Latest / St. Paul Podcast / Looking For Refuge, 7.26.2026

Transcript

Looking For Refuge, 7.26.2026 · St. Paul Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone and welcome to the St.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Mark Neethammer, senior pastor at St.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Lutheran Church, located in Davenport, Iowa, part of the Greater Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right here, each week, you will find beautiful music and a message of hope and good news to guide your life.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm hopeful that this podcast can inspire you and help you on your journey of faith as you grow in love and trust in our God.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks again for tuning in today.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: I hope this podcast is a blessing to you as you listen.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: In just a few moments, we're going to hear several very brief parables from Jesus.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: And parables, as you may know, are these stories or images that Jesus uses to try to convey a larger idea or teaching about faith.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: And most often about uh what God's work looks like, what God's presence looks like right here on earth.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: And as with most of Scripture, the challenge then comes and how we unpack those images.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: Why does Jesus choose these particular examples?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: Or how do these words challenge us today, some two thousand years later?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: So today we're gonna hear several such parables, but we're gonna focus on one in particular, that of the mustard seed.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: Mustard seeds appear several times in the Gospels, so part of our challenge with today's scripture reading is not to immediately lump it in with what we hear about those mustard seeds in other parts of the Bible.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'll say more about that in a few moments, but for now, here are some excerpts from Matthew's Gospel, chapter 13, beginning with verse 31.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus put before them another parable.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: The kingdom of heaven, he said, is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in their field.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it is grown, it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that all the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus told them another parable.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and reburied, and then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: And finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: What it was for it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets and threw out the bad.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: So it will be at the end of the age.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: Alright, now that we've heard these images, the fun begins.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: So let's dive in a little bit and think about what Jesus is telling us about this kingdom of God today.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: Let's take a listen to the reflection.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, unless you have been living under a rock for the last few weeks, you have likely heard Spain mentioned in the news recently.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: At least it was one week ago today, that they won the World Cup, which for those of you who are non-sports people, that's a soccer tournament.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: It was a pretty big deal.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: And while it was an impressive win, I want to share with you actually this morning another very different soccer story to come out of that country.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: It all started about two years ago in this tiny little town of Monterosso, Spain.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's located in the kind of the northwestern part of the country.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: A population just a little over 3,000 people.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: And like many other parts of the world, Spain has grappled with how to welcome refugees and asylum seekers.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: Many of those coming to Spain are fleeing violence or political unrest in their home countries, particularly in that area, from the African countries of Mali and Senegal and others.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: And in this case, there was a group of about a hundred refugees who made their way via the Atlantic Ocean to the western coast of Spain in search of help and a safe place to land.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: And as has happened in other parts of the world, there was some resistance to the arrival of this group.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: First among them was the mayor of Monterosso, who said there's no way this small little town can support a hundred new residents, send them to a larger city.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: But others, beautifully, were insistent that they could help.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: And it didn't start with a school or a social group or church even, but of all places with a local football club, what we would call soccer.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: The president of that club, Balbino Martinez, was his name.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: He came forward and said, we were be willing to do whatever it took to ease the arrival of these newcomers.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: So the players came together and organized a clothing drive.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: Upper management offered jobs with maintenance and food vendors.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: They helped coordinate others in town to provide space in their little stadium for a local barber to give free haircuts.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: Others came in to begin with tutoring.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: Not long after that group of these refugees came, the club sponsored a true fiesta to introduce their new neighbors to traditional music and culture.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: Then, of course, maybe best of all, they offered free season tickets to all of the newest residents of their town.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: At the first home game, the football president, the club president was quick to say, this is the least we could do.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome home.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: And he was quick to remind the natives of Monterrosso in attendance that day we may be a small town, but we are never too small to love each other.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: We may be small, but never too small to love.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds sort of biblical, doesn't it?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: Those words pair quite well with the assortment of parables Jesus has tossed out for us this morning, all attempting to describe the work of God in the world.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: The kingdom of heaven, Jesus says, is like a mustard seed, about the smallest of all the seeds you can plant.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: Or, he says, it's like a tiny amount of yeast that grows exponentially, or it's a small treasure hidden in a huge field.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's like one small valuable pearl in a great sea.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's this flurry of images and analogies.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: We could spend hours here unpacking each of those and what Jesus maybe is trying to get us to know about the kingdom of God based on each of those particular descriptions that He offers.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: But for this morning, and in our limited time, I want to focus on just those first few lines, that first image of the mustard seed.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: We are tempted, I think, to boil it down to how just a small amount of faith can make all the difference.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: But we might actually sort of be confusing these words we heard today with ones that we find elsewhere in the Gospels, kind of a blending of stories.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's later, actually, in Matthew's Gospel, where Jesus talks to the disciples and says, All you need is faith the size of a mustard seed, and you will be able to move mountains.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: Same image or metaphor, but a different kind of message or emphasis.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Here in this parable, Jesus isn't only talking about tiny amounts of faith, but he's describing what is created from that, what it feels like for the kingdom of God to be known right now.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: And what that looks like, he says, is a tree.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: That yes, starts with this small seed, but it becomes enough to be a place of shelter or home.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like the smallest of all seeds, but when it's grown, it becomes a tree that all the birds of the air come and make their nests in the branches.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: What a beautiful image.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: The kingdom of God.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: That refuses to be made smaller, to shrink.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: But more than that, actually, it insists on growing to make itself a sanctuary of sorts, a safe haven, a place where all varieties of birds can come and rest within it.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: All of the different parables or stories Jesus tells at their heart are intended to just expand our imagination, to picture what it looks like in the best possible ways.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: For the love and the presence of God to be felt right here among us.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: So the kingdom of God, Jesus says, is found in any place where another finds rest and peace and welcome because of what we, the tree in this analogy, can offer.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: So we could come up with our own parables, our own stories that illustrate that similar sentiment just by looking all around us, as I imagine Jesus was doing as he was telling those stories.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: The kingdom of God here on earth.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: It looks like a small Spanish town that was determined to welcome others, to say you belong here, no matter what efforts it might take.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: Their commitment to hospitality became the branches in which those others could finally find rest that they had longed for.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: The kingdom of God.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: It might look like thousands of people coming together this weekend for the Bix race, where joy is contagious, and people get up early on a Saturday morning to cheer on perfect strangers, where for at least a stretch of seven miles and a few hours, everyone carries each other.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone is safe, cared for.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: No one is left behind.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: The kingdom of God.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: It might look like my college English professor, who always worked with his door open and the desk facing the doorway of his office.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: It was entirely inefficient, I'm sure, and quite distracting, I imagine, but every single time I walked by his office or I saw others do the same, he would immediately stop what he was doing, close his computer, say, come in, take a seat.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: What's on your minds?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: I knew that office was a safe place to ask questions or share frustrations.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like the best kind of nest for a slightly overwhelmed student in her first semester of college.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: Kingdom of God.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think it might look like the three or four-year-old I saw when we were at a baseball game a few weeks ago, sound asleep on her dad's shoulder, just completely relaxed there in the moment, in the middle of the constant noise and the crowd and the announcer and people moving all around, didn't faze her at all.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: The arms of someone she trusted was holding her so she could find rest and feel secure.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: The presence of God.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: It is felt here on earth, not just when we gather in a beautiful sacred space like this one, but when we take this with us, and when our lives become a sacred space for others.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: When our actions or our words are committed for one another, a welcome sight to any who are needing just a simple reminder of rest.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: It reminds me a little bit of one of my favorite quotes from the author George Eliot.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: If not to make life less difficult for one another, isn't that exactly the purpose of a tree for a bird, to make life less difficult for even a moment.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: What do we live for, friends?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: If not to embody that loving embrace of God in word and in action, with our arms, our hearts wide open, as if the branches of a tree.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus gives us these images, not to imagine what heaven will look like someday in the future, but to paint a picture of how we might live today.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: That we be earnest and are praying, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: So that if we imagine heaven as being a place where we are at peace and safe and secure, we might ask ourselves what we're doing to make that a reality here today.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus says the kingdom of God is like the smallest of seeds.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: But when it has grown and takes root, it becomes a tree so that the birds of all kinds can come and make their nests in its branches.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: And in so doing, may we play that small part in the presence of God being felt, being known right here and right now.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: Your kingdom come.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Your will be done on earth as in heaven.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: And deliver us from evil.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: And the glory are yours.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: Now and forever.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: As you go about your days, may you let the trees be your inspiration.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: May you find ways to be a place of rest, welcome, and refuge for all those around you.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Our commitment to endeavors that lend hope to other people stretches across the country and around the world.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: We hope that in a good way you feel a part of that reach.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Tune in next Thursday for another edition of the St.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Podcast.