Minister
“Mustard Seeds and Other Miracles”
Matthew 13:31–33, 44–52
To join with us by watching our online worship, please click here.
Last week Jesus talked about wheat and weeds. And this week…well, Jesus gives us mustard seeds, yeast, treasure, pearls, fishing nets…and then, just when we think we’ve escaped… “…they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Again.
At this point I’m beginning to wonder if this is God’s way of saying, “Carla… stop skipping over that verse.” It’s a little like watching a movie with someone who keeps rewinding the same scene.
“Did you catch that?”……….”Yes.”………..”No, really… did you catch it?”
Matthew certainly wants us to catch it.
That phrase “weeping and gnashing of teeth” shows up six times in Matthew’s Gospel. It isn’t unique to this parable. Jesus uses it whenever he speaks about taking God’s Kingdom seriously. Matthew repeats it because he wants us to know that how we respond to God’s invitation matters.
I don’t think Matthew is trying to satisfy our curiosity about heaven and hell. He’s trying to wake us up. Our choices matter. Love matters. Justice matters. Mercy matters.
When we reject the way of love, there are consequences, not because God delights in punishment, but because life cut off from love becomes its own kind of suffering.
But here’s what strikes me. Matthew doesn’t leave us there. In fact, before we ever get to the furnace, Jesus spends almost the entire chapter talking about seeds… and bread… and treasure… and pearls… and fishing nets.
It’s almost as though Jesus says, “If you really want to know what God’s Kingdom is like… look here.” Not at kings. Not at armies. Not at temples. Look at a seed. Look at some yeast. Look at a farmer. Look at a woman baking bread. Look at ordinary life. Because that’s where God usually begins.
I have always loved the image of the mustard seed. Not because it’s tiny. Lots of seeds are tiny. I love it because Jesus says something astonishing comes from something almost invisible. But there’s another detail that’s easy to miss.
Jesus could have compared God’s Kingdom to one of the great cedar trees of Lebanon. Those majestic trees were symbols of strength and power throughout the Old Testament. Instead… he chooses mustard. Mustard isn’t majestic. It isn’t even particularly respectable. Some scholars think it was considered more like a weed than a carefully cultivated plant. Once it took root, it spread. It popped up where you hadn’t planned for it. It ignored property lines and garden plans.
Leave it to Jesus. When everyone expected the Kingdom of God to arrive looking like a mighty cedar… he says, “No… it’s more like mustard.”
The Kingdom isn’t tidy. It doesn’t wait for permission. It grows where people least expect it. Maybe that’s because God has always had a habit of choosing unlikely beginnings. An elderly couple named Abraham and Sarah. A reluctant shepherd named Moses. The youngest son, David. A young woman named Mary. Twelve ordinary disciples. A carpenter from Nazareth.
Again and again, God seems strangely unconcerned with impressive beginnings. Which should be incredibly good news for ordinary people like us.
Then Jesus tells another tiny story. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast.” Again… something almost invisible. Something easily overlooked. If you’ve ever baked bread, you know yeast isn’t very exciting. It disappears. You can’t see it working. You mix it into the dough and then… you wait. For a long time it doesn’t seem like anything is happening. It still looks like dough. But underneath the surface, everything is changing. That’s often how faith grows. Quietly. Patiently. From the inside out. Sometimes we pray for dramatic miracles. Sometimes they happen.
But more often, God works like yeast. Changing hearts one conversation at a time. Healing relationships one act of forgiveness at a time. Growing compassion one small choice at a time. Forming us into people who look just a little more like Christ than we did yesterday.
There’s another detail here that’s wonderful. Jesus says the woman mixed the yeast into three measures of flour. That doesn’t sound like much to us. But in Jesus’ day, that was enough flour to feed well over a hundred people.
Can you imagine? She’s not making a loaf of bread for dinner. She’s making enough bread for the whole village. It’s almost ridiculous. That’s the point. God’s grace is never just enough. It is extravagant. Abundant. Overflowing. God is always making more bread than we think we’ll need.
Then Jesus changes the image again. Treasure hidden in a field. A pearl of great price. What I love about both of these parables is that the treasure was already there. The pearl already existed. The person didn’t create it. They discovered it. Sometimes we spend our lives asking, “Where is God?” As though God has wandered off somewhere.
Jesus says, “Look again.” The treasure may already be beneath your feet. The pearl may already be in front of you. The Kingdom isn’t always something we build. Sometimes it’s something we finally notice.
Maybe you’ve had moments like that. A conversation you almost didn’t have. A friendship that began by accident. A kindness that changed your week. A teacher who believed in you. A neighbour who showed up at exactly the right time. At the time they felt ordinary. Years later you realize… that small moment changed everything. I wonder how many mustard seeds we’ve almost walked past because they didn’t look important enough. Or perhaps how many we’ve planted without ever realizing it.
It reminds me of something that happened a number of years ago. I was talking with someone after worship, just one of those ordinary conversations ministers have every Sunday. We chatted for a few minutes, and then we both went on with our day. Nothing about it seemed remarkable.
Several years later, that same person came up to me and said, “Do you remember that conversation we had after church?”
I smiled and said, “You’ll have to help me out…”
They went on to tell me how something I’d said that morning had stayed with them ever since. They said it had given them hope at exactly the right moment and had shaped some important decisions they made afterward.
And here’s the embarrassing part. I vividly remember that second conversation. I remember where we were standing. I remember how much it meant to them. But I still have no idea what I’d actually said the first time.
I wish I could tell you it was some profound theological insight or a beautifully crafted sentence. But honestly, I can’t remember it at all. It was just one ordinary conversation on one ordinary Sunday.
What stayed with me wasn’t what I’d said. It was the realization that God can use moments we hardly notice. We may forget them before we’ve even reached the parking lot, while someone else carries them for years.
We don’t always get to know which conversations become mustard seeds. I wonder how many mustard seeds we’ve planted without ever knowing it.
I was thinking this week about our own lives. Most of us can point to one seemingly ordinary moment that changed everything. Perhaps it was someone who invited you to church. Perhaps someone believed in you when you couldn’t believe in yourself. Perhaps a teacher encouraged you. Perhaps a friend called at exactly the right moment. At the time, it probably didn’t feel earth-shattering. It was just one conversation. One invitation. One act of kindness. One decision. But years later, you can trace so much of your life back to that single moment.
That’s how God’s love is spread. Not usually through headlines. But through faithful people who never realize the significance of what they’re doing. A parent reading bedtime stories. Someone delivering a meal. A volunteer serving coffee. A note of encouragement. A prayer offered quietly. The world hardly notices. God notices every one.
I wonder if we’ve become so fascinated by big things that we’ve forgotten how God usually works. We celebrate viral videos. Breaking news. Celebrity pastors. Mega-projects. Instant success. Jesus keeps pointing us in the opposite direction.
Look at the seed. Look at the yeast. Look at the hidden treasure. Look at the pearl. Look at the ordinary fisherman sorting fish at the end of the day. Look where everyone else isn’t looking. Because that’s where God usually is.
Then comes the fishing net. The net gathers every kind of fish. Only later comes the sorting. Once again Jesus reminds us that God’s invitation is astonishingly wide. The net gathers everyone. No one is excluded from God’s invitation. But Jesus also reminds us that grace calls for a response. Not because God is looking for reasons to reject us. But because love always invites transformation. Grace isn’t simply something we admire. It’s something we allow to change us. That’s why Matthew ends where he does. With another furnace. Another reminder that our lives matter. Not because fear is the final word. But because love is.
Jesus finishes by asking the disciples, “Have you understood all this?” And they answer,
“Yes.” Honestly… I’m not convinced they had. I’m not sure we do either. Perhaps understanding isn’t the goal. Perhaps trust is. Trusting that God is still planting seeds we cannot yet see. Trusting that the yeast is still rising, even when the dough looks unchanged. Trusting that treasures are hidden in ordinary places. Trusting that God can do extraordinary things through ordinary people.
Perhaps the greatest miracle isn’t that God sometimes does spectacular things. Perhaps it’s that God so often chooses ordinary people and ordinary moments to do them.
Because that’s the story of Scripture. And it’s the story of the Church. And, if we’re paying attention…it’s our story too.
God keeps changing the world through things that seem much too small. A mustard seed. A pinch of yeast. A hidden treasure. A carpenter from Nazareth. A cross that looked like failure. An empty tomb.
And generation after generation of ordinary people who simply kept saying yes. Including us.
Planting seeds. Waiting for yeast to rise. Discovering treasure. Finding pearls. Casting nets wide. Trusting that God is still doing extraordinary things through ordinary people.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
So – it seems fitting that I would use a Romans passage for my portion of this series on Paul and his letters.
And maybe more than just fitting… maybe it’s a reminder of how these ancient words travel.
From a letter written to a small community in Rome, to a photograph taken in front of the Colosseum, to this moment, here, today.
Because sometimes scripture doesn’t stay “back there.”
Sometimes it finds its way into our lives in very particular moments, sometimes even in the very weeks when we most need it.
There are some weeks when you come to a text like this… and it feels less like something to explain and more like something to hold onto.
This is one of those weeks.
It has been a week marked by grief in our wider community. A week where life feels fragile.
Where loss is not abstract, but close, and real, and heavy.
Earlier this week, I had the privilege of presiding at dear Bonnie Wudrick’s memorial and then the next day for Nancy Farahani’s memorial, a service shaped by deep sorrow and deep love, after the tragic death of a woman at the hands of her own son.
And perhaps not by accident, this was one of the passages that I turned to then as well, that I read during her memorial service.
These words from Romans, words that don’t try to explain tragedy, but dare to speak of a love that refuses to let go even in its midst.
And I suspect that many of us come into this space today carrying things, some visible, some hidden, griefs that are fresh, worries that linger, questions that don’t have easy answers.
And into a week like this, we hear these words from Paul: What can separate us from the love of God?
Now, it helps to remember that Paul is not writing from a place of comfort or distance.
And, just as a small aside, when we say “Paul,” we’re also stepping into a bit of ongoing conversation.
Scholars generally agree that Romans is one of the letters Paul himself almost certainly wrote.
But not all the letters in the New Testament that bear his name are universally agreed upon.
Some were likely written by later followers, carrying forward his theology and voice.
So when we read Paul, we’re not just hearing one person, we’re hearing a tradition, a movement, a community shaped by his witness.
(Which, if you’ve ever tried to write something meaningful and then had someone else try to continue it later… you know that can get interesting.)
But Romans… Romans is widely considered authentically his. And you can feel it. It has a kind of depth, a kind of urgency, a kind of careful thought woven with deep conviction.
When he writes this letter, he is writing to a community he has never met, a small group of Christ-followers living in the heart of the empire, in Rome.
Rome was not just another city. It was the centre of everything – political power, military strength, economic control. It was a place where the emperor was declared “lord,” where loyalty to the empire shaped daily life, where status and hierarchy defined your worth.
And into that world, this small, diverse community of Christians was trying to live out a different story. A story about a crucified and risen Christ. A story about love that does not dominate, but serves. A story about belonging that crosses boundaries of class and culture.
It was not easy.
There were tensions within the community, between Jewish and Gentile believers. There were pressures from the outside, to conform, to fit in, to stay quiet. And while the large-scale persecutions we often imagine came later, there was already a sense of vulnerability. A sense that following Christ could cost you something. And Paul knows something about that.
By the time he writes this letter, his life has already been marked by hardship. He has been arrested. He has faced opposition. He has lived with uncertainty about what comes next.
So when he writes about hardship and distress and danger, he is not speaking theoretically.
He is speaking from lived experience. And that matters. Because Paul does not pretend that faith protects us from the hard parts of life. He doesn’t say: “If you trust God, nothing bad will happen.” He doesn’t say: “If you believe strongly enough, everything will work out.” (And if he did, we might be a little suspicious of him.)
Instead, he names what is real. He names hardship. He names distress. He names grief. He names fear. And that, in itself, is a kind of grace. Because it means we don’t have to pretend either. We don’t have to come into this space with everything held together. We don’t have to hide the parts of our lives that feel uncertain or broken. Faith, at least as Paul understands it, is not about avoiding reality. It is about being honest within it.
So Paul asks this question: What can separate us from the love of Christ? And I think it’s important to hear that question as a real question. Because if we’re honest, we might have our own answers. Grief can feel like separation. Loss can feel like separation. Illness can feel like separation. Regret can feel like separation. Even silence… when prayers seem unanswered… can feel like separation. There are moments in life when it feels like something has been torn.
When connection feels fragile. When presence feels distant. When we wonder quietly, or maybe not so quietly…Where is God in all of this?
And it is into that very human place that Paul speaks. Not with a neat explanation. Not with a tidy answer. But with a conviction. No… in all these things… we are more than conquerors through the one who loved us. Now, that phrase “more than conquerors” can be misleading if we hear it through the lens of power or victory. Because this is not about winning.
It’s not about overcoming grief as if it were an obstacle. It’s not about rising above suffering as if we could simply leave it behind. That’s not how life works. And it’s not what Paul means.
The word Paul uses here is closer to something like: held, sustained, carried through. Not untouched by hardship but not abandoned within it. And then Paul does something almost poetic. He begins to name everything he can think of. Death. Life. Angels. Rulers. Things present. Things to come. Powers. Height. Depth.
It’s as if he is searching the edges of human experience, looking for anything that might break the connection between us and God’s love. He reaches as far as he can, across time, across space, across all the known forces of the world. (You can almost imagine him pausing and thinking, “Have I missed anything?”) And then he says: Nothing. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Not even death.
And we need to be careful here. Because this is not a denial of death’s reality. It is not a way of softening grief or making loss feel smaller. Death is real. Loss is real. Grief is real. We feel it in our bodies. We carry it in our hearts. We live with its absence. Paul is not denying any of that.
What he is saying is something deeper: That even death does not have the final word.
That even death cannot undo the love of God. That even death cannot break the bond that holds us.
In a week like this, that matters. Because we will gather in spaces of grief. We will speak words that feel both necessary and insufficient. We will hold stories; stories of love, of life, of relationship. We will sit in silence that says more than words can. And in those moments, we don’t pretend everything is okay. But we do bear witness to something. We bear witness to love.
To the love that was shared in a life. To the love that continues in memory and connection.
To the love of God that holds what we cannot hold on our own. And maybe this is where the text begins to turn gently toward us. Because if it is true that nothing can separate us from the love of God…then that love is not just something we receive. It is something we are invited to live.
To embody. To practice, especially in messy times. Because we live in a world that knows a lot about separation. We see it everywhere. Division. Isolation. Fear of difference. Quick judgments. Broken relationships.
It doesn’t take much for people to be pushed to the margins.
It doesn’t take much for connection to fray.
And into that kind of world, this text offers a different way.
A way rooted in love that does not let go.
So what might it look like for us to live that kind of love?
It might look like staying when it would be easier to walk away. It might look like listening when we don’t fully understand. It might look like showing up for one another in quiet, ordinary ways. It might look like sitting with someone in their grief, not trying to fix it, not trying to explain it, but simply being present. It might look like patience. Gentleness. Compassion.
Small things, perhaps. But not insignificant. Because these are the ways love takes shape in the world. And maybe this is the invitation this morning. Not to resolve everything. Not to make sense of what cannot yet be understood. But simply to notice: Where do you need to be held right now? Where has this week been heavy? What are you carrying?
And then, gently, to hear this promise again: That there is nothing… nothing in life or in death, nothing in what has been or what is yet to come… that can separate you from the love of God.
Not your grief. Not your questions. Not your fears. Not even death itself. You are held.Held in a love that is deeper than we can fully comprehend. Steadier than the ground beneath our feet.
More enduring than anything that threatens to pull us apart. And that love… is not far away.
It is here. In this moment. In this community. In the quiet spaces where words fall short. Already here. Holding us. Carrying us. And, in time, leading us gently forward. Amen.