We live in a country that thinks big – REALLY BIG! We
build big buildings; we idolize those with BIG salaries and Big, important
positions with big companies. The artists and musicians we revere the most are
those who sell the most paintings or records, who have the most people at their
concerts or openings.
It’s no big
surprise that religion, spirituality, and even churches in this country have
become equally enamored with big-ness. It’s the big churches we pay attention
to. It’s the pastors of big churches whom we invite to speak, whose books we
read, whose opinions seem to matter most.
But what I’m
wondering this morning is this…What if…what if God isn’t as interested in big things as we tend to be? What if God is actually
way more interested in little things
than we are? What if…?
As we heard in our reading from Matthew 13 a
few moments ago, when Jesus was asked what the kingdom of God was like, he didn’t
exactly choose BIG things to compare it to. He chose a mustard seed, the
tiniest of seeds. He chose a tiny bit of yeast or leaven hidden in dough. The
God we worship may be extra large and may have all the power in the world, but
for some reason, decides to act in tiny little ways, in behind the scenes ways,
in gradual, even subtle ways.
In case you don’t believe me, think
about Christmas for a moment… The God of the entire universe decides to visit
the planet and the people he created, and how does God do it? Not with a bang
but a whisper. A silent, holy night; a tiny baby, born in a po-dunk town to a
couple of nobodies; in a tiny stable. Nobody knew about it really; there was no
fanfare to speak of. Despite the fact that we have “super-sized” Christmas, at
the time, most people didn’t notice Jesus birth at all. And even once he was
born, it took this out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere, son-of-a-carpenter-boy 30 years to start showing or telling the
world who he was. God may be BIG, but He tends to act in small, gradual, almost
hidden ways.
Remember the story of Elijah in the
cave back in I Kings 19? The discouraged prophet Elijah is looking for God, and
a huge earthquake comes, but God isn’t in the earthquake. Then a raging fire comes,
but God isn’t in the fire. Next, a hurricane-like wind blows, and yet,
scripture tells us, God wasn’t in the hurricane either. Finally, in the
silence, Elijah discerns God’s presence in a still small voice, what is
sometimes translated as a gentle whisper.
I worry sometimes that in our enfatuation with what
is huge, we might be missing much of what God is saying and doing right here
among us in subtle, tiny, gradual ways. Francois Fenelon once noted that, “God
hides his work in the spiritual order as in the natural order, under an
unnoticeable sequence of events.” Robert Mullholland puts it this way: “The
hidden work of God is a nurturing that prepares us for what appears to be a
quantum leap forward. But what we see as a quantum leap may actually be only
the smallest part of what has been going on in a long, steady, process of
grace, working far beyond our knowing and understanding.”
(Tell the story of Faithful Phil and the Flood?)
In our over-enfatuation with the large
and the big, not only might we miss the millions of amazing little things God
is doing here and now, but we might even be misinterpreting the Bible. Let me
give you an example. You know the story of the feeding of the 5000, right? True
or false – the story says that Jesus took 5 loaves and 2 fish and magically
turned them into a bunch more loaves and a bunch more fish and fed the people
accordingly…?
A dear friend of mine from seminary set
me straight on this passage. He lived a very different life than most of us
have. He’s Ethiopian and was one of the leaders of the church there in the
1970’s when the communists came in and took over the country in a bloody coup.
One of the first things the communist regime did was gather all the leaders of
the Ethiopian Orthodox church to give each bishop a choice – either renounce
his faith or be imprisoned in a 7x7x7 concrete cube in the hot desert. My
friend, Bishop Abuno Paulos chose imprisonment. He lived in a concrete cell with
no windows in the baking desert for 7 years – 7 years! Each day, he was given
one “meal” consisting of a small crust of bread and a dixie cup full of water.
I asked him how he could have survived. I’ll never forget his answer…He said,
“When the guard brought my meal each day, I thanked him for it. Then I said
this prayer over the meal every single day…Dear Gracious Provider, please take
this cup of water and this tiny crust of bread and make them enough, I pray.
Multiply it inside me, so that it might nourish me adequately. Just make it
enough.” Bishop Paulos concluded this harrowing tale telling me, “I never
hungered in the entire 7 years. I never thirsted. God multiplied it and made it
enough.”
It was Bishop Paulos who set me
straight on the feeding of the 5000. The gospels never say or suggest that
Jesus made more bread and more fish; it only says that Jesus prayed over it and
that it was enough…more than enough. Bishop Paulos’s take on this tale is that
Jesus prayed a prayer much like the one he used in the Ethiopian desert. He
then explained, “People in that crowd probably saw how little food there was
for so many and took tiny bits, so that everyone would have some. It was their
spirit of sharing and being concerned for one another’s well being that made
this simple feeding miraculous,” Bishop concluded. I’ve never looked at that
parable the same way since, and now, my bet is that neither will you. We
mustn’t take our fascination with size and bigness and project that onto the
God of small things.
Over my years in ministry and working
with people, I’ve heard and lived some incredible stories of what God has done
with some equally tiny things. Let me share a few of them…
Here’s one that you may know a little
something about. I came across it in the August 20 edition of The Weekly
Choice, and it’s a story that was told by our own Rokko Jans. In paying tribute
to his mother, June, Rokko wrote, “She spent her whole life looking out for
those who needed a helping hand; the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the
needy, remembering Jesus’ words, “Whatever you did for one of the least of
these brothers of mine, you did for me.. No one’s faith was stronger, yet she
took to heart the words of James, “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by
action, is dead.” With my father Paul, she created the first meals-on-wheels
program in America back in the 1950’s, like a mustard seed growing into the
greatest of shrubs.” That program has now grown into an organization supporting
over 5000 senior nutrition programs across the country.” The kingdom of God is
made up of a million mustard seeds, for we worship a God of little things.
In 1988, about 50 miles north of
Chicago, I served a tiny little church in Wildwood, Illinois. I was apart of
clergy association that met every other Tuesday to talk about common concerns.
We had all noticed a dramatic rise in people who had no homes, coming by our
churches looking for help, food, and shelter. The seven of us clergy, despite
our differences in denomination and background, all agreed that we needed to do
something about this. So we came up with an idea of using our church buildings
– each taking one evening of the week – to provide a warm meal and a safe place
to sleep for people to come from Oct 1 through April. We called it Public
Action to Deliver Shelter – the abbreviation was PADS – which worked well
because we also used these brown mini mattresses or pads for our guests to
sleep on. That first year, we served an average of 6-10 guests a night in our
simple little rotating shelter ministry. In 2013 that tiny little effort we
started celebrated its 25th year of operation. It now involves 28
churches in the area, over 2000 volunteers, and they’ve housed over 100,000
people in that time. All from that little tiny idea hatched in a little coffee
shop, where 7 unknown pastors from 7 tiny little churches decided to act as if
the Kingdom of God were already here. The kingdom of God really is built from a
million mustard seeds, for we worship a God of little things.
Back in 1990 on Super Bowl Sunday, a
seminary intern in a tiny Presbyterian church in Columbia, South Carolina
uttered the following prayer. “Lord, even as we enjoy the Super Bowl football
game today, help us be mindful of those who are without a bowl of soup to eat.”
Following the prayer, this seminary intern who delivered his simple prayer then
asked the parishioners to give $1 each for the needy as they left the church
that day. The people in that small church liked the prayer and the idea so much
that they shared it with other area churches and together they raised $5,700
for local hunger centers and soup kitchens that first Souper Bowl Sunday in
1990. Since that first tiny Souper Bowl offering 25 years ago, this “Souper
Bowl of Caring” offering has become a nation-wide effort that has raised over $100 million dollars,
including $8 million just this past February. That’s how the annual SouperBowl
of Hunger offering began – 1 seminary student, 1 prayer, and $1. Talk about a
mustard seed. All because one seminary intern at a tiny little church decided
to act as if God’s kingdom had come. The kingdom of God really is built from a
million mustard seeds, for we worship a God of little things.
Friends, the God we worship is HUGE, and we must
never forget that. But this same God works in and through the smallest of
things – the little prayer, the idea offered at a friend’s coffee table. God
works in and through the tiniest of things, and He expects us to honor and work
through the tiniest of things as well. We are to have His eyes, His way of
seeing, His sense of potential. Do we, in the 1st , value the single
cup of water offered in faith to the thirsty stranger?
What if God’s eye really IS on the sparrow?...What
if the God of this universe really does honor and even prefer the small over
the huge? What if the way we help build the kingdom of God isn’t such a “Big
deal” after all, but rather just a whole bunch of tiny little gestures and
steps?
Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which
a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of seeds, when
it grows it becomes the largest of the garden plants and becomes a tree where
birds come seeking shelter and shade.” What if he really meant it? What if we grew to have faith in the mustard
seed ways of God. What if we set our sites on building the kingdom of God one
tiny decision at a time…one little faithful act at a time? What if one day
people will be telling our stories,
the stories of the little, tiny things we
did with our tiny and insignificant lives that turned into something huge and
beautiful in God’s kingdom and in God’s time. What if…? What if…?
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