SERMON: Great Things for God…

PENTECOST 2, 2009 | MARK 4:26-34

I’ll tell you another parable: Once upon a time there was a young man, an Evangelical Christian, who was sitting in church one day, and suddenly felt convicted to surrender his life to the proclamation of the Gospel. So great was his conviction that he instantly rose, went to the altar, took the pastor by the hand, and confessed his call. He stood before his congregation that day, and told them he believed that he had been called to do great things for God. The people approved of his decision, and over coffee hour, made much of him.

 

And despite the fact that the young man was really sincere, real life seemed to get in the way. He went to college, he met a wonderful young woman that he wanted to marry. Soon there was a child on the way and rent to pay. Every now and then during the altar call in church, he would feel a little twinge of guilt, that he didn’t seem to be getting around to doing those great things for God, but he didn’t see any other way ahead given his commitments. But he was young, he told himself, he had time.

 

Until the time ran out. In late middle age, he had a heart attack. He didn’t die, but he realized he would have to take things a lot easier, now. He realized he would probably never do anything great for God. There was no one around, so he was able to let go, and he quietly sobbed.

 

This was how his pastor found him. He surprised the man when he came in and laid a hand on his shoulder. But by this time, the man’s grief was so great, and his sense of guilt so acute that he poured his heart out without reserve. He told his pastor about his call to do something great for God, and how he had just never gotten around to it; how he had wasted his life, how he had failed.

 

His pastor was overcome with compassion, and shushed him. “But look at what you’ve done,” his pastor said. “You’ve had a very happy marriage, you have raised two beautiful children, at the top of their class, you founded your own business and you employ many people. You teach Sunday school and support the ministry of our church with your time and your money. Everyone who knows you admires you. You’ve done everything God requires and then some. What makes you think what you’ve done isn’t great, or that it hasn’t been pleasing to God?”

 

Which is just the sort of infuriating thing a pastor WOULD say. But consider for a moment the truth of it. It’s true, the man did nothing unusual. In fact, it’s so “normal” that it’s hard to care about. It was really, really tempting to end the story by adding,”And then zombies crashed into the hospital room, entangling themselves in the IV, and feasted on the pastor’s brains.”

But I restrained myself, and for a good reason. Just look at this man: He didn’t go to Africa to do AIDS relief, he didn’t spearhead a religious reformation, he didn’t found a homeless shelter. He wasn’t faithful in what we normally think of as a heroic, dramatic way. He DIDN’T do A GREAT THING. Instead, he was faithful in small, inconspicuous ways. He did many, many GOOD things, and that goodness added up to a life well-lived.

We live in an age where we project everything to comic book proportions. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love comic books and popular culture as much as the next guy, but you have to admit that it very often feeds us a pretty warped view of reality. So much so that even I, the guy who wrote this parable, had to fight pretty hard to keep the zombies out of it. Why is it that the quiet heroism of a life lived faithfully day after day is not enough for us?

In our Gospel reading today, we read the very first parable that Jesus tells in the Gospel of Mark. And since Mark is our earliest gospel, this is the very first, the earliest parable of Jesus’ in the canonical scriptures. And, for a first parable, it’s not bad. It’s really clear that Jesus has a long way to go, though. It doesn’t have the power or the punch or the clarity of the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan. Okay, it’s a little weak. But we know he gets a lot better, and it’s always interesting to trace an artist’s development.

One of the reasons it’s weak is that it’s so opaque. Who does the farmer represent? God? Us? Agribusiness? What is the crop? Who does the harvesting? None of this is clear. If he had continued in this vein, Jesus would have gained a reputation for being “Mr. Cryptic” rather than for being a great teacher. Fortunately for everyone he improved. But one thing about stories that are obscure is that they are also malleable.

What it said to me, as I meditated on it, was that even though it seems we are sleeping, growth is happening. Even though we are not doing much, great things are getting done, slowly, often imperceptibly from day to day. A mustard seed, invoked in the companion parable in our reading, grows into the largest of shrubs, but if you looked at it every day, you would hardly notice, because the change is taking place so slowly. Yet a great thing is emerging from this small beginning.

Saints and superheroes work miracles and wonders, they do impossible things that inspire us. We wish we could be them, we wish we could be even half as great as they are. But on this planet, there ARE no flying men in spandex, saints work more miracles in legends than they ever did in truth, and zombies rarely feast on the brains of the clergy–even though many of them deserve it, and I have met some that made me wonder….

Instead, it is as the Buddha says in the Dhammapada, “Do not underestimate good, thinking it will not affect you. Dripping water can fill a pitcher, drop by drop; one who is wise is filled with good, even if one accumulates it little by little.” THIS is how God actually works. Not dramatically, as in the comic books, but quietly, slowly, often imperceptibly, growing goodness like the unfolding of a plant.

We can see this in our own lives, right here in our own community. The word “Salvation” comes from the same root as “salve,” an ointment for healing. Salvation is the healing of souls, and there are few of us whose souls are NOT in need of healing. Salvation rarely happens quickly, despite the dramatic conversion or healing stories peddled by the televangelists. Instead, it happens slowly, quietly, often imperceptibly. It happens by being in community, where, free from our family of origin pressures, we can learn to love others in healthier ways than we were taught, and where we can allow ourselves to be loved. It happens through the sacraments, through which we admit our dependence on God through our participation in such signs and symbols, and through which we receive grace according to the measure of our faith. It happens through our experience of God’s faithfulness, day after day, in the smallest things, through events that inspire faithfulness in us, again, in the smallest of ways. Through these things we slowly transform from the hurting people we were into the kind of people God is calling us to be. Through the slow, quiet work of grace, we are healed, we are saved, and we, in turn, do the work of God.

But this work isn’t great by the estimation of the world. It IS great, however, by virtue of the cumulative effect of millions of seemingly insignificant acts of faithfulness. “Do not underestimate goodness,” don’t think “it will not affect you,” as the Buddha says.

I needed to be reminded of this, this week. I was feeling like a failure as a pastor because I have not been able to spark the dramatic growth in this parish that we have all hoped for. I feel responsible, I feel like I have let you, myself, and God down. I know I’m probably not alone. We have all been working very hard. We’ve put a lot of love, a lot of sweat, and even a few tears into this parish, and even though most of us are proud of the many things we’ve accomplished, it hasn’t been as dramatic as we hoped for. We aren’t flooded with new parishioners, people are not abuzz about our unique, interfaith approach to the Gospel.

Instead, God has been doing something else, something harder to see, something quiet, something true. He has been healing us. For most of us come to this parish with scars inflicted by other churches, with hurts from past relationships, some of them inflicted by our own families. We come to this table tentatively, afraid of being burned again, yet willing to trust just one more time.

Of course, we’re not a perfect community–what would be the point of a perfect community, after all? I certainly wouldn’t be welcome in such a place, with all of my flaws! We are, however, a GOOD community, healthier than most, and one in which the Spirit of God is active, if we only take the time to notice it. We are not doing GREAT things, as defined by the world, but many, many GOOD things are happening here, quietly, slowly, truly, the way God actually works.

As we plan for our future, let’s keep this in mind. God may not be calling us to be GREAT, in some cartoonish, dramatic way. It may be that God continues to call us as he has been doing, calling us to be faithful, calling us to love one another, calling us to the healing of our souls, calling us to reach out–not to thousands, but to one or two people at a time–to touch them with healing, to love them back to wholeness, to provide them safe space to reclaim their spirituality, their faith, their soul once again.

This is not an insignificant calling, and it’s something we do really well. And perhaps the vagueness of Jesus’ parable is helpful. We thought at first that we were the farmer, but perhaps we are the grain. God seems to be sleeping, but he is not. We are growing, not in numbers, perhaps, but in soul. Healing is happening. Community is happening. We are slowly, quietly, often imperceptibly, becoming the kind of people God is calling us to be. And that, my friends, is GREAT. Let us pray….

God, what are you doing, here? It’s hard for us to see it, even harder for us to understand it. Help us to continue our journey in faith that you are working in us, even when we cannot see it, even when it seems like the motion is so slow we seem to be going backwards. Inspire us, by thy Holy Spirit, to be faithful in every small matter that confronts us, even as you are faithful to us, so that, step by small step, we may be transformed into the people you intend us to be. For we ask this through Jesus, who told little stories that continue to yield great fruit. Amen.