Mustard Seeds

It was a busy Thursday with a 7:00 AM Building Committee meeting and a 6:00 PM confirmation meeting. Other meetings were scheduled and one was cancelled during the day. The outside door was left unlocked by the Building Committee. Around 8:30, a man came into my office so quietly he startled me. He walked with a shuffle. His limbs were thin. He asked if he could come in to talk to the pastor.

Somewhat reluctantly, I took him to the library where he sat on the couch. I have been scammed many times by people with hard luck stories. I have turned away a few people based upon appearance. This time, I let him in. His voice was raspy and thin. I could detect the south Bronx accent. He began to tell me his story.

He served Ladder Company Number 5 in New York. On that day in September 2001, he was the first one in to Tower 2. He carried out dozens of people in countless trips up and down the stairs. Caught between the fifth and sixth floor when the tower collapsed, it took him 17 hours to get out of the rubble. Only two out of nine in his company survived.

Brought up Roman Catholic, he said he converted to Episcopalian based upon how he was treated by the Episcopal Church. He knew the name of the church across the street from the site of the World Trade Center. He knew the name of the woman priest who was on duty that day and who converted the church into a food, rest, and emergency care center for the police and firemen. He told me he had visited a large church “over there” (here in Muskogee) that “looked like a bank.” He said the pastor there treated him like trash and would not help him. At age forty five, he was in the final stages of stomach cancer. He had lost eighty pounds.

He pulled up his shirt to show me the surgical scars on his stomach, looking more like a road map than human flesh. During the few hours he spent with us, he was in some distress. He showed me his stomach later and I could tell it was bloated. He talked to me about his memories of that day. He shared details and stories I cannot repeat from the pulpit. The stories and descriptions were too vivid and detailed to be part of someone’s scam. He said that he should not have survived that day. We talked about survivor’s guilt and he seemed to understand a little better.

He quoted John 15:13 “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” and he added to it, “Greater love is to lay down one’s life for people you don’t even know.”

I typically write my sermon on Thursday. I had started on it Wednesday night but I decided to throw that one away. It seemed like the sermon God wanted me to preach had walked through the door.

His shirt was soiled and he asked if we had any clothing. B.J. reached into our box of tee shirts and found one his size. As he started to put it on, I saw a tear in one corner of his eye. I said, read what it says. He looked and smiled as he read out loud, “Loving our neighbors as ourselves.”

The launching point for the story of the Good Samaritan is the question posed by the young Bible scholar who was attempting to trap Jesus. The question was “And who is my neighbor?”

Let me re-tell Jesus’ response: A man is beaten up by life’s journey and knocks on the door for help. One church says he looks like homeless trash and they throw him out. ‘He doesn’t sound like one of us’ they say to themselves. Another church invites him in, gives him food and drink, gives him a shirt to wear, prays with him and helps him with transportation. Which of these churches is a neighbor to this man?

Grace Episcopal Church in Muskogee Oklahoma is a church with tremendous compassion. We reach out to our local community and to those in need. That is why we need to dig deeper and make sure we can complete our building project with a functioning kitchen.

Grace Episcopal Church is also a church that teaches and forms people. We actually teach and form people to be compassionate servants of God. We do this through our programs with young people, adults, choir, mission trips, social events, and worship. We are a congregation that reaches people and teaches people. This is our role in Muskogee, and we do these things better than any place for fifty miles around.

We are small right now. I must confess to you that I worry about our future a lot. I worry about the building project and I worry about our operating budget. But when I can be part of the compassionate heart of this church, that worry goes away. It is as if God reaches out to jolt me out of my worry. God smacks me with a 2×4 and says “Look at who you are. Look at this church. Right now you are just seeds in the hand of the planter.”

And so we are.

We are mustard seeds in the hand of the planter. “With what can we compare the kingdom of God ? 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.”

At some point in the life of every congregation, they experience being a tree or a shrub with branches and fruit and great size. Trees and shrubs have a life cycle. At some point they produce seeds and then die. At some point the planter takes those seeds and scatters them. After a while they begin to grow again.

With seeds of reaching and teaching in compassion, God has a plan for us; a hope and a future. All we have to do is make sure that we water and tend the garden.