mustard seed ramblings: part two...

Here's the thing about choosing to live into the way of Jesus: the way of the mustard seed is a lifetime commitment. We will get it wrong at least as often as we get it right. That is how we grow in humility and trust. Honoring the "little way of love," you see, isn't heroic. It is very, very ordinary. Everyday there are blind spots in our shadow to contend with; there are our unique wounds and demons that are always waiting to make an appearance, as well as expectations that our journey downward will one day be accomplished, too. Ours is the road less traveled, entrance by the narrow gate, acts of ordinary love shared with those nearest to us with consistency. T Bone Burnett once sang about illusions in "Trap Door" noting that the funny thing about humility is that as soon as you think you've arrived, you've missed the mark.



The little way of love invites us to have few expectations, to act with tenderness in our immediate circumstances, and to trust that God will lead us deeper by grace. Showing up, opening our hearts to God in prayer, and welcoming real forgiveness is how we incrementally mature into people of Christ's mustard seed blessings. Even with a Damascus Road-like conversion practicing the way of the mustard seed is essential. Remember that Scripture notes that after St. Paul's dramatic awakening, he too went away to practice the upside down wisdom of the mustard seed in a desert community. For three years he lived and trained with wiser elders who showed him the essentials of this new way of living. Small wonder that when St. Paul talked about this he described little acts of love:

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m

nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled. When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good. We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

We drive ourselves wild aching to attend to all the wounds of the world. But this is not the revolutionary little way of Jesus and his love. It is the path of anxiety and inertia. We have been invited to practice - and make flesh - radical hospitality and ordinary generosity with those whom we can touch. Those who are closest to us. Yes, we can raise funds for lawyers and activists fighting the forced separation of children from their parents on our southern border. Of course we can share resources and prayer for a world engulfed by fear and greed. But then we must translate our big picture concerns into little acts of love in the neighborhoods where we live. This not only brings a measure of hope and healing to those closest to us, it strengthens our own hearts with joy.

One of the sobering truths I encountered in my departure from local church ministry is that too often fear or habit drives our decisions, words and actions. This was true for me at times, I know, and likely true for others as well. Sadly, contemporary people are often too busy to make time to listen to others beyond our fears. We hear sounds and voices, but don't have ears to hear or eyes to see. Eugene Peterson cuts to the chase when he illuminates Psalm 40 like this:

A brilliantly conceived metaphor in Psalm 40:6 provides a pivot on which to turn the corner; literally it reads: "ears thou hast dug for me" (azenayim karîtha lî). It is puzzling that no translator renders the sentence into English just that way They all prefer to paraphrase at this point, presenting the meaning adequately but losing the metaphor: "thou hast given me an open ear" (RSV) . But to lose the metaphor in this instance is not to be countenanced; the Hebrew verb is "dug."

Imagine a human head with no ears. Where ears are usually found there is only a smooth, impenetrable surface, granitic bone. God speaks. No response. The metaphor occurs in the context of a bustling religious activity deaf to the voice of God: "sacrifice and offering thou dost not desire . . . burnt offering and sin offering" (40:6). How did these people know about these offerings and how to make them? They had read the prescriptions in Exodus and Leviticus and followed instructions. They had become religious. Their eyes read the words on the Torah page and rituals were formed. 

They had read the Scripture words accurately and gotten the ritual right. How did it happen that they had missed the message "not required"? There must be something more involved than following directions for unblemished animals, a stone altar, and a sacrificial fire. There is God speaking and must be listened to.But what good is a speaking God without listening human ears? So God gets a pick and shovel and digs through the cranial granite, opening a passage that will give access to the interior depths, into the mind and heart. Or–maybe we are not to imagine a smooth expanse of skull but something like wells that have been stopped up with refuse: culture noise, throw-away gossip, garbage chatter. Our ears are so clogged that we cannot hear God speak. God, like Isaac who dug again the wells that the Philistines had filled, redigs the ears trashed with audio junk. The result is a restoration of Scripture: eyes turn into ears. (Working the Angles)

When we lose touch with one another's humanity in our busyness, we not only

quit trusting God's grace, we prevent ourselves from nourishing trust with one another. Trust cannot ripen without time and real time presence. Electronic media has a place, but it cannot duplicate the charism of breaking bread with one another. Or listening carefully to your deepest sorrows. Or just catching up on what is happening in your everyday, walking around life. Peterson puts it like this in his restatement of Romans 12: 

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

The little way of love that Jesus shared is built upon a foundation of everyday listening, loving, forgiving and starting over. Fear, busyness, and habit always work against the blessings of this little way of love. As I look backwards over my years in the local church, I have to own the mistakes I made through fear and busyness. The good news is that there is wisdom in these wounds if I am open to the spirit of that mustard seed.

credits
1. https://fineartamerica.com/featured/sacred-heart-of-jesus-jen-norton.html
2. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/327073991661821260
3. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/477944579182588127