EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2017 I began a new venture as a synodically authorized minister at Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. The ride over the past 2.5 years has been an amazing journey of learning, growing and a deepening of my theological mind. This sermon took place on June 17, 2018.
The Christmas after Shelley and I were married, she bought me one of my most favorite Christmas presents ever.
It was a small tie tack: a small plastic bubble that contained an itty bitty mustard seed. … An insignificant gift to some, perhaps, but to me it was worth all of the other Christmas presents I’ve ever received.
You see, Shelley knew that The Parable of the Mustard Seed is my absolute favorite parable in the Gospels. … So what a treat for me today, right?
The parable is told a little differently in each of the Gospels, but the story essentially remains: In it Jesus reminds us that God’s Kingdom is a little like that unappreciated, inconspicuous, little mustard seed.
Now you have to understand that in the 1st century, Jesus’s comparison of the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed would have been laughable. … Maybe even interpreted as Jesus mocking his audience.
After all, as a crop seed, mustard was anything but valuable. … It grew everywhere, in cities, in the hardscrabble patches around homes, in the roadside ditches, and most regrettably in the fields with more valuable crops. … In fact, most people worked hard to root out this unwelcome nuisance plant, much like we do today with thistle or maybe dandelions.
So, when Christ makes the comparison that much like a mustard seed, good things can come from a small kernel of God’s Kingdom, it likely came off as comedic to the 1st century Jews. After all, it was a society, much like ours, that didn’t hold much esteem for the commonplace, the everyday miracles of the natural world. … The people of the time would not have thought that “great” things would grow from that pesky mustard seed, and thus how could Jesus think it worthy of a comparison to God’s Kingdom.
But, as we know, Jesus often used his parables to turn the tables on the conventional wisdom of the time. … Jesus’s point was actually just that: God’s work isn’t based on what’s important in the earthly realm, and God’s values aren’t the same as man’s.
In other words, in God’s view, great things could certainly come from a tiny mustard seed ... things that would sprout and grow into something sacred, holy … something worthy of God’s Kingdom after all.
So this little parable, while maybe not one of the more well known parables, has fed my soul for quite some time because its simple message so nurtures my soul, and I don’t think it’s any coincidence that it happens to fall into our lectionary cycle this year on Father’s Day.
The parable of the mustard seed reminds me today -- of all days -- of the importance of our role as fathers and even father figures. … But we’ll get to that in a moment. … For now, I ask that you indulge me for a minute in a little story, if that’s alright?
The first time I ever met Jackson, he was a struggling 7-year-old boy. … Jackson was my “Little.” ... I was a first-time mentor in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program in Fargo. … Recruited by a friend who was also part of the program, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to try to make an impact in a young boy’s life.
That sentiment probably won’t surprise many of you, as you’ve heard some or all of my story.
At the age of 4 my parents divorced, and it was the 1970s, after all, so I lived with my mom, and rarely saw my dad. … Then, when I was 11, he passed away. … For the next 25 years, I found myself in a constant search for a replacement for that missing father figure. And today, at the age of 43, I can look back on how significant the loss of my father was on the course of my life.
However, I can also look back and see how that turn of events allowed for other men to come into my life and play a role in helping to shape and mold me. … In other words, there are little mustard seeds I can look back to and identify relationships that were dropped into my life at the exact right time to help instill some kind of value or skill or wisdom into my life that I needed. …
And those tiny mustard seeds have sprouted. … While I certainly still mourn the loss of my father at such a young age, I know that I’ve been inexplicably lucky to find many men along the way to help me find my way. And while none of those men replaced my father, I can attest to the fact that they each helped instill in me values that I count on today.
But I digress, wasn’t I telling you a story about Jackson?
So I was part of the Big Brothers Big Sisters school-based program that allowed me to visit Jackson once a week for 40 minutes during his recess and lunchtime. And so on Fridays, during my lunch break, I would venture over to Jefferson Elementary School in Fargo and spend my lunch with him. … The first year, I will admit was no picnic.
Jackson, was a former African refugee. ... He had spent the first couple years of his life in a poor, unclean and unsafe refugee camp, along with his mom and siblings. … So, his first years on this earth were spent in survival mode along with his family, all forced to live a little like animals. … And then he became one of the lucky ones. His family was accepted into the Lutheran Social Services resettlement program here in the United States, and they ultimately landed here in Fargo. … But that didn’t mean that their challenges were done.
When I met Jackson in the fall of 2013, he was more than shy. He simply didn’t know how to communicate with an adult, let alone a man. … His communication skills amounted to not much more than monosyllabic grunts and some hand gestures.
He certainly didn’t possess the ability to look anyone in the face, and he absolutely struggled in school, as the basic concepts of getting along with others in social settings, the ability to sit still, and the skill of listening were all foreign concepts to him. … After all, just a few years earlier, this was a kid crawling around in a refugee camp as his mother scraped together enough food to keep their family alive.
And so after our case worker introduced us that first time, Jackson cocked his head, looked at me with a queer look, and then grabbed my hand and drug me outside to the playground so that I could watch him roughhouse with his boy classmates.
And that’s how we spent the next few months. I’d show up. He’d drag me out to the playground and I would watch him play. … The fall passed. The winter passed. … Eventually, spring came.
… I’m not going to lie. After seven or eight months of this, I was questioning whether it was worth my time. But late in the school year, our case worker encouraged me to stick with it. She said that whether or not I could see the changes taking place in Jackson, something special was happening.
He was doing better in class; his mom reported better behavior at home; and he was spending less time in the rooms set aside for disruptive students. … Please stick this out and see where it goes next year, the case worker asked.
And so I did. … Despite the fact that I questioned the impact I was having, I had to admit that there were small bright spots that happened during the year that I could look back on fondly. And the little bugger had grown into my heart. … So, I agreed to come back the next year to be Jackson’s “Big” again.
Over the summer, I wrote Jackson a couple of letters and never heard anything back. As part of the school-based program, you are only allowed to visit with you “Little” during the confines of the school year. … So, I waited, as the summer passed, wondering how Jackson was doing. But soon enough the fall rolled around.
The first week of September dawned and I went to the school for my first visit with Jackson. I signed in at the office and went to the commons area to await his arrival. … A few minutes passed, but eventually I saw Jackson appear around the corner of the hallway that led to the classrooms.
And for a brief moment, we both stood there, transfixed and staring at each other. … And then in motion picture slow-motion fashion, I could see a smile a mile wide break across Jackson’s face, and he started in a sprint toward me, all the while screaming my name! …. “Devlyn!!!!!!” reverberated off the brick and tile hallway and down through the commons area. So loud that everyone in the vicinity, students and staff alike, turned to look toward us. … Jackson didn’t care; he came at me at full throttle, stopping two feet from me to jump into my arms, and I receive the biggest bear hug from the little squirt you could ever imagine.
So that second year, our lunchtimes were so much different. … We would grab his lunch and we would squirrel away to some nook or cranny in the school and take with us a board game. And we would play. Or we would talk. I would share stories about my family that he so badly wanted to meet one day. And slowly I tried to draw out more and more from him. … It was often a one-way street as Jackson, still only 8 didn’t know how to share much about himself. It was a skill he still hadn’t learned.
But, regardless, our lunch hours that year were tremendous. No matter what had happened during the week in my own life, whether it was a crappy week at work or something else, I walked away from those 40-minute sessions with Jackson a happier person, more able to put all of the unimportant things each week into perspective. ... It was an awesome year.
The following year, our third year together, our relationship bloomed into something so special, it’s hard for me to even put it into perspective. … Remember the lowly mustard and the great and lovely thing that sprouts from it?
Without reservation, I can tell you that by that third year Jackson had grown to be a part of our family. Despite him never meeting my biological family, he knew everything about them, and Shelley had come know Jackson through my repeated telling of my stories each week. … I loved that boy no less than any of our own children. … He just happened to have been born on a continent across the oceans and also happened not to live with us. … With each turn for the good in his life my heart would swell, and with each downturn in his life, my heart would ache.
And then at the end of our third year together, I learned the devastating news that Jackson and his family would be moving away. His mother was moving their family to Grand Forks for a new opportunity, and this would effectively end our relationship. That was more than a year ago and it still leaves a hole in my heart. And I dream that one day somehow I will be able to reunite with Jackson.
So why do I share this story? Why today? … Well, because it was the small actions -- the mustard seeds, have you -- that other men all along my path as I passed from adolescence to young man to married man to young father to middle aged father and husband, those unselfish actions that planted that mustard seed in me, that mustard seed that later sprouted into something beautiful with Jackson.
And in all that time that I was spending with Jackson, even in the most difficult of times when I couldn’t figure out why I was there, I knew I owed it because of the times that many men stuck it out with me when they could have been with their own family or doing any number of things more entertaining that working with a difficult young man.
I stuck with Jackson to repay my high school football coach Dick Braun, who stuck with me and kept me from quitting during the times I was challenged, and got me to believe in myself enough that eventually I would earn a scholarship to play football at Bemidji State University.
Coach Braun planted a mustard seed.
I stuck with Jackson to repay my high school friend’s father, Mr. Oistad, who shared countless times with me even though he had his own family of four kids.
Mr. Oistad planted a mustard seed.
I stuck with Jackson because of Jerry Winans, a financial officer at Bemidji State University, that for some reason took an interest in me and imparted invaluable wisdom into me as a young college kid.
Jerry Winans planted a mustard seed.
Later, in the time I needed it most in my young professional career, the Lord dropped an editor into my lap who became far more important to me as a life coach and father figure than he ever did as a boss. His name was Kelly Boldan and it is because of his investment in me that I stand where I do in Forum Communications.
Kelly Boldan planted a mustard seed.
And there have been so many others. Countless men, who devoted their own time, sacrificed time for their own families or own recreation to help mold me, shape me … teach me how to live and to be a father, a husband … a Christian. … And one of the most recent men who has invested in me, I am lucky enough to have sitting with us today, my father-in-law. Thank you, Gary, for allowing me to call you dad, as well.
I would like to direct your attention to the description of our Gospel printed on our bulletin today: “The mustard seed becomes a great shrub that shelters the birds, recalling ancient images of the tree of life. We’d expect a cedar or a sequoia, but Jesus finds the power of God better imaged in a tiny, no-account seed. It’s not the way expect divine activity to look.
Yet the tree of life is here, in the cross around which we gather, the tree into which we are grafted through baptism, the true vine that nourishes us with its fruit in the cup we share. It may not appear all that impressive, but while nobody’s looking it grows with a power beyond our understanding.”
And so my challenge to each of you here today, especially you men … you father figures … sitting among us, is this: Invest in someone. … First, yes, invest in your own children. That’s a given. … But, then find another young person who needs your time. Trust me, we have more time to do so than we think. … Find someone who needs your time. Find someone who would benefit from a caring relationship, even if you don’t know what you’ll do with them at first. … Just go and find your Jackson. … Just go and find your Devlyn, and then invest time in them. … It’s really as simple as that. … You never know whom you might be helping to shape. … It might just turn out to be your next pastor.
And that is the Good News for this Sunday. … Happy Father’s Day! … Amen.
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