big time.
Jesus was always teaching people in parables. He was a storyteller, and I’m sure that Jesus learned a lot of his stories from his mother.
I can still remember stories and songs that my mother told us. She or my dad used to read to us, every night before we went to bed. That kind of love and care and attention, stays with us for a lifetime. And then, we try to pass it on, to our own kids, and our grandkids. So, this may have been a story Jesus heard from his mother, when he was just a boy.
Jesus told them a parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”
He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
Matthew 13:31-33
This time of year, everyone’s getting their garden planted. They’re raking out leaves from last fall, they’re spreading mulch, they’re pushing seeds into the ground.
My wife and I used to have a big garden. Peas, and carrots, and tomatoes, and peppers. Sunflowers, cone flowers, all kinds of stuff like that.
I remember one year, one of the Sunday School classes at a meeting were I was serving had all the kids start marigold and tomato plants in little pots for Mother’s Day.
One of the kids came running into the worship room and said, “Guess what! We planted tomatoes and miracles today!”
All of us are here, because another kind of seed was planted once upon a time. Our parents made a special seed of love together, and our mothers carried it until it was big enough to be born as us. We all began as a seed, once upon a time.
And Jesus says, “OK, you want to understand about God, and you want to know how God works? Go look at seeds. Any kind of seeds. Mustard seeds, pumpkin seeds, corn, radishes, human beings, you name it! Understand what planting seeds is like, and you’ll understand about God.”
Take almost any basic piece of understanding about seeds, Jesus said, and it can be applied somehow to God. You’ve got to have ground that’s prepared and ready. All right, people’s hearts have to be prepared and ready, too. Some seed never comes up? A lot of things God plants, never come up, either.
Seeds need water, or they get all dried up by the hot sun. Figure it out – we all need the living water of the Holy Spirit, and a lot of people get burned out and dried up by difficulties, or temptations, or tough times, or by even mildest kind of persecution or ridicule.
Even seeds that grow, can still get choked up by weeds that block them, Jesus said. People can get choked up, by too much money or too many other things in their lives.
But take a look at one of the smallest seeds, Jesus said – the mustard seed. We’re so used to buying things all packaged and ready at the store, we forget what a miracle it is, that something so small you can hardly see it, could grow into a big tree. We’re so used to all kinds of things, that we forget they start from tiny seeds.
The kingdom of heaven is like that. It starts as the tiniest seed of all – something invisible, something we hardly notice, something we may not even feel at the time. But that tiny seed of God, if we allow it to grow in us, can change our lives and change the world. It’s a living miracle. Just like a baby.
How does it happen? God plants all kinds of seeds, all the time. A seed can be a prayer, that if we just listen to it and let it grow, and change us.
It may be just a small sense of concern for someone or some condition. If we let it deepen, it can help to transform society. It may be some word that we speak to someone else, a word that can lift them up and give them hope or healing.
Mothers know a lot about planting seeds. They do it all the time. Mothers and parents are always planting seeds in their children. Every day, we plant dozens of them, in the hope that one day, our children will grow up into people we can be proud of, people who will love God and love their neighbor.
The trouble is, we’re always planting seeds, whether we know it or not. And we can be planting bad seeds as well as good ones.
There’s an old poem or set of proverbs that says,
If a child lives with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility, they learn to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule, they learn to be shy.
But if a child lives with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If a child lives with praise, they learn to appreciate.
If a child lives with fairness, they learn justice.
If a child lives with security, they learn to have faith.
If a child lives with approval, they learn to like themself. . .
We’re always planting seeds with our kids, and with everyone else we meet. Even the tiniest little mustard seed kind of love and faith we plant may grow up to move mountains one day.
I always wish that families would turn on a recorder, and save some of the things they say and play them back. I did that with my parents, years ago, and I played back the things they said and wrote them down.
It’s so easy to do, today you can even just turn on your smart phone and make a recording. You may think you’re going to remember all those family stories, but you probably won’t remember all of them. And so many times, we wish we could just hear their voices again, one more time. Well, with a recording, you can do it. You might as well. You’ll be so glad you did!
But I also wish people could record some of the other things they say, and hear them. Some of the things people say to their children are so hurtful, they’re just incredible.
Children will hear some of those things, and play them back again and again in their memory, for the rest of their lives. If we could just hit the stop and erase button sometimes when we’re talking with our kids. One wrong word, one fight, one thing forgotten or left unsaid, one piece of gossip they overhear, can ruin people and drive them away for good.
It’s lucky there’s such a thing as forgiveness, or we’d never be able to start over, after some of the things we plant have come to fruition.
“And the kingdom of heaven is like yeast,” Jesus said. “It grows without anyone watching it, yet it changes the whole batch of bread. . .”
That’s what we can be like. We can be the yeast. We can be the quiet, unseen, transforming force in society. We can help to change people’s lives, and raise our whole community up towards God. That’s what yeast does. That’s how God works.
I don’t know if actual yeast has any self-awareness. Probably not. But maybe we can ask ourselves, “Have I lived my life in such a way that it changes other people? Have I been like leaven – have I been like the yeast in the loaf?”
It doesn’t matter how flashy we are. Yeast works in secret. And yet, slowly, surely, it changes things. Understand how yeast works, and we’ll understand the kind of living bread that Jesus wants to be in us.
Every time you have a sandwich, every time we sit down and break bread together, give thanks for the yeast which made it all possible. Every time you feel hopeless, every time you feel you haven’t done anything worthwhile, remember that yeast works quietly, secretly.
I remember, years ago, one of the first sermons I ever gave. It was in a Quaker meeting where a lot of the people were farm families. I read this same Scripture, about yeast, and I asked people what they thought about what Jesus said.
I said, “Jesus wants us all to be like yeast. What do you think Jesus means by that? Do you think Jesus wants us all to go sit in a warm, dark place, and cover ourselves with a damp towel, until we double in bulk?”
Well, all the mothers and the farm wives completely lost it. One Quaker lady was trying so hard not to laugh, she had stuff coming out her nose.
Mothers, go home, and remember that you are honored. Always think about what kind of seeds you’re planting. And fathers, and everybody else, do the same thing. We’re planting seeds, every day. Some of them are big, and some of them are really tiny.
And we have to be like yeast, which not only changes itself, but changed everything around it, until the whole loaf is raised up. That’s what we’re supposed to be, too.
And when you feel the seed of God, stirring in you, no matter how small it is, take care of it, and listen to it. Because that tiny seed of God’s own Spirit, in each one of us, can grow to be a power that transforms the world.