St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
June 16, 2024
Year B, Proper 6: The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-17
Mark 26-34
God Can Do a Lot with Small Seeds
Maybe it’s because of our upcoming "Celebration of Life" planning session, but funerals have been on my mind.
Funerals are such a sacred and tender responsibility.
Over the years, of course, I have presided and preached at many funerals, including quite a few right here.
(I’ve learned that when you have your own cemetery, you tend to have a lot of funerals!)
For me, there are really two kinds of funerals.
One kind is for people I’ve come to know and love.
Here at St. Thomas’, I think of beloved parishioners, and great dads, like Jim Piper and Sandy Martin.
At that type of funeral, I’m grieving, too. And so, it can be a real challenge to maintain my composure.
Not easy.
(In case you’re wondering, my strategy is to try to not think so much – just focus on the words and the choreography of the service. To be honest, it doesn’t always work.)
The other kind of funeral is for someone I didn’t know well or maybe never even met.
The challenge there is quickly learning as much as I can about the person’s life so I can craft a homily that is not just generic – so I can say something true about how God was uniquely at work in this person, in this life.
A couple of weeks ago, we held one of those second kind of funerals, for someone I never met.
His name was Robert Baker and although he only had a very distant connection to St. Thomas’, his daughter asked if her dad’s funeral could be here.
Well, around here we don’t say no to baptisms or funerals!
Fortunately, Robert made my task much easier because several years ago he had written a memoir.
He begins his book by telling the story of his grandmother who, back in the late 1800’s, left Poland and traveled on a German ship to Baltimore, where she began a new life in Canton.
Robert tells the story of his grandparents and parents who received very little education and spent their lives toiling in factories, where the work was tedious and dangerous and the pay not so good.
Young Robert was an obviously intelligent boy and a go-getter. Like his grandparents and parents, he was not afraid of hard work.
Although money was always tight, his family made sacrifices and he was able to attend what was then Loyola College.
There, Robert distinguished himself as such an excellent student that one of his professors, Fr. Gibbons, recommended that he apply to the Hopkins Institute of Advanced International Studies.
And, sure enough, Robert was the first Loyola student to be admitted into that prestigious program, setting the course of his life.
He went on to have a fulfilling career in the Foreign Service, stationed in many places around the world, having all kinds of Cold War adventures that he recounts his book: experiences that were gratifying, exciting, dangerous, frustrating, and funny.
In his book, Robert points out that less than a century after his grandmother sailed to Baltimore on that German ship, her grandson was the cultural attaché in the US Consulate in Berlin.
Quite a leap.
And here’s the thing: none of that would’ve happened if Fr. Gibbons hadn’t seen something promising in Robert and made his life-changing suggestion.
A small seed, perhaps, but Jesus teaches us that God can do a lot with small seeds.
Something else about funerals.
One of the hardest moments of being a priest is leaving - leaving a church, leaving a community where we’ve been through life and death together.
I’ve left churches a couple of times now – and it’s always painful.
And one of the saddest parts of leaving a church is missing out on the big moments in the lives of the people I’ve left behind, not being there for times of joy and sadness, missing out on all those baptisms and funerals.
Well, a couple of months ago, a man named Eric Petersen died.
He was a much-loved parishioner at my church in Jersey City, where he served as the Verger, which, if you don’t know, is a ministry focused on hospitality and worship. At St. Paul’s, his main responsibility was training and supervising our acolytes.
Eric was a Vietnam veteran, and he was also a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America (the other CIA!).
In his professional life, he had worked in large commercial kitchens, but his passion was baking the most decadent and delicious desserts.
By the time I met Eric, he had been slowed by a stroke. He mostly got around in a motorized chair – a big challenge, for sure, but somehow, he managed to get himself to church and pretty much anywhere else he wanted to go.
I’ve mentioned to you before that another one of our parishioners, a woman named Sonia Staine, started a beautiful ministry serving once-a-month homecooked lunches at a local drop-in center for people who were homeless.
The goal was to serve food at least as good as anything we served at our Sunday church coffee hours (which were usually pretty elaborate meals), at least as good as anything we served ourselves at home.
Well, of course, Eric volunteered to prepare the desserts.
With great determination and generosity, each month Eric would get himself and his desserts to the drop-in center. There he would sit in his motorized chair before trays of deliciousness, happy and proud, bantering with each guest, offering something beautiful and even extravagant to people for whom store brand cookies would’ve been a treat, people who spent their days just trying to survive.
A small seed, perhaps, but Jesus teaches us that God can do a lot with small seeds.
One other memory of Eric:
He came up with the idea that the church should offer a cooking class for boys.
And, of course, he would be the head teacher.
I was a little skeptical, but he put together a plan and we received some grant money for this innovative project.
With the grant money, we bought lots of kitchen equipment and one of our parishioners even made chef’s hats for all the boys.
With the help of a few other parishioners, Eric taught the boys a lot, from the basics like hard-boiling eggs to more advanced skills like making one of his signature desserts.
And the boys really did learn, although, I have to say, they never quite mastered the art of cleaning up the kitchen.
Eric and his students hosted coffee hour a few times – no small task in that church -impressing everybody with their newfound talents.
That was all years ago, now. And I don’t know if those young men have retained any of the techniques that Eric taught them, but I bet that they remember his fatherly love for them, his belief in them, his care and respect for them, the pride he took in what they were able to accomplish.
A small seed, perhaps, but Jesus teaches us that God can do a lot with small seeds.
Often, when we take the time to reflect on the lives of the people we love, we discover, we remember, seemingly small things, all those small seeds.
When I think of Jim Piper, I think of how he was always so eager to make connections, to bring people together, especially people he thought might be able to do some good for the city he loved.
And when I think of Sandy Martin, I think of all the time he made for his children and grandchildren, all those school events he attended, all those games and tournaments, always so supportive and so proud.
The lives of Robert, Eric, Jim, and Sandy, and so many others I’ve met along the way, remind me to be on the lookout for opportunities to share seemingly small seeds – offering a word of encouragement, just showing up, making a phone call or sending a note.
Small seeds, perhaps, but Jesus teaches us that God can do a lot with small seeds.
Amen.
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