Mark 4:26-34<\/p>\n\n\n\n
June 18, 2006<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today being Father\u2019s Day, I want to share two stories that were first introduced to me by Sharyl B. Peterson in Grand Junction, CO. The first story is about a crime-scene in Chicago some 75 years ago. Some of you remember that back in the 1930s there was a man in Chicago who called himself a \u201cbusinessman,\u201d but most of the American public knew as a gangster\u2014as \u201cPublic Enemy No. 1\u201d\u2014a man named Al Capone. He virtually controlled the city of Chicago for an entire decade, involved in everything from buying off government officials to running bootlegged liquor to gambling to prostitution to racketeering to murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because Al Capone was very smart, as well as very corrupt, he employed a very good lawyer\u2014a man named \u201cEasy Eddie.\u201d Eddie was such a good lawyer that he managed to keep Capone out of jail for a long time, in spite of massive amounts of money and massive numbers of police officers that had been authorized specifically to bring Capone to justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because Eddie was such a good lawyer, Capone paid him well\u2014well enough that he could afford a huge mansion, so large that it occupied an entire city block of Chicago, filled with every convenience of the day and a full-time staff. Eddie apparently enjoyed his high-living style, and for a long time didn\u2019t seem to give a second thought to the corruption and evil that he was helping to support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He had a wife he loved and one son whom he adored. Nothing was too good for his boy, and Eddie saw to it that he had the best of everything: clothes, toys, education, and cars, as he got older. Despite his own career path, Eddie also did his best to teach his son right from wrong. He wanted his boys to be a better man than he knew himself to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet with all his wealth and power, there were two things he couldn\u2019t give his son: a good name, and a good example of real honesty and real integrity. So one day, Eddie made a very difficult decision. He decided to rectify the wrongs he had done, as well as he could, by going to the authorities and agreeing to testify against Capone. When he did, his testimony was a key piece of evidence that finally sent Capone to prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eddie\u2019s decision came with a very high price. Capone had no mercy on anyone he believed had been disloyal to him and only a couple of months after Eddie\u2019s testimony against Capone, Eddie died in a blaze of gunfire on a lonely Chicago street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our second story this morning comes from a very different setting\u2014it comes from the South Pacific during World War II. Stationed there on an aircraft carrier called the Lexington was a young Lieutenant Commander named Butch O\u2019Hare, who was a fighter pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day, O\u2019Hare\u2019s squadron was sent on a mission. Unfortunately, it wasn\u2019t until after he was already airborne that he checked his fuel gauge and realized that someone had forgotten to top off his fuel tank. It meant he wouldn\u2019t have enough fuel to complete his mission and make it back to his ship. So, his squadron leader told him to return to the carrier immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reluctantly, he dropped out of formation and headed back to the fleet. As he was returning to the Lexington, he saw in the distance a squadron of Japanese aircraft coming toward the American fleet. Since the other fighters were all gone on the mission he had just been ordered to leave, the ships in the fleet were all but defenseless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Butch knew he couldn\u2019t get the squadron back in time to save the fleet, so he did the only thing it seemed possible to do. To divert them from the ships, he flew straight into the formation of the Japanese planes. He charged into their midst, firing his wing-mounted 50-calibers, damaging as many of the Japanese planes as possible until all his ammunition was finally spent. Even then, he continued his attack, diving at the other planes, hoping to clip a wing or tail, in order to damage their ability to fly, and actually downing five enemy aircrafts. Finally, and somewhat surprisingly, the Japanese fighters took off in another direction. Even more surprisingly, O\u2019Hare and his tattered fighter made it back to the Lexington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not surprisingly, his act of heroism became instant news. Butch was invited to the White House by President Roosevelt, where he received the Congressional Medal of Honor, the first naval aviator to do so. One year later, Butch was killed in aerial combat, at the age of 29.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His hometown, Chicago, honored him by naming their airport after him. The next time you fly through O\u2019Hare, you might stop between Terminals 1 and 2 and see Butch O\u2019Hare\u2019s memorial and his Medal of Honor. And you might reflect on the fact that Butch O\u2019Hare was Easy Eddie\u2019s son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The story of Butch and Easy Eddie O\u2019Hare is a wonderful contemporary example of what Jesus is talking about in today\u2019s parable from Mark\u2019s gospel. Eddie O\u2019Hare eventually did his part as a loving father in search for honesty and integrity. By his example, his son, Butch O\u2019Hare was able to grow up to become a better person in the sight of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Planting Seeds<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In both of today\u2019s parables, Jesus is talking about the kingdom of God is like that of planting seeds\u2014those that are planted by God, and those which we plant. The first describes it as a growing seed which someone scatters on the ground, and which then grows while the person sleeps and gets up every morning. This process of growth has a life of its own. The planter does not have any power over how it grows; he can\u2019t make it grow faster or more slowly. The earth simply produces by itself\u2014first the stalk, then the head, and then the full grain. When the grain is ripe\u2014when the time is right\u2014the planter comes with his sickle and harvests what\u2019s grown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the most part, most Americans don\u2019t plant or garden anymore. We like to hustle about our day\u2014working hard to achieve something in a hurry. Gardening is very different\u2014the seed spreads and grows mysteriously, without the gardener\u2019s inpatient intervention. We would rather not take the time to trust God to work the miracles of growth and learning in our lives. We want things to happen right now!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second parable describes how a mustard seed though very small when planted, nonetheless grows up to become the greatest of all shrubs, its large branches becoming the home for birds to nest in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus is talking about the way growth comes out of an interaction between God and human beings. When seeds are planted, we can rest assured in the knowledge that growth will occur\u2014and it will occur partly because of God\u2019s built-in processes and systems in the world. But it also means that at the same time, we have a responsibility to help not only with the planting of the seeds, but also with their nurturing, so that they might realize their full, complete, built-in potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Counting on the fact that God will always do God\u2019s part\u2014if we\u2019ll do our part, too, if we\u2019ll help spread the gospel, the good news\u2014Jesus says that we can indeed bring about the kingdom of God on this earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Doing Our Part<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When we are in the business of planting and nurturing, we are doing our part in the Kingdom of God. Have you ever wondered who Albert Einstein\u2019s third-grade math teacher was? Or whether that math teacher had any idea what he was doing when he encouraged a little 8-year old boy in his simple love for addition and subtraction? Have you ever wondered about who Georgia O\u2019Keefe\u2019s or Calder\u2019s art teacher was in junior high? Or who was Beethoven\u2019s first piano teacher or Kenny G\u2019s saxophone teacher? Do you suppose any of them imagined the effect that their words and attitudes, their teaching and encouragement, would ultimately have, not just on these individual people, but on our entire society? When Easy Eddie O\u2019Hare decided to become honest, he never imagined that his son, Butch O\u2019Hare would become a war hero and one day having one of the world\u2019s busiest airports named after his son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Have you ever wondered who was the mission advocate who planted the first seed in Astrid Peterson to become a missionary to China or the person who taught Debbie Allen how to make tuna casserole or the youth advisor who first led Dr. Chuck to consider the Christian ministry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It seems that Jesus was right. Someone plants a seed. Sometimes nurtures the growth of the tiny plant. And if it keeps getting nurtured, and it keeps on growing, eventually it may turn into a bush so huge that it changes the face of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some years ago, reporters were interviewing Boris Yelsin and asked him what gave him the courage to stand firm during the fall of communism in the former USSR. Yelsin thought about it a minute and then said that it was an ordinary guy, an electrician from Poland named Lech Walesa, who had started the downfall of communism in his own country that had inspired him. When, on a different occasion, Walesa was interviewed by a different group of reporters, he was asked what had inspired him in his struggles. He said it was the civil rights movement in the United States and the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Years before, when Dr. King was interviewed and asked what had inspired him in his work, he said it was the courage of one woman, an ordinary African American woman who worked as a seamstress, whose name was Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It doesn\u2019t seem like too much of a stretch to say that one ordinary, tiny, brave woman living in a small, ordinary town in the south of the U.S. brought about the downfall of communism. Because that\u2019s the way seeds are\u2014when they are planted, nurtured and growing, great things can happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Packets of Seeds<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n All of us are given packets of seeds\u2014gifts, abilities, talents, values\u2014and the opportunity to plant them. Every one of us, over our lifetime, touches dozens, even hundreds, of other lives\u2014and in every one, we touch, we may plant seeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hopefully, we\u2019ll try to make every seed we plant a healthy one. Because we all certainly know that it\u2019s just as easy to plant unhealthy seeds as healthy ones. The kind of unhealthy seeds we plant (or had planted in us) when we tell someone (or were told): \u201cYou\u2019re no good at that\u201d or \u201cyou\u2019re not smart enough to\u2026\u201d or \u201cyou\u2019ll never be an artist or a doctor (or whatever our dream was).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hopefully, we\u2019ll try to make every one of the seeds we plant one of encouragement, and hope, and liberation. Seeds like: \u201cYou can do it.\u201d \u201cYou are terrific at that!\u201d \u201cI know you are going to make it.\u201d Even the smallest of seeds that we plant matters, because we never know how big it may grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n William Bausch tells a true story of a little girl who came home every day from school on the bus. As she stepped from the bus she was always greeted by her brother who was waiting for her with a hug and a kiss. He was mentally retarded and had a wonderful gift for showing affection. The other children on the school bus were tempted to make fun of this boy and his sister as he embraced her with the same enthusiasm every day. They realized that he was very different from them. Gradually, however, through the course of the school year the children on the bus grew to have respect for the love that was shown in that family, day in and day out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a true story because it was told by an observer, one of the girls on the bus who had been so ready to ridicule the boy. Forty years later, she found her own sense of love and compassion for others still growing from the \u201cseed of love\u201d she witnessed between a sister and her mentally retarded brother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of us have to look very far to see that in our church experience at FCBC, we have witnessed the \u201cseeds of love\u201d growing and maturing as a part of God\u2019s kingdom on earth. What started as a tiny little mission over 125 years ago to spread the good news about Jesus Christ has now become a vibrant and strong and healthy community of disciples that want to do more in missions, teach more of our neighborhood children, and grow more in our faithfulness in Christ in both word and deeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We, my friends, are a part of God\u2019s unfolding kingdom on earth. We, my friends, are the only seeds\u2014and the only sowers\u2014God has to work with. So may we remember what we do when we plant? May we plant with honesty, compassion, with justice, with wisdom, and with encouragement, so that through our sowing and our nurturing, God\u2019s harvest may be abundant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Happy Father\u2019s Day to all of the Dads, Grandfathers, Uncles, Brothers, and all who sow seeds of love so that there will be an abundance of good people who knows about honesty and a deep love for God, our Creator. You are indeed \u201cpackets of seeds of love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let us pray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gracious Lord God, we give you thanks for your ever-loving care and nurture for life that we see in our lives and in the world. When we recognize and appreciate our parents and in particular, our fathers, we realize how significant they have been in our growth and maturity. We pray that you will continue to bless them and strengthen their ability to serve you in their important roles as providers and guardians. Thank you, dear God, for the many gifts and talents that you have given to us that we can use for your kingdom. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mark 4:26-34 June 18, 2006 Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco. Today being Father\u2019s Day, I want to share two stories