The lessons are found
here.
I like when we open the windows at Christ Church in the summer and hear the sounds of the city while we pray. Buses beep, radios play, motorcycles roar and people shout. The cadences of the city fall in with the cadences of our prayers, and we all pray together. At first, I am distracted by the noise; then I feel like I am being called by the din to come back into the world to worship there, “not only with our lips, but with our lives.”
Old movie buffs know
On the Waterfront, which begins when Joey, who is willing to testify to the Commission about mob corruption on the docks, is thrown off his roof by a couple of goons. The kindly, disinterested priest arrives to pronounce last rites over Joey and then counsels Joey’s enraged sister, Edie, that “time and faith are great healers.”
Edie confronts him: “Time and faith? My brother's dead and you stand there talking about time and faith? Who’d want to harm Joey? Tell me, who?”
Embarassed, the priest just says, “I wish I knew,” and turns to leave.
“Don’t turn away,” she shouts, grabbing him, and forcing him to look at her dead brother. “You’re in this too, Father.”
“Edie,” he says, “I do what I can. I’m in the church when you need me.”
“’In the church when you need me?’” she sneers back. And then the line worth the rental: “Was there ever a saint who hid in the church?”
Saints don’t hide in churches, they live in the streets of the city, the corridors of power, and hallways of real, complicated, messy life. Saints teach school, work in hospitals, care for elderly parents, drive carpool for other parents who can’t get off work, bake casseroles for the neighbors, get arrested for civil disobedience at protest rallies, and take extra care to put all qualifying items into the recycling bin.
Saints don’t hide in churches, but, like all of us today, saints seek sanctuary in church from the world’s challenges and pain. Church is a temporary shelter from the storm, not a permanent home. We take refuge in Sunday worship to be inspired, to remember the goodness and blessings of God, and to pray for those in need. We come to get loved, supported and recharged. At the end of worship, these words ring in our ears: “Let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.” Those may be the most important words of our liturgy, and we respond like school kids who hear the dismissal bell, “Thanks be to God.”
I have never met a pilgrim that doesn’t want to make a contribution to the goodness of the world. If I had a dollar for everytime I heard, “I want to make a difference with my life,” I’d have enough money to make a difference.
Everything we do makes a difference. Every relationship is important. Every bit of our labor makes a contribution.
I am reminded in the scriptures today that when we set out to transform the world, we seek to do so in a small way, with humility, aware of our own weakness and sin with the evil we confront. When I say “small,” I don’t mean “insignificant” or “trivial.” Scripture reminds us that from the smallest comes the greatest transformation, for in our weakness, God is strong.
In the first lesson, the prophet Samuel is charged by God to anoint a new king for Israel, as the first king, Saul, hasn’t worked out so well. God has arranged for Samuel to pick from among the sons of Jesse, the Bethlehemite.
Samuel stands before the sons of Jesse. Eliab, Jesse’s oldest, is quite tall and strong. Samuel assumes that he is the one God will pick as King. God says, No. "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart."
Samuel cannot find a potential king among Jesse’s seven sons. Perplexed, he asks, “Are all your sons here?”
Jesse replies, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” Like Cinderella who is hidden by her family when the Prince comes to see whose foot fits the glass slipper, David isn’t strong enough or big enough to be included on the A-team. He sent for, and he is chosen.
David’s heart was faithful and courageous. When he confronted the Philistine giant Goliath, he first put on the armor of a king, but it was too big for him, so he left it behind. He went up against Goliath with five small smooth stones he took from the river. Those stones represent the Torah, meaning, he went against Goliath just with the faith in the word of God. With one small stone and a simple slingshot, he could defeat the evil before him. With a great faith, small gifts are made large.
David was quite content being small. Jesus says, “"With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."
Jesus himself is like that mustard seed. In terms of what the world values, Jesus was a very small person. He had, in the world’s view, an illegitimate birth. He was a peasant. He came from the outskirts of society. He had no diplomas or credentials. He hung out with the weak, the lost, the sick, the shunned, the lunatic, and the sad. He had no wealth; just he clothes on his back. When he entered Jerusalem to challenge the powers that be, he rode on a donkey, not a horse. The powers that be, in their bigness, squashed him, killed him, and assumed that someone so small would be of no consequence.
But, like the mustard seed, Jesus fell into the ground, and from that seed planted in the tomb, a new kingdom began to grow, not of earthly power, but a kingdom built on the small things of forgiveness, love mercy and righteousness.
Here is the rub. The Church, which I mean in an institutional way, is drunk with the wine of the world, and becomes addicted to bigness. Church builds buildings that are big, and creates doctrines and dogmas that makes people feel little. Is the Church missing the message of David, and of the mustard seed?
You are not here to make the church big; the church is here to make you powerful in your smallness. Like David, all that is needed is your faith in the righteousness of God. See yourself as a mustard seed, and realize that even in smallness, you, with the power of the resurrection, can grow big.
I am a great admirer of Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12-step movement. Christ Church hosts six AA groups a week. At its heart, AA is powerful because it is a collection of people who admit powerlessness over something that they want to control, but cannot. They must give over this powerlessness to a “power greater than ourselves,” which for most is God.
AA has no central administrative structure, no CEO’s, no fundraising departments. AA is a grass-roots movement. AA is small, yet it is powerful. Think of how AA has transformed the way society approaches addiction. AA’s power comes both from its smallness and its belief in powerlessness of those who create it by gathering.
The Christian faith is very much about embracing weakness. Not only do we admit our weakness, we come to trust our weaknesses.
Jesus may have
seemed weak, just as the mustard seed seems small. From weakness comes strength, from smallness comes power to do God’s work, one small step at a time.