Too Small to Fail

“The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle because the harvest has come.”

He also said, “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.” - Mark 4

(If you’d like to listen along…sermon starts at 34:20)

Too Small To Fail

Sometimes the youth ministers at the conservative Christian summer camps I attended when I was a kid would ask questions like, “how’s your relationship with the Lord?”

I never knew what that meant exactly, but it sounded super nosey and maybe a tiny bit passive aggressive. And just the fact that I always had to keep myself from replying I don’t know, how’s your relationship with your secretary shows that I was never the kind of Christian who ever had “a relationship with the Lord” that could be characterized as good.

I assumed that having a “good relationship with the Lord”, relied on a great deal of understanding and a great deal of effort.

Because faith was cultivated by people who worked hard for it, which meant lots of time in church, lots of Bible study,  not to mention watching your tongue, watching your attitude, watching only wholesome TV shows.  None of which I personally was ever good at.

I thought about that this week because the same day I was studying this morning’s parables I was also teaching Luther’s Small Catechism inside the Denver women’s prison.

And in his small catechism Luther says this about faith:

I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort, believe in my lord Jesus or come to him, but the Holy Spirt has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with their gifts, sanctified me and kept me in faith. -Luther

Luther teaches that even faith (the thing we think we give to God) is, like every other good thing, really a gift to us from God, it does not come from our understanding and effort. Which I think means that if you were in an Evangelical in the 80s and 90s, you could have been watching better TV all along and still had faith.

It makes me wonder if Luther was studying our Gospel for today when he wrote this. Because these two parables are nothing if not good news for anxious disciples.

In our first parable, Jesus says that the kingdom is like if someone just sort of tosses some seeds on the ground and goes to take a nap. And while he’s resting from the great effort it took to toss seeds around, God’s work produces of itself. God’s work produces of itself. And I love this part – the dude literally has no idea how. Totally clueless, but still, he reaps all the reward.

Harvesting the goods of God’s kingdom relies not one bit on our understanding or effort. It relies entirely on God’s generosity.

And then in our 2^nd parable Jesus goes on to speak of how God’s kingdom is like a tiny little unimpressive seed, which when sown in the ground grows to becomes what he calls “the greatest of all shrubs” which sounds like saying someone is the smartest of all idiots, but I digress. The smallest, little easy-to-dismiss as insignificant seed becomes the greatest shrub on whose shady branches birds can rest.

Which means the life of faith as portrayed in these two parables is far from the one I spent so much of my life striving for thinking I was volunteering for God’s kingdom when really I was being conscripted without realizing it because I was too busy trying to be good. But honestly, most times when I am TRYING to do good things, when I am SO SURE I am being helpful and holy, it all just kinda goes sideways. It’s humbling for someone who has spent much of her career planting a church and writing books and running conferences and starting big projects to realize that God’s Spirit most often moves among us in small ways we don’t even notice, much less can ever take credit for.

Maybe our best work in God’s Kingdom is hidden from us at the time, so that our egos don’t mess it up too bad. I’m starting to suspect that the Spirit prefers small nudges to grand gestures, anyhow.

Those big impressive moments burn bright and then fade. But the smallest acts plant themselves in us and grow into things that can eventually be of use to others.

A few years ago, just a couple days after my nephew Henry was shot and killed, Eric and I boarded a plane. I was deep in grief and I remember thinking we’d do well to bring back the wearing of black armbands when we are bereaved so people know not bother us with small talk. I think I’d never take mine off. Anyhow, I could not stop myself from crying the entire flight. Tears streamed down my face, which I covered with my hand, wishing with everything I had that I could just be invisible.
When the plane landed, the woman across the aisle casually handed me a small pack of tissues. I took it without managing the courtesy of even looking at her. Eric stepped in and said simply, “Thank you. She’s grieving.” To which the woman replied understandingly ,“I thought so”.

And that was it.

Small as a mustard seed. What felt to me as an epic act of compassion was, I assume, easily forgettable to the tissue giver.

I bet she wouldn’t even remember it.

But I will never forget it.

And I know for sure her small gesture planted something in me.

Because a couple months ago, I was on a delayed flight…with lots of stressed out passengers afraid of missing their connections, when I noticed a woman absolutely sobbing into her hands. I grabbed a pack of tissues, and without making a big deal of it, gently handed them to her without any eye contact. She managed to whisper…I might be missing a funeral. We soon took off and for the rest of the flight we spoke honestly of grief and even shared stories back and forth about both being kids who were chronically ill.

What I am saying is that, this is what God can do with Kleenex. Kleenex and some not very hard working gardeners who don't really understand much of anything.

We have just the tiny things of God at hand with which to help heal ourselves and this busted up world. Small things that easily fit in a child’s pocket. But they are enough.

I cannot say for sure, but I suspect that God’s best gifts are always the smallest. And the weird thing is, they aren’t even rare. They’re everywhere. Even when we don’t realize it.

I say this because Eric and I just returned from 6 ½ weeks of walking across Spain on the Camino de Santiago. And the people in our lives, eager to hear what it was like, ask us to tell them what the highlight was, like what was the best take away…the deepest spiritual lesson…the most profound insight. People want to hear about the big stuff and honest to God all I can talk about is the birds.

See, I walked the Camino before, it was about a week after that nice lady handed my weeping self a pack of tissues. So last time when I walked I walked in grief.

But this time, it was about a week after my Eric and I got married, and so this time when I walked I walked with my beloved and I walked in gratitude.

Now, I don’t know if Spain recently imported millions of songbirds but I literally have no memory of hearing them the last time. Maybe because grief can blanket over our senses. But this time it was like a whole production was being put on each morning. They are real show offs those songbirds of Spain.

So I bathed each morning in their symphonic waters without any understanding and effort of my own. Because the best gifts of God are unearnable.

There is no amount of virtue or charitable giving or activism that I could exchange for the mind-blowing gift of songbirds. Those small, and easily missed little magical musicians of God.

I mean to say that we may look for God in majesty, and big showy-offy miracles and highlight reels and profoundly spiritual insights that we think worthy of bestselling books and there’s nothing wrong with that. But while we do, the smallest, easily unnoticed, not terribly significant miracles surround us in multitude.   

In fact, there is so much beauty in this world that sometimes, I think I might cry from the immensity of it, from the enchantedness of it, from the heartbreak of it. And other times all I can think about is how annoyed I am by how, because of construction, every street in Denver is down to one lane.

And that is a perfectly good life of faith.

I guess what I am saying is that the world is just as filled with the glory of God in the times we notice as in the times we don’t.

Just last Summer I was up in the mountains, looking at the night sky and without realizing it I said “they have so many stars up here”

Um…the sky above Colfax and Colorado has the exact same number of stars as the sky in Summit County.

There are the same number of songbirds on the Camino now as 3 years ago.

Which means that the good things, the tiny beautiful things, the God-scatters-them-all-around-us things don’t go anywhere during the times we can’t perceive them due to the weight of grief or even due to the light pollution of a shiny life. They are always here. And they are always ours. And they are always free. Amen.

My deepest thanks to everyone who supports my work. Because of you, no matter where I am: cathedral, prison, church - I do not need to get paid to preach. All the honorarium for all my preaching goes directly to New Beginnings, the only inclusive Christian community inside the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility. THANK YOU!

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