Christ, the Mustard Seed

As I have watched snippets of news and the ensuing public responses flood across various media feeds - about Russia and the Ukraine, about Israel and Palestine, about political murders in the United States - and as I’ve read and listened to people on all sides of these issues proclaiming the other is evil, threatening one another with supposedly deserved retribution, I have read this passage from Habbakuk several times: “O LORD, how long shall [we] cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save? Why do you make [us] see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack, and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous; therefore judgment comes forth perverted.” 

While bouldering at the climbing gym this past weekend, I was talking to my friend and colleague in ministry, Martin, about this. We were talking about how the bombardment of the media can make it seem like we’re drowning in a world without any order, justice, real meaning or hope. I said to him: I wonder where God is, why he doesn’t intervene to prevent suffering, if he’s even there at all or if God is just a placebo that makes me feel like life isn’t just a set of oddly particular constants - like gravitational force - that hold our universe together, with no meaning beyond what I can measure. Why have faith in God, in other people, at all when everything always seems to be falling apart. Where do you find hope, I asked Martin. He said something far more profound than it initially sounds: sharing life with one person at a time. 

How does this give you hope, I asked? He said to me, “Jesus is the mustard seed of life. Through him all things are made to point in some unique way, for some unknown amount of time, back to their creator, to God himself.  

So when I talk to the student who is struggling with shame about their bodies, or their lack of this or that, or their jealousy and envy at what others have, or their anger and humiliation, their ensuing judgmentalism and insecurity, borne out of having been continuously berated or neglected by an angry, insecure, frustrated, parent, I see not just their suffering but their desire to experience the love, the peace, the purpose and place, the holiness, for which God made them. I see in them their very origin, their seed, Jesus Christ. 

He is their mustard seed, and through them, and with them, I can help them find that core, and grow into the fullness of who God made them to be. And seeing them grab hold of just the corner of Jesus’s garment, as it were, acting with patience, kindness, gentleness, self control, lending a hand instead of raising a fist, speaking gently rather than caustically with insecurity spouted as self-righteous indignation, engaging with an individual rather than lumping them into some category that they think can be written off as wrong or evil, I see Jesus come alive in them. I see Jesus at work in this world one person at a time, one image of God at a time, I see in each of these together, a kaleidoscope vision of Jesus coming through each of us, to all of us. I see the light actually overcoming a very dark world, a pinprick of light, a light at the end of a dark tunnel, but a light that causes me - no - that compels me to let go of my anguish, my frustration, my sadness, my rage, my need for immediate divine intervention as a condition of my seeking God. I see in those tiny acts of faith borne out of a relationship of persistent love between two followers of Jesus, the very power of God overcoming the overwhelming, chaotic life to which we have bound ourselves.

And I know that if such a tiny seed of hope is in each of us - if Christ is in each of us, if we are truly made in the image of God, as God tells us we are in Genesis - then persisting in faith doesn’t require that I see a mulberry tree moved into the sea, or that I find a way to end wars, prevent poverty, or homelessness, or suffering or death. Rather persisting in faith requires that I step out of my own ambition to both judge and make this world in my own image, according to my desires, and seek Christ in every individual whom I encounter, no matter how much I might struggle to see that seed through the bluster or the walls most of us present to others to protect ourselves.     

You see it is not simply speaking words associated with Christian doctrine, that conveys faith. It is not simply showing up to church on Sunday, that demonstrates you have faith. It is constantly working to share in God’s overflowing grace with and for the sake of others, that illuminates to others that God is still at work in this world. It is engaging with other people in a way that allows the very seed of life to grow up in others, that transforms hearts and minds, and so the concrete things that people say and do in this world. And it happens one seed at a time. For God so loved this world that he sent the seed, Christ, into it, that all might find that seed, and so find life. AMEN