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Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Real Faith in the Real World, a ministry of Normal First United Methodist Church in Normal, Illinois. Let's listen to what our guest speaker, Pastor Von Hoffman, has to say today.

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Let us pray. Grant, O Lord, that we might be the masters of ourselves to become the servants of others. Take our minds and think through them. Take our lips and speak through them. Take our hearts and set them on fire for thee. Amen. Over the course of my career as a Methodist preacher, it was my habit about this time of year, late May and early into June, to devote a few Sundays to the parables of Jesus. Because the parables are, frankly, just my favorite part of the Bible. I find them the most interesting and the most helpful. Parables, I'm sure you know, they comprise a huge part of what Jesus actually had to say about life and faith. Three of the four Gospels, what scholars call the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, over half of anything Jesus actually said that we have recorded, half of his words in those gospels come in the form of these stories. These stories that have a common theme, that their conclusions are usually open-ended. Sometimes the parables are long and involved. Think of the parable of the prodigal son as an example of a kind of a long, detailed parable. Takes the whole chapter in Luke. There are characters that get developed. And when he finally comes to his senses, we learn a little about his interior monologue. Remember, he rehearses a speech he's going to give. Father, I'm not worthy to be called your son. Treat me as a hired hand. He's thinking about that, what he's going to say when he gets back. A lot of detail about that character. And then we learn the father's joyous, gracious response and the older brother's jealousy when it's all. It reads like a little novel, and it takes a while for that story to unfold. And other times it's just the opposite with parables. They're little tiny things. Just a single sentence or two, almost told as an aside. You know, that's the case of the ones we heard today, right? Two brief parables, almost casually told. A mustard seed becomes a big tree. A tiny bit of yeast transforms the whole batch and makes it rise. So there's a lot of variety in parables, and I like that aspect of it, but the the other thing parables have in common that I really like is that almost without exception, Jesus leaves them for you to think about. There's an open ending. He doesn't say, well, let me explain to you what this means and the point you should get and the one truth that you need to take away from this. He just lets it hang out there, lets you think about it and take it to heart. Sometimes he would end by saying, He who has ears to hear, let him hear, right? Which is just another way of saying. Why don't you stew on that a little bit? See if it makes a difference in your life, see if it uh you find yourself challenged by what I just said. There is, I think, a kind of a spiritual respectfulness and modesty in allowing the hearer of those stories to kind of see where it's gonna lead them. And um, it's the way Jesus seemed to value teaching what he wanted to teach. The point of the parable is never to try to force fit anybody into a predetermined conclusion. Wisdom for Jesus is something different in the parables. It's not about finding a pat answer to every question, it's about trying to open yourself to see things in a new way, a broader way. It's the idea that healthy religion is best understood as not a bunch of rules to appropriate, but as a kind of light on our experience. So a way of seeing and a way that values a kind of an open engagement with life more than trying to have it all figured out. So that's what I like about parables. Uh these two little ones are two of my favorites, actually, though little they are. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of seeds, but when it is grown, it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. Or the kingdom of heaven is like yeast a woman took and leavened in with all the low with all the flower until all of it was leavened. Who would think that something so little could become so big? Who would think that something so seemingly insignificant could make such a huge impact? Some years ago now, when I was the preacher across town in Bloomington, I was in my office one day and the business manager came in with kind of a worried look on her face. She had an envelope. She said, I'm I'm reluctant to open this. I think you ought to handle this. It's uh it's a registered letter we got from a lawyer. I don't recognize a lawyer either. And I'm like, uh oh, uh-oh. Usually a registered letter from a lawyer might not be uh good news, uh, but this was good news. Uh we opened it up and we found out that we had been included, the church, as uh uh a beneficiary uh in the will of a woman. Uh she had left us a significant tract of good McLean County farmland at the time, turned out to be worth well over a million dollars, much more than that now. It's been several years ago. The interesting thing about that was, aside from just the good news of having that great gift bestowed upon us, I didn't recognize this woman's name. I didn't know who she was. And we did some digging through our membership roles. We couldn't find any record that she was ever a member at the church. And we asked our old timers, the ones who'd been around forever, anybody know her? And no, I don't know who that is. Uh she didn't have many family, but eventually we were able to track down what distant families she had, and they kind of knew the story. Uh the story was that as a young girl, elementary age girl, she had come to the vacation Bible school at the old Bloomington First M.E. Church, long gone. Bloomington First M.E. Church is the predecessor congregation, one of them, a Bloomington Wesley Church, used to be uh the Bloomington First Methodist Church, Methodist Episcopal was on the corner of Front Street and East Street, right there, the parking lot, parking deck next to the Law and Justice Center. That's where it was. It's been torn down for 70 years now, something like that, been torn down. But this woman, as a girl, elementary girl, elementary age girl, had gone to vacation Bible school there for two or three summers. We don't exactly know why, but that's where she landed. But um, in response to that, all those years later, boom, there comes this gift. And we were like amazed. We thought, what happened to that vacation Bible school? Man, that must have been good. Uh uh who was her teacher, you know, who was her teacher? What did they say that so affected her that she would remember it so long? Who did somebody befriend her? And you know, what what made a difference for her? And all of which is just to say, you just never know, do you? You never know what small thing will make a difference. What word of encouragement, what act of inclusion, uh, what that that will really mean something to someone? A vacation Bible school week, when that woman years later decided how do I want to distribute my estate, that experience rose to the top. Isn't that amazing? I think it's amazing. Rose to the top of the things she would want to support, even knowing that it was now a successor congregation that was still carrying on in some way that work. You just never know when a little thing will mean a lot. And I bring this up on Miracle Sunday today across the Methodist Church to suggest that, you know, the greatness of Miracle Sunday is that we don't know what good we're gonna do. You know, what when a gift that is given for some aspiring, we saw that uh video, some aspiring young minister in some remote corner of Mozambique or Malawi or Zaire or the Philippines, somebody who's called and wants to make a difference, but needs some help to kind of get the resources together and become the leader they want to be, we never know. What difference that'll make down the road in the lives of people we'll never see. We'll never know ourselves. Kingdom of God is like that, Jesus said. The little tiny thing, the little seed, the little measure of leaven in the dough, that when it's deployed in faith, changes things in ways you can't imagine or can't foresee. You know, some scholars think that the original context of these two little parables is that Jesus is trying to address a recurring misperception the disciples tended to fall into. The misperception was this. When the disciples would hit some roadblock or some obstacle in their attempts to follow Jesus, do what he wanted, and to be faithful to him, when they would hit a roadblock, their tendency was to assume that their failure was because of their lack of faith, their lack of good spirituality and wisdom and philosophical depth. Once, for instance, when Jesus had sent them out on the first missionary journey, he pairs them up two by two. Remember, he says, Go out, spread the good news, say the kingdom of God has come near, eat what is set before you. If anyone won't receive you, shake the dust off your feet and go on to the next house. But say, peace be with you, uh, the Lord has been near. They go and they do that, and it doesn't go all that well. Uh they come back and they're kind of dejected, and they say to Jesus, Lord, we could not heal as you do. And when we tried to cast out demons, they did not listen. Lord, increase our faith. The assumption behind the request is that faith is a commodity, and the more you have, the more you can do. Uh the the disciples thought faith was like a quantity, like horsepower in your car's engine, you know. If you got a car with a lot of horsepower, it can go fast, you can tow a big trailer, you can haul a big load, you got a lot of power in your engine, your car can do a lot of things. If you got a little tiny engine with a little bit of horsepower, yeah, you go slow, you know, you can't tow anything. It's less, it seems less. And the disciples said, Lord, Lord, increase our faith. We can't do very much. We need some more spiritual horsepower. So help us to be better, different people than we are. And the scholars think Jesus told these two parables to help them see things differently. In both parables, the tiniest amount of faith is enough so long as you use it. So long as you plant it or you stir it into the dough. That's the key. You got to use what you got, and that's enough. It's Jesus' way of saying you don't need somebody else's faith. You don't need more than you have because it's not a commodity. It's a quality, it's it's a it's a relationship. It's it's not quantitative, it's qualitative. It's a relationship, an attitude of trust. So however much or little you got, it's okay. Just use it. Use what you got, and you'll be amazed at what happens. Hence, tiny seeds become a great tree. Uh there's a word for that, right? In the world of physics, it's called synergy, which is a, it should be a spiritual word. It's not really, but it should be. Synergy comes from the world of physics, which means literally working together, two separate and distinct entities joining forces to become more than either one could be on their own. Uh and it's not an overstatement to say that synergy is at the heart of those little parables, the mustard seed, plant the little seed and stand back, and then God has his part to play, the mysterious processes of germination and photosynthesis and growth and all, none of which the planter is responsible for, but Jesus said they don't you don't worry about what you're not responsible for, worry about what you are, and let God do God's part. You know, that's the key piece of living hopefully and getting beyond the tendency the disciples had, and that all of us have, I sometimes think, uh, to feel like we aren't enough, that our efforts won't really make that much difference, and uh to sometimes feel like we're half defeated before we even get started. We're too small to make a difference. Um I've got neighbors who live down the street from me that um for years have had this boisterous and rather fierce-looking, uh intimidating dog, a Rottweiler dog. Do you know a Rottweiler breed? They're kind of scary-looking dogs. I walk my of an English setter. She hates that dog uh because she's scared of him. We have to kind of cross the street because that Rottweiler is out. They have it contained with one of those invisible fences. You know what those are? Invisible fence, you you bury an electric uh wire around the boundary of your property and it emits some somehow, I don't know exactly how, it emits an electric charge. And the dog then wears a uh a transponder on its collar, and if it gets close to the boundary where it can't, it gets a mild shock. It's just sort of trains it to say, that's no farther for you. And that dog, to his credit, he never broke the bounds. He never broke the bounds. You'd see him charge out, he'd charge out looking like uh-oh, and get to the boundary and stop, put on the brakes. Well, over the years I have noticed they stopped putting the transponder on the dog. Stays in the front yard, no transponder, and I asked the owners about it, Lemon. I said, I notice your dog. I I've that dog never crosses, but he has it, doesn't have his transponder on. They say, Yeah, he doesn't need it anymore. He just thinks he's gonna get shocked, and that's enough. And you know, I think about people, we're kind of like that sometimes, right? We can imagine boundaries are more impermeable than they really are. We can sometimes think, oh, I shouldn't do this or should do that, and oh, it may not go very well. You know, we think defeat, we don't, and then we, even though we don't have a transponder on our neck, we don't go past the bounds for fear we're gonna get shocked. Um that's that's how it is with people, too. Uh you know, the old saying, you can't be too careful. Uh well, according to these parables, you can be too careful. Oh, yes, you can. Sometimes you can be too careful if you don't plant the seed, if you don't stir the leaven in. That's you that's too careful in the story. Jesus not only taught that way, but we have story after story in the Gospels where we see that he lived exactly that way, too, of taking a little and making a lot out of it. One of the most famous examples that you all know is the feeding of the 5,000, right? With the five loaves and two fish. I mean, it's a very simple story of a little amounting to a lot. We have this huge need on the one hand, these hungry people who've been following Jesus. They're on the Sea of Galilee and they're there, and the disciples uh they don't have any resources, right? Jesus says, you need to feed these people, and uh it's uh one of them says, six months' wages for us wouldn't give them all a crumb of peace. And then finally they look around, and Andrew sees uh a kid with his lunch, five loaves and two fish. That's a big lunch for his kid. His mom must have known how long he'd be gone. But Andrew says, Well, there's a kid, we there's a boy here with five loaves and two fishes. But what is that among so many? And the answer in the story, of course, is well, with God it's more than enough. And we never really know how that miracle happens in the story, only that the boy offered what he had, he he made it, he gave it, and with the synergy of grace, it God did the rest. The implication of the story is if the boy hadn't held back, there wouldn't have been a miracle that day. If I hold back when I'm asked to do my little part and you hold back, and the whole religious community holds back when we're called to do something on uh important on behalf of our faith, our values, then the channels of grace get blocked. That's the bad news. But the good news is that the opposite's also true. If we trust enough to try our do our part and plant our little seed and stir the leaven in the loaf, we open ourselves to the synergy of God. And the smallest bit of faithfulness takes off in ways we can't control or imagine. So I want to end with a reassurance to you. If you come here today feeling maybe stuck about something or wondering if you have enough faith to make a difference, these stories would tell us uh not to worry about that too much. Uh use what you have. Don't worry about having more, just use what you've got. Uh, God cares not nearly as much about your ability as your availability. Uh trust that synergy and in every generation. It's been our call. God depends on us, ordinary people, on you and on me, just like he depended on that little boy with five loaves and two fish. So let it be. Amen.

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Thanks for joining us for this episode of Real Faith in the Real World. We hope that this message helps you grow in your understanding and sparks new insight on your journey of faith. If you found this episode helpful, don't forget to subscribe and share. And as always, if you have questions and want to dive deeper into today's topic, please feel free to reach out to us by going to normalfumc.org, click about normal first, and click contact to leave us a message. We would love to hear from you. And until next time, keep seeking, keep questioning, and keep growing.