Shrubs and Birds

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Luke 13:18-21
Heritage Series 7: Mennonite Heritage

Some of you have met my older brother Chris. He has joined us for worship a couple times. To look at the two of us you wouldn’t know that we are siblings. He is tall, with dark hair and dark eyes, and we really have no similar features marking us from the same blood line. Our personalities are quite different as well. He sort of likes to fade into the background in social situations. While he is friendly when approached, he isn’t exactly what you would call an extrovert…far from it. He is fairly quiet and reserved. Given these personality polarities, we were never really compatible playmates with one another growing up.

But then, it may have had to do with the fact that he was four years older than me. Given our different qualities it seemed like the gap was unhelpful. There wasn’t a large enough space between us that he could look on me as his cute little sister, and it wasn’t small enough that we shared similar social settings.

For example, when I was an excitable 13 year old, just entering high school, he rolled his eyes at my immaturity, being a recent graduate himself, moving on to the big bad world of college. I imagined him saying “High school kids…so immature. Just wait to you’re in college.”

Then when I finally made it through the teenage horrors, ready to bound into the life of an undergrad, he had just graduated from college himself, off to do noble volunteer work in Bosnia and Croatia. I was convinced he was thinking “College kids…so immature. Just wait until you’re in the real world.”

When I finally joined Brethren Volunteer Service after college he had just completed his first year of law school and on and on.

Luckily we both have such different lives right now that we can’t really compare our experiences to one another. But I wonder, as the Church of the Brethren celebrates is 300th anniversary, do Mennonites see us as the excitable little sister? Does it seem like we, Brethren, are having our 300th birthday tea party with our stuffed animals celebrating with us, while our older, more experienced brother…well, cousins perhaps is a better metaphor… move into their 483rd year, lovingly looking at the Brethren, sighing, “oh yes, I remember back then. They still have so much to learn.”

Well, I believe Mennonites have more grace than this, but it is true that throughout this heritage series we have been highlighting the meeting points that our two traditions share such as peace, simplicity, and community, and yet we must remember that there are distinct traditions, histories, and understandings that make up the Mennonite Church. My close friend Amy has also pastored a joint Mennonite and Brethren congregation in Michigan and she found it helpful when discussing church history to draw a picture of a river with many different streams coming off of the larger body.

To begin with the large river is the Catholic Church, which then breaks during the Protestant Reformation primarily with the challenge of Martin Luther in 1517. Off of these two large rivers there are more streams. One of the large streams that breaks off of the first major river is Anabaptism, which as we have been talking about, is where Mennonites and Brethren come from.

Anabaptists have the confusing history of being neither solely Protestant nor Catholic, because streams from both traditions found their way to begin the Anabaptist water. Brethren and Mennonites are like two logs floating together in this stream of Anabaptism. The Mennonite log, if you will, had been flowing in the river 183 years before the Brethren log fell into the stream, but since, we have been flowing side by side, each distinct, yet surrounded by similar theologies and practices of Anabaptism that make us such compatible cousins. These practices are the ones we have been highlight the past several weeks

To be honest, in the turbulent seas of the Reformation, of the religious wars in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, the formation of the Mennonite Church doesn’t seem to shake the annals of history like some of the other traditions. Menno Simmons doesn’t jump out of the history books like other reformers such as Martin Luther, or Ulrich Zwingli, or John Calvin (names of some of the Reformation “Big Wigs”).

Menno Simmons, who the church is named after, was a Catholic priest in Holland who became an Anabaptist. He believed that baptism should only be taken on by adults who could understand the responsibility of discipleship to Christ. He helped organize scattered groups of the Anabaptist outsiders in northern Europe at great consequence to his freedom and his life as many Anabaptists faced. One more mustard seed of God’s vision for the world, planted in the heart of yet another visionary.

The mustard seed: a seed that is so tiny that it takes about 750 seeds to equal a gram. The mustard seed: that tiny specimen that in its maturity grows to about 8 or 9 feet. OK sure, not so impressive in size, but given that a single seed is 22/10000ths of a pound…well, I don’t know what that looks like but it is very very small. While it is a very very small seed, it had a huge influence on the minds and imagination of the first century Christians. I can imagine this had a large influence on early Mennonites as well. The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all speak of this parable that we have read today. It is even referenced in the Gospel of Thomas, one of the texts of Jesus’ life and ministry that didn’t make it into the Bible we have today.

Often we confuse this parable with Matthew 17 where Jesus says that if you have faith the size of a mustard seed you could move mountains. Jesus didn’t say in this parable that “Faith is like a mustard seed…” he said the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.” In this parable, he isn’t necessarily speaking about faith that personal, intimate experience with God. He implies that the working of God in the world, and in us, starts small.

But whether or not this parable speaks directly to us about our faith, we still know there is a calling in the parable. This mustard seed is the kingdom of God, come be a enmeshed in it, grow in it, find yourself organically a part of this amazing thing taking place. And in the process of growing God’s realm, faith will certainly be found.

Those small seeds were scattered with the Mennonites, as they moved around northern and central Europe in seek of refuge from persecution. They sought the fertile ground where their seeds of nonviolence, community, and free worship would take root and allow their faith to flourish. They sought a home where they could practice what they called Christ’s Law of Love, which they believe could be the only soil that could grow God’s kingdom. They became scattered throughout Switzerland, Holland, Germany and Russia. In all these places their faith was challenged, their living out the realm of God was put to the test.

No place are the stories of the way these seeds took root in early Mennonites seen more than in the highly valued book called The Martyr’s Mirror of the Defenseless Christians, also known as The Bloody Theater. (Gives you chills, doesn’t it?) Written in 1660 in Holland, it is a record that highlights those who lived and died for Christ. It stretches back to the first century but paying special attention to those Anabaptists, and particularly Mennonites, who were killed for their beliefs.

I knew a Mennonite woman in college who went to a Mennonite high school and she told me, “Some Christian kids carry around a bible with them. We always carried around a Martyr’s Mirror.” This is no small feat, as the Mirror is a tome more than one thousand pages.

For some Mennonites, the small seeds of the kingdom led to persecution and death. Their stories are amazing, at times inspirational and at times we might question their sanity. Today we certainly don’t have to deal with the ramifications of faith that our spiritual ancestors did. When faced with a valuable history that is presented to us in stories like Martyr’s Mirror, we can question our own faith, our own seed. Is our tree really big enough to be pleasing? We try to tend the soil to nurture and give strength to our little seed, but we often feel like we are failing when our efforts seem too small, our shrub, too…well, shrubby.

Sometimes texts like this, which we thinking is supposed to be inspiring and give us comfort, can often leave us less than hopeful. Maybe our kin-dom seed isn’t doing so well, we might worry. It’s easy to get caught up in grandiose nature in the gospels’ portrayal this parable.

In Mark 4, the parable sounds like this: “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which when sown upon the ground is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

Matthew 13 is similar: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes of tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” Sounds pretty similar.

But in today’s scripture, can you tell what’s missing? “It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.” What’s missing?

No mention of smallness. Jesus used everyday images to speak his parables, so the people probably new that a mustard seed was small. But also, nothing about greatness, other than referring that it grows into a tree. No “greatest of all shrubs” as in Matthew, not “large branches” of Mark. It simply grows, nothing too amazing about that and, oh right…it makes a place for the birds to make a home. The birds. How can we forget about the birds? When we aren’t busy being impressed by the massive size of this tree-bush, or when we aren’t caught up in worrying about the size of our personal faith, we may remember that this parable ends with the birds. When we take it away from being all about us, and focus instead on the amazing workings of the kin-dom of God, it is easier to hear why the tree exists at all.

The kingdom of God is small like a mustard seed. If it is nurtured and nourished it will grow into a tree. But the tree does not grow for its own sake. It is not intended to stand as monument to the amazing challenge of growing from something so small into something big. Maybe the proof of faith isn’t all in the size of growth, but in they way others find a way to make a home in the branches.

This is something Mennonites have known. The fruitfulness of the seed which grows is not seen by how proudly it stands alone, blowing in the breeze. It’s fruitfulness, our faithfulness to God’s planting is something that beckons the birds. Our commitment to living out Christ means our tree must provide. Our tree must welcome. Our tree must offer shelter.

From the beginning Mennonites knew that their faith could not simply be a private matter, but a public expression. Over time those seeds of the kingdom that compelled Mennonites to give their very lives, also became the branches that reached out to offer a home for the those who sought new life. Peace for the distraught. Safety for the refugee. Many people only know Mennonites by their work for peace and service in the world. It might not seem like a big tree, but the branches hold many nests.

Perhaps this parable should speak to Mennonites and Brethren, because for so long we seemed like birds without protective branches. When Mennonites found no other choice for religious freedom in their homelands, they made their way to the Americas. Since arriving we have taken many different forms, from the Amish (who reflect the lives of earlier Mennonites), to the Mennonites you see here among you, and many more expressions of Mennonite faith.

Because of that mustard seed that kept Mennonites striving to find a home, where the seed of God’s kingdom could be fully rooted and expressed, this parable has to speak to Mennonites today, and Brethren today. We have become comfortable in our tradition, but we must always make room within our branches for others to find a home, and safety. But it’s not always easy to welcome different birds into our branches.

And yet it’s the branches that Jesus was about. It was the birds that was his priority. Everything he did, everything he nurtured was not to be the biggest, the best, the strongest, the most religious-looking, the most powerful. It was about love, compassion, caring for the birds. What is the greatest commandment? “Love the Lord your God with all that you are. The second is love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

Our denominations aren’t the biggest, even when you put the two together. Our congregation is certainly not Morgantown’s largest or flashiest church. Today, Jesus says that’s not the heart of faithfulness. Instead of focusing on these things, Jesus asks us “how are our branches?” Our Mennonite tradition asks us “how are we welcoming the birds.” There are places in our denomination and our congregation that can feed those who seek shelter, and we should celebrate those. And in other ways our branches aren’t so welcoming, and there are some who don’t feel a safe home among us. We need to confess these places as well, ask for God’s forgiveness and strength and strive to make a home for all.

In our time of waiting worship, I invite you to reflect on the branches. How are your branches feeling? Strong and firm, or weak and brittle? And our congregation’s? Where are the strong branches and the weak branches of our little, but important, shrub? May this be not our measurement of success or failure, but our prayer for faithfulness and fruitfulness.