We are Christ-centered Friends who equip and encourage all people
to respond to God's love and transforming Spirit.

Subversive Change
Matthew 13:31
August 3, 2008

Several of us attended NWYM week before last. For me, the highlight of the week was hearing Tony Campolo speak in the evening sessions. What an inspiring storyteller he is. He told lots of great stories. You can go to the NWYM website and download a video of his messages.

Jesus told stories, too, about ordinary things to explain the extraordinary, the inexplicable. The imagery found in his parables is rich and deep. They are a great gift to us. Because most of us never outgrow our childhood love of pictures, we respond well to teaching that invites us to create pictures in our minds. Imagery helps us to go deeper, to grasp that which cannot be quantified, measured or neatly captured in words, charts or formulas. With images we manage to approach the unfathomable because we are led gently. We are told that a God who ultimately is beyond our comprehension is like a shepherd, a king, a loving parent, a maternal figure with great sheltering wings. None of these images are God but only reflect some of what the Divine is like and how God quietly works in our lives.

What Jesus helps us to see in today's parable is the subversive way in which God works, that there is this hiddenness in the way God chooses to bring about change in us and in our world and that it is never what we expect. I've certainly seen this play out in my own life. Journey with God and be prepared to be surprised.

As we read the gospels we see that Jesus was a master at subversion. Eugene Petersen, the pastor who authored the Message paraphrase, points out that, "Jesus' favorite speech form, the parable, was subversive. Parables sound absolutely ordinary: casual stories about soil and seeds, meals and coins and sheep, bandits and victims, farmers and merchants. And they are wholly secular: of his forty or so parables recorded in the gospels, only one has its setting in church, and only a couple mention the name God. As people heard Jesus tell these stories, they saw at once they weren't about God, so there was nothing in them threatening their own sovereignty. They relaxed their defenses. But then they walked away perplexed, wondering what they meant, the stories lodged in their imagination . . ."

So it is for us centuries later. We hear these stories and we "the listeners start seeing connections, God connections, life connections, eternity connections."

Parables have a way of subversively dissolving these protective shields we put up around us. Yet our integrity is always honored and preserved. God never imposes God reality from without but grows flowers and fruit from within. God never pushes God's way into our lives. Petersen puts it this way; "God's truth is not an alien invasion but a loving courtship in which the details of our common lives are treated as seeds in our conception, growth and maturity in the kingdom." He says, "Parables trust our imaginations, which is to say, our faith."

Friends, God's kingdom is full of surprises. How many parables of Jesus are like this one today - metaphors in which Jesus, says in effect, "The kingdom of God is not what you expect, it is like this rather than that."

Imagine the effect of Jesus saying to his followers, "You are part of the great reign of God, which is like a small mustard seed that is planted in the soil, germinates, and grows so much so that it becomes a common, rather pesky shrub, about a foot high, so high that birds can roost in its branches."

How did they like being compared to an unimpressive weed-like shrub? This wasn't some exotic flowering plant Jesus was talking about here. How about if Jesus said of our meeting, "Friends, you're doing a wonderful job here, you are changing this neighborhood in a profound way, just like Waste Management did when they put out new those new trash cans." Or, "Friends, when you speak out for social justice, your voice is like the roar of a huge mouse."

Perhaps Jesus is reminding us: God doesn't look at things the way we look at things. We measure greatness with size, numbers, and volume. Maybe God measures greatness in terms of faithfulness.

Today, within the life of this meeting, how do we measure greatness? What are our criteria for success? It might be hard for some of us to believe that kingdom change can actually come through such a small worshipping community. Is it possible that we as a meeting can bring positive change to our messy world?

Several years ago, our family went to Mexico and stayed in a resort for a couple of days. During our stay we were offered a free breakfast if we would come and hear their sales pitch for buying a vacation timeshare in their worldwide resort conglomerate. Oh, it was very appealing. They promise you the perfect vacation, family togetherness, romance, the absolute ideal travel experience. Lots of glitz and glamour and oh, did I mention, it also costs a ton of money.

In our market driven culture, there are churches out there that try to present themselves in much this same way. Come to our church and you will find happiness, community, marvelous programs for your children, the perfect pastor, great people, inspiring music, fun, food and fellowship.

Is this the kingdom that Jesus was talking about?

The other day, someone said to me, "I am very religious, but I just don't like organized religion. The institutional church disgusts me." I wanted to respond with, but refrained, of course, "Look I'm in the church all of the time, have been my whole life. I know a lot more about the church than you. If anybody should be disillusioned and suspicious it ought to be me."

And to any of us who look at the poor old church and critically despair, Jesus tells us this story. The reign of God is just like a tiny mustard seed that grows and grows miraculously and becomes a little shrub. Yet that shrub, as unimpressive as it may seem to you, is a miraculous sign of the work of God.

How might this parable be happening among us here at the Friends Church? Here are a few ideas:

Because of a concern someone had about helping stock the local food bank our meeting is contributing to feeding the hungry in Klamath County.

There is someone of humble means within our meeting who came forth with a leading last spring, putting up $2,000.00 to fund a seed money project to raise money for what will go to Kaimosi Friends University and to our local Fairview helping fund. Look at how that seed is growing in us. . . and in ways we still have yet to see.

There is a small group who gathers to pray every Sunday morning before meeting for worship for our time together, and for the needs of this meeting. A subversive act that is quietly bringing change in them, and yes, maybe, even in the rest of us.

There are a handful of men who gather on Friday mornings to pray and read scripture together, just a small group of men who gather faithfully, committed to each other's spiritual growth. Gary Keppen was a part of that group. Following Gary's untimely death his son began attending the group.

Friends, as we contemplate what change will look like for our meeting at this point in our history together, my heart is deeply drawn to pray for guidance. Might not our willingness to be a people of prayer be the most subversive act of all? Are you and I finding time each day to go inward to that still place? I'm convinced that things begin to change when we pray. Something shifts in us... Like a tiny seed growing, in hidden ways, in ways we never ever expected. Be prepared to be surprised when you give yourself to God in this way, when you are willing "to lay your heart at the feet of God". Things will change; usually not on our timetable, and in ways we may have never dreamed to even ask for.
Prayer transforms us. A line that sticks out in my mind from Tony Campolo messages at Yearly Meeting is this, "Transformed people transform the world."

"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 all shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."

The Story of the Mustard Seed

· Where do I see myself in this story?
· Where is God in this story?
· What insights might I take from this story about my own journey of faith and sense of mission in the world?
· What insights might we take regarding our collective journey of faith and mission as a Quaker meeting here in Klamath Falls?