So how do you feel about trees? Did Hurricane Isabel change your feelings about living in a city of trees? When some of them fell on the power lines and cut you off – our house was out for six whole days – how did you feel about trees?
I didn’t ask you how you felt about Pepco. That’s another story, and maybe another sermon. But how did you feel about trees?
Some people are passionate about trees. We call them tree-huggers. Let a developer line up with his bulldozer to clear a space for building, and these folks chain themselves to the nearest oak to protect it from progress. Let a utility company come through to clear a path for those wires, and the tree-huggers will speak their minds to everybody from the neighborhood block captain to the District delegate. In the immortal words of the kids’ cartoon, “George of the Jungle”, they “watch out for that tree.” Great trees are a glorious asset.
The patron poet of trees was Joyce Kilmer, who was not merely an interchange on the New Jersey Turnpike, but was also a teacher, a soldier, and a writer. Those of us of a certain age can probably recite most of his poem, “Trees” from memory:I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks to God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wearA nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
That is the ultimate tree-hugging statement, isn’t it? And yet, there were all those trees that came down during the storm; all that power disruption, all that work to clean up, all those houses damaged. So how do you really feel about trees?
I
Jesus taught us to cherish trees as the symbol of the Kingdom of Heaven. He spoke of the Kingdom as like the greatest of trees, where the birds of the air find a nesting place. But Jesus was not so much focused on the immense size of the tree as He was pointing to its beginning as a small seed. Think, He says, about a mustard seed, the tiniest of the seeds, so small you can hardly see it. And yet, when someone sows that mustard seed, it grows and becomes not just a thin blade of grass, not just a squibby shrub. It becomes the greatest of trees, where the birds of the air make their nests. Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven is like the greatest and most majestic of trees.
That greatest work of God – the great tree of the Kingdom – is that God wants to bring together all sorts and conditions of people, all races, all nations, all ages, all opinions, all personalities. He intends to unite, in Jesus Christ, a wide spectrum of human diversity, not just folks that look like, sound like, smell like you or me, but all people. “Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” A truly remarkable, astoundingly great work, the greatest work of God. And He wants us to share in it. He wants you and me to participate in making it happen. Doesn’t that stir you? It stirs and excites me to know that I am supposed to share in growing this Kingdom.
And yet, sadly, sort of like poet Kilmer, I think that I shall never see the greatest tree. I think that I shall never experience the Kingdom of Heaven grown to be what Jesus said it will be. I think that I shall never see the greatest tree, because I know that right now there are so many shortcomings. Right now nation lifts up sword against nation. Right now brothers and sisters spit up gossip against one another. Right now public officials and private entrepreneurs alike are caught with their hands in the till. Right now the entertainment media seem bound and determined to make us a nation of sexual deviants. Right now there is so much that is off the mark that I think that I shall never see the greatest tree. I think that I shall never see the Kingdom of Heaven come to the full.
One reason I think that I shall never see the fullness of the Kingdom, is that the church, the harbinger of that Kingdom, is so weak. The church is pitifully weak. Not just our church, but the church overall – weak as water. Oh, I know about the millions on the church rolls. But how many are genuinely committed to Christ, and how many are just names and nothing more? You know, I always struggle with it when somebody asks me how many members Takoma Park Baptist Church has. I struggle with it because I do know how many names there are on the roster – 825! But I also know that many of those will not stand up to be counted, and nearly two hundred have absolutely disappeared, so that we don’t even know where they are. And we are not alone in this kind of mess – even the megachurches that count their members in the multiplied thousands have exactly the same problem, on an even larger scale. I read the other day that the Church of England has 25 million names on its rolls, but only about three percent actually worship in its pews. How’s that for weakness?
So, in the face of the challenges of this world, and with the vision of the fullness of God’s Kingdom in front of us, the church is not equal to her task. She is weak. And we her members are weak. Oh, do you see why I say that I think that I shall never see the greatest tree?
II
And yet the Lord Jesus is focused in this parable not so much on the greatness of the tree as He is on the smallness of the seed and the potential in that seed. Yes, the Kingdom of Heaven is slated to become a great tree in which the birds of the air find a nesting place, but Jesus begins by talking about the smallest of seeds, the mustard seed. He wants us to see that from that small beginning great things can happen.
It’s World Communion Sunday, when we celebrate the breadth and width of the Gospel, a day when many of the world’s churches gather around the Lord’s Table. When World Communion Sunday began, several decades ago, most of those who shared in it were European or North American. Today we are far nearer celebrating a truly Worldwide Communion, for whereas a hundred years ago, less than one percent of Africa was Christian, the seeds of the truth were planted, and today some African nations are more than ninety percent Christian. A century ago, evangelical Christianity was almost unknown in Central and South America; but the good news trickled in, and today some of the most dynamic Christians in all the world are from that region. And as for Asia, although missionaries have worked there a long time, there did not seem to be much happening. Yet today the strongest and most effective Christian movements in the world are in South Korea, and the most dramatic evidence of the power of the Kingdom is in China, where in our own lifetime we have seen the Christian church, banned and illegal, enrol so many people no one even knows how many there are!
Oh, it’s the seed that counts, it’s the tiny little planting that matters. Let’s not worry about how small things seem now; let’s believe God for the future and trust Him to grow it.
Barely five years ago several leaders gathered to talk about the need for a Baptist seminary in this national capital area. The Methodists have one, the Episcopalians have one, the Catholics have several, there is a nondenominational school, but Baptists had no seminary for training ministers close by. Out of prayer and planning the John Leland Center for Theological Studies was born. When the first classes opened, there were not a dozen students. When I was invited to join its Board, we were out of money, we had nothing but dreams, and we were existing on borrowed energies. Today the John Leland Center has about 160 students, among them our own Victor Oke, and it operates in five locations! One of those is in a single church in Virginia, a one church which has produced more than fifty students to train for ministry! Do you see how small seeds grow into great trees?
This past week your church began three new ventures in prayer. We began weekday sunrise prayer, five days a week at 6:00 a.m.; we began midweek prayer and Bible study at a new time, 1:30 on Wednesday afternoons; and we turned over the Wednesday evening time slot to one of our lay-led ministries, for pure prayer, without commentary or discussion, just prayer. Now I would like to stand here and tell you that the house was packed for all those occasions. I would love to imply that you’d better come early if you want a place to sit for these gatherings. But no, of course the gatherings were small – by some standards. If the Redskins had only fans in Philadelphia this afternoon, that would be thought a failure, right? But I tell you, in the words of the leader of our sunrise prayer services, because of all of these new small ventures in prayer, Takoma will never be the same!
It is the tiny seed we are looking at now; we do not see the outcome. We shall see the greatest tree. But do not be fooled; trust God to do His greatest work from the small seeds we plant.
III
But now planting seeds does have to be intentional. It does have to be done with purpose and commitment. It’s not just an accident. It’s not just, “Oh, well, sit back, God’s going to do it anyway.” Somebody has to have the faith and the determination to plant the seeds of truth before anything will happen. What did Jesus say? “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field ...” That someone took and sowed. Intentionally, with serious purpose.
My wife and I are trying to clean up and get rid of useless things around our house. No, I hope I am not one of those useless things! But we worked the other day around the area where she keeps garden supplies. Among the things we found were old packages of seeds. In an ambitious moment some years ago we bought a variety of vegetable seeds, but we never put them in the ground. Had they grown, still in the package? Had they produced, sitting on the shelf? Had they blossomed into a great shrub on its way to becoming the greatest of trees? By no means! They were still seeds, dried and shriveled, and quite possibly dead – all because no one had planted them in the field.
Brothers and sisters, if you care about seeing the Kingdom flourish; then plant your seeds. Take those talents and gifts and dollars and put them into the field. God will not grow them until they have been invested. Jesus says, “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone; but if it die, it will bring forth much fruit.” You have to take what you have and who you are and give it away, bury it. You may not see the results for a long time to come, and maybe not even in your lifetime, but they will come! Be bold enough to sow the seeds in our field.
For example, you can plant a seed by bringing a child to church. There are families all over this community who are not involved in any church. Say what you want about what the parents should do, the truth is that the children cannot get here unless some adult brings them. It’s one thing to gripe about irresponsible parents. It’s another thing to make room in your car and in your heart and bring a child to church. Some of our folks have done that; and this past Easter eight or ten children professed faith in Christ, among them children brought to church just that way. A few of us are intentionally planting seeds in children.
You can also plant a seed by enlisting a teenager for our youth ministry. That ministry is reorganizing after graduating a large group from high school, and it’s going to do well. Some of our youth brought friends to the first fall meeting last week, friends who are not already a part of this church. Is that seed-planting? The church where my wife and I were once members in Silver Spring attracted kids from the neighborhood to its youth ministry, kids that were not from church families. Do you know that as a result of planting that seed in unreached young people, several became ministers and at least two gave their lives for missions? All because somebody deliberately planted the seed.
Do you want more? Plant a seed by reaching out across those old barriers of race and class, culture and language. Plant a seed by touching somebody who is different from you. If the Communion Table on World Communion Sunday is to be what it truly ought to be, around it will be gathered red and yellow, black and white, rich and poor, young and old, male and female, all sorts of people. And yet what a lot of us do is edit our lists! We edit out the folks who look different. We look at our neighbor and say, “Oh, he’s Asian, probably wouldn’t want to be at our church.” “Look, she’s in her twenties, probably would prefer a church where there are more young people.” And worst of all, I know what some of us do – we look at that neighbor, and we say, “Well, these are kind of lower-class people, and we at Takoma are ‘got-it-made-in-the-shade’ folks, so I don’t think I’ll invite them.”
No, brothers and sisters, no! The Kingdom of Heaven is the greatest of trees, with branches that can nestle any kind of bird, from the commonest of sparrows to the soaringest of eagles. And even a few turkeys like ... well, never mind.
A year or so ago we began to gather some French-speaking African folks and we worked with our Congolese brother, Rev. Adrian Ngudiankama, to plant a seed. La Philadelphie mission was born. If you came up here while they were meeting on Sunday afternoons, you saw maybe four or five, or on a good day a dozen people, and you might have said, “This is going nowhere. Doesn’t look like much.” But you would have been wrong. Because today, though Dr. Ngudiankama’s folks no longer meet in this building, we have not one church, not two churches, but three churches – in Landover, in Columbia, and in Baltimore – that have come out of that intentional seed planting. Oh, don’t tell me that missions is not worth the trouble; don’t argue with me that we should have kept the money and the energy for ourselves. I know better! Plant the seed.
Start a new ministry, with one or two others; do it with prayer and with intentionality, and trust God for the rest. Start a new Bible class, with just a handful, but do it with prayer and with purpose, and God will use it. Start a new church! New churches are needed, though it may seem there is one on every corner. “The Kingdom of Heaven – someone took and sowed in his field – “, becoming the greatest of trees.
Conclusion
Yet I keep on thinking that I shall never see the greatest tree. I will not, you will not, live long enough to see the outcome of all this seed-planting. Too bad, isn’t it, that the work we do today may not have its full effect for a year, or that the witness you offered yesterday will not be acted on for a decade? In an age of instant gratification, we’d like to see that greatest tree, that Kingdom of Heaven, show up now, wouldn’t we?
But wait! But wait! For I have seen the greatest tree! I have seen the Kingdom come! We have seen the Tree of trees; we have seen the Cross. We have seen the greatest tree, in whose branches all nations and kindred and tribes and ages of people make their nest, and when we hear the Lord cry out, “It is finished”, we know that His work will be done. His promise is secure and is sealed with His blood. We have seen the greatest tree, for we have seen the Cross on which the world’s redeemer died, we have seen His promise that whosoever, without exception, trusts in Him shall have everlasting life. Oh, yes, we have seen the greatest tree, after all, because even though there are many who refuse Him and millions who do not know of Him, yet there is His empty tomb, where He whipped forever sin and death and evil. And so it’s coming. The Kingdom is coming! The tree is growing! When we see this Table and its symbols of His life, His death, and His resurrection, we can be satisfied. We can know that the energy we invest and the money we give and the witness we share – the seeds we plant – are not wasted. Not at all. Not at all.
“Was it for crimes that I had done He groaned upon the tree? Amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree.”
With further apologies to poet Kilmer – sermons are made by fools like me; gifts are offered by ordinary folks like you; but God uses all this seed planting to make a tree. The greatest tree.
