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 performers 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 and spirituality 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 tonight is this…What if…what if God isn’t as interested in big things
as we tend to be? What if God is way more interested in little things than we
are? What if…?
Who’s up for a little Bible quiz??? When Jesus
was asked what the kingdom of God was like, what did he choose to compare it
to…? A mustard seed, the tiniest of seeds…a tiny bit of yeast hidden in dough.
The God we worship may be extra large and has all the power in the world, but for
some reason, decides to act in tiny little ways, in behind the scenes ways, in
gradual ways.
(Here Rokko played and sang Randy Newman's "Dayton, Ohio 1903)
In case you don’t believe me, think
about Christmas for a moment… The God of the 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. Most people didn’t notice it 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 Elijah in the cave – 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 but God isn’t in the
fire. Next, a hurricane-like wind blows, and yet, scripture tells us, God
wasn’t in the hurricane. 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 we might be missing much of what
God is saying and doing. And I think one of the reasons we miss so much of what
God is up to is that we are so enthralled with the big that we fail to hear or
see all that God is 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.” (p22)
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.” He 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. How does that great old gospel hymn go, Melissa…”His eye is on the
sparrow…” Sing it, girl…
(His Eye is On the Sparrow… sung by Melissa Ludwa and Rokko Jans)
One
of my favorite gospel stories is known as the Widow’s mite. It goes like this… And Jesus looked up and saw the rich
putting their gifts into the treasury, 2 and He saw also a
certain poor widow putting in two mites. 3 So He said, “Truly I say to you that this poor
widow has put in more than all; 4 for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings
for God,[a] but she out of her poverty put in
all the livelihood that she had.”
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…
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.
This next mustard seed story is a little closer to
home. In 1972, an informal meeting of 7 area men who were concerned about land
and land use in the Little Traverse Bay region took place. That little, tiny
conversation spawned what is now known as The Little Traverse Conservancy. In
43 years, this little idea has protected more than 40,000 acres across 5
northern Michigan counties. The LTC now has over 4,100 pledging members. In the
last year alone, the educational arm of the conservancy had more than 5,500
students participate in one of their summer trips or programs. It all started
with just a tiny little mustard seed-like meeting.
Here’s
one more… Who do you think said this: “I never look at the masses as my
responsibility. I look at the individual. I can only love one person at a time.
I can only feed one person at a time. Just one, one, one. You get closer to
Christ by coming closer to each other. As Jesus said, “Whatever you do to the
least of my brothers and sisters you do to me.” So you begin…I begin. I picked
up one person; maybe if I didn’t pick up that one person, I wouldn’t have
picked up 42,000. All my work is only a drop in the ocean. But if I didn’t put
my drop in, the ocean would be one drop less. Same thing for you; same thing in
your family; same thing in your church…So just begin…one, one, one.” Any
guesses…? That was Mother Teresa who said that. Mother Teresa. Isn’t that
incredible? Talk about mustard seed faith!
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 note written on a napkin, 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 this time
and place, 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?
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 think and act out of that mustard seed
faith, so that 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…?
(Sing Inch by Inch – the Garden Song…
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