Doubt, Hope, and Gardening

[this is a sermon I preached for Texts and Communication @ Truett Seminary, Baylor University. It bears the marks of context and audience, and for that I do not apologize]

Dubito ergo cogito; cogito ergo sum. I doubt therefore I think; I think therefore I am. Rene Descartes is famously credited with doubting, and therefore proving, his own existence. I do not often doubt my own existence, but I do question, and even doubt, what to do with said existence. Perhaps Descartes is a bit removed from our context, so a local personality is more apropos: Eric Howell, pastor of Dayspring, told the story of a conversation he once had in which he was given counsel which has derivatively been helpful to me. The gentleman responded, “You have faith. You also have some doubt. That’s okay: most of us have some of both.” Another set of pastors and church planters gave similar pieces of advice. Francis Chan said “everyone who follows His [God’s] call will experience pain, and will think about quitting…. Let ‘em beat you up, and love ‘em in return…. [and] don’t be surprised when trials come.”

With all of this counsel, I have my own doubts and questions. And you probably have your own queries and road blocks which interfere with your desire to move forward in ministry. I want you to be aware of one or two of yours as I continue, and in that rite I will share with you a few of my own.

· What is Scripture? Is it prescriptive of our faith, or just descriptive of the faiths (plural) of our forebears?

· What will I do in ministry, and is that actually what I’m supposed to do?

· What does and should church look like?

· What exactly is my calling anyway?

· Then there is the overarching missiological question, “What is the mission of God in the world?”

And surely there are better preachers, pastors, exegetes, and theologians than you and I out there. They have larger vocabularies and Ivy League degrees and personal mentors and systematic brains and perfect teeth and tailored suits and whatever else you need to succeed. And so I have to wonder: Can God use me in the midst of my questions and my doubts. But there’s an even more difficult question to answer: “Does He?” And yet here we are, humans, and admittedly not necessarily the crème de la crème of the bunch. We are, to hijack Karl Barth, incapable of saying anything about God, and yet we are commanded to do so.

I’m relatively short, and so is my attention span, so I tend to like short parables, simple similes, and the like. It seems that Mark did also. Jesus says “with what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that all the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” It is curious that Mark, probably hyperbolically, tells us that Jesus taught only in parables, and yet he records so few. Perhaps he considers this one of special importance.

Matthew also records the parable in chapter 13, though for Matthew parables are anything but a sparse crop. Matthew records quite a few longer and shorter parables. He mentions mustard seeds another time in chapter 17, again making reference to how small the seed is. Mark precedes this with a note on growth. A person may plant, and may see growth, but she never knows just how the groth takes place. Matthew, however, couples this parable with a similar comparison to leaven, noting how the small, seemingly insignificant has a great yield.

I would like to suggest to you a certain hermeneutic with which to approach the biblical text. It is not a revolutionary hermeneutic—in fact it is actually derived from the text itself. I call it “the absurdity principle.” Just think about it: God picks Abram, who is old, has a barren wife, and who’s future is in the family business of idol-making, and He calls this guy to become the progenitor of a great people and lead that people to worship a God for whom no idol can be made. Isaac is so dumb that when his father leads him up a mountain to make a sacrifice, he fails to fully comprehend that the only thing they have to sacrifice is him! Jacob is the second born, and is a complete mama’s boy. Joseph, Genesis 37 tells us, got lost wandering in a field looking for his brothers, whom he didn’t even realized despised him. Moses was a Hebrew, raised by Egyptians, who wasn’t liked by either bunch. David was nothing to look at when compared with the mighty Saul, and Jeremiah was just a kid. Ruth was a Moabite widow, Esther a Jew in Babylon who married the oppressor, and Rahab a prostitute and a liar. John the Baptist would never have fit in with the American Apparel V-neck, skinny jeans, and Tom’s culture. Fisherman, tax collectors, and shady women were Jesus covenant group, and when Jesus was around Roman centurions and Gentile women received the greatest accolades for their faith.

JESUS himself is probably the greatest example of this principle, wouldn’t you say? The craftsman son of a scandalized “virgin” turned widow, who himself becomes a crucified criminal as an enemy of the state and religious order (and all this before being emergent was cool)! What’s more: we proclaim this crucified criminal to be the most righteous human to have ever walked the earth who preached the message that irrevocably changed the world that God came down here because God is Deus pro nobis – God for us!

I don’t need to proof-text that which is one every page of the New Testament and in every book of the Old – I could preach this Absurdity Principle from the Table of Contents, verses 1-66.

In Genesis 12, God promised to make a great people of Abraham. In Matthew and Mark He said a great tree or plant comes from a ridiculously small seed. He promised Abraham that he would be “blessing to all peoples.” In our Gospel texts, Jesus said that in that mustard plant many tired birds could find rest.

And so I return to my own personal doubts, and you can probably rapidly recall your own. Does God use people like us? When we are at our best we are keenly aware of the smallness of our selves, and yet also of the promise inherent in the parable of the mustard seed. God uses the mystery of plant growth and the exponential yield of the mustard seed and the leaven to illustrate how His kingdom comes. Therein we can and must embrace our parallel lowly status; there is comfort.

Because isn’t it just like the King of the Kingdom of Heaven to use an

· idol-maker’s son and a now-barren future mother.

Isn’t it just like the king to use a

· Jewish woman in exile and a

· Moabitess in Israel’s midst and

· a prostitute in Jericho?

Isn’t it just like the King to use

· a speaker with a stutter,

· a fisherman turned Apostle, and a

· murderer turned missionary?

Isn’t it just like our King to use

· a doubtful preacher to proclaim a sure message of hope,

· a wounded woman to heal hearts, and

· even a theologian to do some good every once in a while?

Isn’t it just like our King?

Our King, the King of the Kingdom of Heaven, built something brilliant out of barrenness. Our King used Christ the crucified criminal to pant His kingdom, and he uses us mustard seeds, replete with doubts, questions, and impairments, to grow the plant of the kingdom, of the plant where the tired might find rest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci4S_HUIsZ0