8th Sunday of Trinity: Seeds and Flowers.

Judges 7: 1-4

Early in the morning, Jerub-Baal (that is, Gideon) and all his men camped at the spring of Harod. The camp of Midian was north of them in the valley near the hill of Moreh. ²The Lord said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’ ³ Now announce to the army, ‘Anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave Mount Gilead.’” So twenty-two thousand men left, while ten thousand remained.

⁴But the Lord said to Gideon, “There are still too many men. Take them down to the water, and I will thin them out for you there. If I say, ‘This one shall go with you,’ he shall go; but if I say, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ he shall not go.”

Matthew 13

31 He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 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.’

33 He told them still another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about thirty kilograms of flour until it worked all through the dough.’

44 ‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

45 ‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

47 ‘Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. 48 When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. 49 This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous 50 and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

51 ‘Have you understood all these things?’ Jesus asked.

‘Yes,’ they replied.

52 He said to them, ‘Therefore every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.’

Heaven.

Sometimes we mean by that something otherworldly, so, 'the place you go to when you die’, or ‘the place where God lives’.

But, sometimes by 'heaven' we mean something this wordly, so a really excellent experience, such as walking on a beautiful beach, or time spent with those we love, or sinking your teeth into an especially good Victoria Sponge.

We’re a complicated lot really, we speak of heaven as other worldly, but then use the same word to mean experiences in this world.

Is heaven above us, or with us now?

Jesus talked about heaven a lot, although when he does it doesn't sound like what we have come to expect heaven to be about.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.”

That doesn’t fit with either of our modern uses of the word ‘heaven’.

A mustard seed is not other worldly, it is everyday and commonplace.

Neither is a mustard seed especially excellent, it is not going to incline you to think about heaven like a beautiful sandy palm tree fringed beach might.

So is Jesus wrong, is heaven not like a mustard seed?

Jesus taught that heaven was a Kingdom. You will have heard me say this again and again, because Jesus said it again and again, and because we seem in our times not to have understood this.

The Kingdom of Heaven is any place in heaven or earth where God’s good and holy will is done.

The work of a disciple of Jesus is to make earth more like heaven, a place of justice, and healing, a place of community, a place of love for neighbour and for enemy, a place of prayer and worship, a place of care for all creation, a place of peace and reconciliation, a place of salvation.

Heaven and earth are not separate realms, they overlap, and we should work to make them overlap more.

God is a King who rules ultimately not by force, but by love.

We can go our own way, we can make earth more like hell, we can crucify the good that we see, or we can learn from Jesus and follow His way, the way that leads to abundant life in both this world and the next.

Despite the seeming fragility of love, and the brutality of evil, love will win in the end. Despite our cries of ‘crucify’, the resurrection shows that life and love will carry the final day.

So the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, seemingly unequal to the task of changing the world, it is entombed in the earth, but in God’s goodness the seed lives and grows to become, as Jesus says, “the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

You are all birds sat in the branches of the tree that grew from the seed Jesus planted.

God’s plans often seems unequal to the task, a tiny seed that appears to be dead, that is buried in the ground, yet from such a beginning flows new life, and the world is changed to be more like heaven.

God delights in plans that seem unequal to the task, because he wants us to understand His sovereignty. Our part is to be faithful, to say with Mary, “I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.”

Take Gideon, commissioned by God in the Old Testament to drive off the Midianite horde threatening Israel, to which Gideon rightly replies, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family?”

The weakest and the least – a mustard seed for a national hero!

Then we read the Spirit of the Lord inspired Gideon, and he rallied the men of his land, calling them to arms, but what was God's response to this mass mobilisation?

The Lord said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, saying ‘My own strength has saved me.’”

God sends home most of Gideon's army, whittling it down from thirty-two thousand men, to three hundred. Yet by an unlikely strategy of blowing trumpets and smashing jars, they drive off the Midianite army.

William Blake knew that heaven could be seen in even the smallest of God’s good gifts, and that we need not live as if heaven is another place. He wrote that we can,

... see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

You can see heaven in a wild flower, because a wild flower obeys God’s good and perfect will, a wild flower is a part of the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. A wild flower gives glory to the King of Heaven better than any art of humanity.

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

Amen.