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God is a Show Off

”He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”30 Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. 32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”

33 With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. 34 He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.”

Today we are talking about size and what this parable teaches us.

Before we dive I want to read to you a snippet from the margins of a bible about parables. The quote is from the Voice Translation.

“Jesus’ teaching often includes parables: stories that explain truth about the Kingdom with examples from everyday life. Considering that most of His listeners know about farming, it’s no wonder most of Jesus’ parables are based on agricultural realities.

Parables like this force Jesus’ listeners to think about the kingdom of God differently. He challenges their ideas, and He also knows they are unlikely to forget it. When they see farmers broadcasting their seeds they will remember this parable and ponder the mysteries of God’s kingdom. It never seems to bother Him that people are confused by His teaching.

HE doesn’t expect them to understand everything; He wants them to wrestle with His teachings so His worlds will sit in their hearts and germinate – much like the seed sitting in good soil that eventually grow to bear fruit.”

Jesus is by far the greatest teacher that ever existed, which is important because we have many teachers, but truly there is only one that matters as much as Jesus does.

This morning, my prayer for all of us is that Jesus’ words would sit in our hearts and germinate like a seed in the soil.

Today Jesus calls you and me to understand that we need to wrestle with the simplicity of the mustard seed. It’s not simple, and we must wrestle with what it truly means.

The question is why?

About a month and a half ago my life and my wife’s life changed forever. Our daughter, Rilla Olive Rey Alexander was born at 7:51 am on July 19. She was born at 6 pounds and 1 ounce and was 19 3/4 inches long.

She was tiny.

Smaller than I was comfortable with because I was so afraid of hurting this little life that we were now entrusted to take care of.

To explain the last month or so I could wholeheartedly say that God is a Show-Off.

I have never been so terrified in my life and yet I have never before been so blessed in my life. I lose it more and more every time I look into her eyes. She was so tiny, and she was creating seismic changes in my life, how was this possible?

We have a misunderstanding in what size is. We have a skewed understanding of what strength is and what weakness is. For centuries we have surmised that God’s power would level the earth and rightfully so it could, but it doesn’t, it works like a still small voice. We are given this parable today about a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds in the entire earth.

The imagery of the seed is seismic in how much it changes how we think about life. We believe you to be big and strong and have muscled out to your eyeballs; we have to have large sums of money or even be a certain age or tax bracket to impact change in this world.

We have never been more wrong.

How can this be? How can something so small impact so much change, how can the faith of a mustard seed move mountains?

God uses everyone, no matter their age, how much money they make or what job they have or how attractive the world deems them to be they are all of the sacred worth to God and deemed very good by the creator of everything.

So, today know that wherever you are, whoever you remember the famous quote from Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who: “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

Know that you can change the world.

 

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Prayer

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Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven.
Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.
I read a very interesting piece out of the most recent Relevant Magazine yesterday. It was an article entitled, “Just Great…We’re The Most Anxious Generation Ever.” This article of course talks about a lot of things, but one part that really struck me was the following:
Modern life doesn’t give us as many opportunities to spend time with people and connect with them, at least in person, compared to, say, 80 years ago or 100 years ago,” Twenge told New York Magazine. She also pointed to millennials’ tendency to desire fame and money as a possible contributing factor. “There’s clear evidence that people who focus on money, fame and image are more likely to be depressed and anxious,” she said. But another study, also led by Twenge, may offer another clue. Not only is belief in God at an all-time low, but the amount of people who say they pray is five times less than the number of individuals who prayed in 1980.”
This study led by San Diego University social psychologist Jean Twenge definitely brings up some excellent points for us to consider. It’s worthy of us noting in our lives how connected as we? Also what is the connection between anxiety, isolation from community, and a down trend in our prayer life?
We would naive if we thought these are not connected because they are most definitely connected. From the beginning of time God has designed us to be beings that connected to nature, others in community, and of course to God himself. That design is everywhere in our lives and in creation.
The rise of social media and technology itself even speaks to our need to be in connection with others.However, we can be so connected to everything that we are really not connected to anything. Being connected in the sense that Jesus was speaking about in community is being all things for all people, but being intentionally connected to what or rather who matters.
As disciples of Jesus Christ our first and foremost connection should be lived out through prayer in the presence of God. By actively engaging in conversation with God through prayer the Holy Spirit molds us, convicts us, and empowers us to be more and more like Christ. If we are not connecting to that then we will stagnate and again will be controlled by anxiety, our will, and ultimately fear.
The argument is that we have too much going on to invest in this time with God and with our community the church.
I completely agree. It all comes down to intentionally connected to what or who really matters. We will have to sacrifice some things to invest in this connection and THAT IS A GOOD THING, becuase our connection with God should supercede everything, but it doesn’t because it’s easier or more comfortable to put God on the back burner than ourselves or others.
I pray that we will be in prayer with each other, and at times confess what we need and what God needs us to be and to do. And may we do what the Holy Spirit guides to do.
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Rock Our Souls

I have been planning for this weekend for longer that I thought I was.

This weekend the Heights Youth Ministry at Arlington Heights UMC where I am blessed to be the Director of Youth Ministry is having a retreat at our church for our youth to deepen in their faith, their identity in Christ, and their call to live a full life in love and grace. The actual retreat have been on my mind ever since I started at Arlington Heights.

Teenagers need an experience away from school, family, and stress of life to focus completely on God. We all need that, but it is crucial to have that experience in your adolescence, because these experiences ground you in the only identity that you should concern yourself with.

I am additionally blessed that I have the pleasure to lead this retreat with a co-speaker, Jason Weaver, my best friend, my brother in arms. We have always dreamed what it would be like to do ministry together and this weekend we finally get to experience what crazy ministry God is going to do. Even more so our worship team is a team of two of my other brother in arms. Joseph Cisneroz and Timothy Miler. It’s a scary thought the four of us together, but nonetheless I am excited.

Personal moment over.

What I need from you is prayers. We have over 15 students coming to stay with us this weekend from Arlington Heights and I want you to pray for them consistently through the weekend. Pray for them to cast aside all distractions and to focus completely on God and God alone this weekend. Pray that God rocks our souls with His mighty love and grace and that through that they cement their identity in God.

It’s going to be amazing to see what God does in us, through us, and thankfully in spite of us.

Amen.

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Bring it All

Bring your mess, bring your brokenness, because all Christ wants is you. We find this new life, this new love at the cross, because we cannot get to easter unless we go through the cross. As hard as the cross was Jesus endured it for you and for me. And yes there will be trouble in this life, but because of Christ we will not be defined by our brokenness or our mess, we are defined by the mercy on the other side.

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Thin Places

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely,[a] and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of[b] the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

3 Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners,[c] so that you may not grow weary or lose heart. (Hebrews 12:1-3, NRSV) 

Yesterday was a hard day. This past weekend a tragedy struck the community of Benbrook, TX with the death of two young girls that left this world all too soon and last night at Arlington Heights UMC we opened our doors to the family to give them a memorial service for the two young girls.

In the midst of the memorial service I thought of this scripture that I had been trying to write a post for all day, but for some reason never got around to it. Barbara Brown Taylor one of my favorite authors once this following quote in an interview Flycatcher Journal.

Thin places are transparent places or moments, set apart by the quality of the sunlight in them, or the shadows, or the silence, or the sounds—see how many variations there are? What they have in common is their luminosity, the way they light an opening between this world and another—I’d say “between this world and the next,” but that makes it sound like one world has to end before the next one can begin, and a thin place doesn’t work like that. It works to make you more aware of the thin veil between apparent reality and deeper reality. It works to pull aside the veil for just a moment, so you can see through.

The author of Hebrews is illustrating for us a thin place in Hebrews 12. A place where we are cognizant of more than we can physically see. I have felt this type of place two times in my life, when my Papaw (my dad’s father) and when my grandmother (mom’s mother) passed away and I was at their bedside in their last moments. Words can’t express these moments, but there is a tremendous feeling of community in these moments. It’s when God blurs the lines between Heaven and Earth that we truly see who God is, when Jesus was born and when He died on the cross.

Just like my previous experiences, last night I felt a tremendous community among us, a priesthood of all believers, a cloud of witnesses that were and are with us in all times of our lives, but sometimes I guess its more thick, or more apparent than others. These moments are precious gifts to us from God himself, saying that we are not alone and we are never alone. And we never will be.

It’s Holy Week and Easter is coming, but Easter is not here yet and its in these moments that we need to realize more and more that to get to Easter you have to go through the Cross. There is no other way. Why does it have to be this way? No, it’s not because God wants us to feel pain before we feel love, it’s because God wants us to know that even though there is pain, anguish, and death, that God has the last word.

Not pain

Not regret

Not anguish

Not even death will have the last word.

As it turns out as Frederick Buechner says, “Resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.”

So, wherever you are, whatever you are doing know that God is bigger than what you are facing, and God and God alone will have the last word, and that word is Love. Because that is the whole point. Jesus came and died not for himself, but that we, through Him would have life and have it to the fullest. Not just exist, but to live life fully now and forever.

So let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Amen.