A Fourth Church Sermon by Matthew J. Helms

October 10, 2010 | 4:00 p.m.

Hidden in Plain Sight

Matthew J. Helms
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Matthew 13:31–35

”I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth,
do you not perceive it?”

Isaiah 43:19 (NRSV)

The movie The Social Network, released in theaters last weekend, tells the story behind the creation of Facebook, a website that has become as much a part of our vocabulary as Google has in recent years. Facebook, as we know it today, was the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg, a brilliant programmer with less than brilliant social skills (if the movie is to be believed). He attended Harvard University in the early 2000s, and in February of 2004, Zuckerberg and a few programmer friends launched Facebook from their Harvard dorm room as a means of allowing Harvard classmates to connect with their friends and share information about themselves. From this single campus dorm room came a social revolution that spread like wildfire; within months, the website was being utilized at six other campuses. By the end of 2004, less than twelve months after launching, Facebook officially reached its millionth member. It currently has more than 500 million members, and an estimated 50 percent of the U.S. population has had a Facebook account (www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics). It is tough for us to imagine exponential growth, since we tend to think of things in a more linear fashion, but the growth and spread of Facebook has been nothing short of exponential, nothing short of astonishing.

How is it that the vision of one person can reshape the social fabric of society? How is it that events taking place in an isolated dorm room on the edge of the country can have a global impact? I have never met Mark Zuckerberg, but because of him I can learn of friends across the country and the world getting jobs, message those who have lost loved ones, celebrate birthdays, and view pictures of newborn children all in the span of five minutes during my morning. I can do all this because one person had a small mustard seed of an idea sitting in their dorm room just six years ago, a seed that has blossomed into a global empire.

Despite the vast size and varied scope of our world, despite the assumed power of the status quo, nothing is more powerful in affecting our society than the mustard seed of an idea. This mustard seed can be humanitarian, such as the Nobel Prize-winning work of Muhammad Yunus in creating microfinancing, a money-lending technique that completely overhauled the fight against global poverty. This mustard seed can be religious, such as the sudden rise of Protestantism thanks to the ideas of Luther and a handful of other church reformers. This mustard seed can be political, such as the idea of nonviolent resistance used by Gandhi and later Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to spark a revolution. Each mustard seed contains the ability to inspire, bringing with it the passionate growth that still shocks and amazes everyone as it comes to fruition. When Jesus speaks of the kingdom of heaven as a mustard seed, he is describing an idea that, no matter how humble its beginnings, will grow to have a gigantic impact on humanity.

Christ’s comparison of the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed proved to be startlingly accurate for the early church. Jesus was the son of a carpenter from a small town in Northern Israel—humble beginnings even within a country that was itself quite humble in between kingdoms and empires. Within years of Jesus’ death, his teachings were spread from Spain to India—much of the known world at that time—by a small group of devoted followers. Over the centuries that followed, Christianity grew from a small Jewish sect in Israel to the state religion of imperial Rome. Today Christianity has approximately 2 billion adherents around the world. To paraphrase the words of Jesus, “The smallest of all the seeds has grown into the greatest of shrubs and has become a tree.”

If we understand these small mustard seeds to be what moves and shapes our lives, how can we think about the second of our parables today, that the kingdom of heaven is like yeast which was mixed with flour until it was leavened? Anyone who has ever worked with yeast in bread making or dough making knows how seemingly insignificant and yet powerful yeast is. When I make pizzas, I need only a small packet of yeast weighing half an ounce to completely change the substance of the dough. Within hours, the contents of the once lifeless bowl of flour and water begin to rise, doubling in size, expanding and changing texture, taste, and consistency. For lack of a better term, yeast transforms things.

These parables of the mustard seed and yeast are fascinating, because they remind us that even though we might not notice the work and growth of these small objects, they are nonetheless transforming themselves and the world around them. They are agents of change, agents that are hidden in plain sight. It is so easy to overlook and dismiss that which we do not see; after all, our world is one of concrete realities and direct associations. Most of us do not have time to look for things that are hidden, and yet these small, hidden things shape and guide our world in ways that we can only understand in part. Despite the immense size of our world and the power of the status quo, nothing affects our world more than these small, hidden things.

~~~~~

At Fourth Church’s eighth grade confirmation retreat a few weeks back, the confirmands were asked to write out questions they had about God and faith. Their questions are the same ones that many of us have: “Why does it seem like God is not always there?” “Where is God right now?” “How does God speak to people?” “Does God even exist?” These questions reflect on the same principle: we do not see God or God’s work in our everyday lives. Even when we do, it often seems isolated or fleeting; not the kind of sustained presence that many of us expect or want. In many ways, God’s presence with us seems hidden and obscured, a frustrating paradox given our assertion that God is love.

The situation was similar for the Israelites after Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in the sixth century B.C.: God had never seemed more distant to the people than when Israel was captive in a foreign land. They asked many of the same questions that our eighth graders did and we all do: God, where are you? How could you let this evil happen to those who trust in you? In the book of Isaiah, a portion of which was written during this captivity, God speaks to the prophet using bold words: “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?” I would assume the answer from most of the Israelites would have been “No! Of course we don’t see it! What about our current surroundings would have us believe that you are present?” It is difficult to see mustard seeds, I guess, when you are looking for trees.

The mystery of God’s relationship with humanity always reminds me of the story of Elijah waiting for God on the mountaintop (1 Kings 19:11–18). The story begins with Elijah being told to wait for God’s presence to appear. As Elijah waits, a great wind passes by, a wind so strong that it breaks the nearby rocks into pieces, but God is not in the wind. Next an earthquake shakes the ground beneath Elijah’s feet, but God is not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, a fire comes, but God is not in the fire. After the noise and tumult and action of these three things, Elijah hears the sound of complete silence, and it is then that he is in God’s presence.

It is a paradox that the infinite, almighty God works through silence, yeast, and mustard seeds. It is a paradox that God was revealed in humanity in Jesus Christ. It is a paradox that the smallest of seeds and the quietest of moments can be the very things that are utterly transformative. As humans, we are not satisfied with paradoxes; we are continually frustrated at something our mind cannot grasp. And yet if we want to understand God and where God is in the world, we need to recognize the paradox and mystery of God and believe in the power and might of small events. We need to look for mustard seeds instead of looking for trees. We need to listen for silence instead of listening for thunder.

However, it is important to remember too that not all mustard seeds should be seen as the work of God. In comparing the growth of Facebook to the rapid growth of mustard seeds in the beginning of this sermon, I was not suggesting that the work of Mark Zuckerberg is akin to God’s work. Indeed, receiving status updates about your friend’s cat is probably fairly low on the list of what God is trying to communicate to you. Instead I wanted to remind us of the power of small events—that they are not something to be dismissed, but that they are instead something to be respected. Although we may have a difficult time perceiving it as these events are occurring, our world is being shaped and guided by these mustard seeds, for better or worse, each day. A terrifying counterexample to God’s work through small events is the mustard seed of anti-Semitism that quickly grew within Nazi Germany. Meteoric growth is not a guarantee that God is in that event. Rather, an awareness of God’s presence needs to come from recognition of God as revealed to us in Jesus and in scripture. It needs to be not only transformative like yeast, but transformative in reflecting the radical love that Christ taught. It needs to not only grow like a mustard seed, but to grow and foster caring for all peoples. It needs to not only convict, but to convict us into becoming better people.

Up to this point, I have only spoken broadly about God’s work through mustard seeds, so I am going to focus it more with an experience I had working as a chaplain two summers ago in a nearby hospital. One night while I was on call, I received a page about a patient who wanted to pray with me. The man was in his early twenties, and he began to share with me that he had been in a gang since the time he was fourteen. He told me that he had done many things in his life that he regretted, including that he had shot two people during his time in this gang and that he had no idea whether they lived or died. He continued to get deeper and deeper into the gang until it eventually became his whole life. However, when he was nineteen, he was picked up for robbery by the police and ended up receiving a two-year sentence. It was while he was in prison serving out this sentence that he was confronted by God—not by a sudden and shocking revelation, but by a great silence. By a mustard seed of doubt about his life that he could not let go. This man had never been to church more than a handful of times in his life, but he told me he just felt this voice telling him to change his life. By the time he got out of prison, he began taking steps to change his life for the better. He left the gang, got married, had a child, and now goes to church every Sunday. His life was utterly transformed by his encounter with the silence.

~~~~~

“I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?” How do we recognize God’s work in mustard seeds when we want something the size of trees? How do we recognize something that is hidden in plain sight? There are no easy answers in the realm of paradox, no easy answers in silence. If we want to participate in God’s work on earth, we need to trust in the immense power of the mustard seed. We need to trust that the kingdom of heaven can transform all things like yeast. But most of all, we need to trust that the God who loves us all dearly is working in our world even when we are unaware of it. Words do not have to be thunderous and loud to have the power to transform. Actions do not have to be groundbreaking or showy in order to be effective. The smallest of the seeds will grow up to be the greatest of the shrubs and become a tree. God’s work is springing forth; do you not perceive it?