Mustard Seed Trees
“In the midst of all the pushing and shoving” : A Prayer by Walter Brueggemann
In the midst of all the pushing and shoving among us, in the world and in the church, propelled by anxiety and acted as brutality, you have planted yourself in all your fidelity. You have placed yourself among us in steadfast and abiding care present in the day, alert in the night, making us all safe and noticed and cared for. So evidence your fidelity as to curb our anxiety, to restrain our brutality, as to overcome our alienation.
By your fidelity, renew us, renew church, renew city, renew world. Give us the safety to love you fully, to love neighbor well, in glad obedience. Amen.
This week I was flipping through my Bible, trying to get to a certain passage, when on the way my eyes caught on a different story from the Book of Acts. It was titled “The Believers Pray for Boldness” and I thought, “Ooh, I could use some boldness” and stopped to read.
This story is early in the Acts (Acts 4), shortly after the gift of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, which means just a few months after Jesus’s execution and resurrection. Two of the twelve disciples – Peter and John – had just been detained by the Temple police – the community waited with bated breath to see what would happen to them – and then they were finally released.
Peter and John return to the community of believers, and we hear the community think about their arrest, the danger they had been in, and then about King Herod, Governor Pontius Pilate, and the crowds of people who had helped them to arrest and kill Jesus. All the while they are thinking about God’s power, which they have seen manifesting in healings and miracles. They take it all in: the tragedies and the victories, all mingled together.
And together they remember – they speak or sing – the words of Psalm 2:
Why do the nations plot,
And why do their people
Make useless plans?
The kings of this earth
Have all joined together
To turn against the Lord
And his chosen king.
They say, “Let’s cut the ropes
And set ourselves free!”
In heaven the Lord laughs
As he sits on his throne,
Making fun of the nations.
The Lord becomes furious
And threatens them.
His anger terrifies them
As he says,
“I’ve put my king on Zion,
My sacred hill.”
This is where the believers get their boldness: in reminding themselves that the people with power – worldly power to govern and to arrest and kill – these people and all their machinations and even their victories are all in the hands of an eternal and much more-powerful God. They cannot deter what God is doing.
The very next verses tell us one of the ways the disciples lived out that boldness even in a hostile atmosphere: they formed a strong, supportive community: “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common” (Acts 4:32).
This ancient story reminds me of stories from Antebellum America, a time when Black Americans found themselves utterly and terribly controlled by earthly powers – and yet they still found ways to claim their own community and to claim the love, care, watchfulness, and power of God. While many states enforced laws that punished worship that was not under the leadership of white people,
Despite the danger, the slaves kept meeting, worshiping, and praying. They gathered together secluded woods, gullies, ravens, and thickets called “hush harbors.” [It was] a time when folk enslaved in the present could talk about a God who was even then mapping out plans for future freedom.
What powerful testimonies – especially to those of who have never known the persecution of the early believers or the people enslaved.
Finally, these testimonies lead me to back to the parable of the mustard seed:
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has 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. (Matthew 13:31-32).
The mustard seed seems puny. The rulers of this world seem all-powerful. But in God’s hands – in community – the truth is unmasked and reality is shown to be the reverse. “The first will be last and the last will be first” (Matt. 20:16). Or – to quote a Christian band from my youth – “God has given us each other, and we will never walk alone. In the shelter of each other, we will live.”
Pr. Kate
Rev. Katherine Museus and Rev. James A. Wetzstein serve as university pastors at the Chapel of the Resurrection at Valparaiso University and take turns writing weekly devotions.
November 6, 2024
1. Brian K. Blount, Then the Whisper Put on Flesh: New Testament Ethics in an African American Context, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001), p. 39.
2. Jars of Clay, “Shelter”, The Shelter (Provident Label Group LLC, 2010).