9/22/63

Scripture: Matthew 13: 24-43.

We like to “think big.” We are impressed with the big city; the big budget, the big business. Some years ago, our family visited the Hoover dam. The guide who showed our group about kept explaining that the walls, the generators, and other features were not complicated. “Just big, that’s all,” was his frequent comment.

We think of mighty power connected with bigness. But power does not belong alone with great size. Indeed, we do not need to labor this point any more; for we have heard of the tremendous power which can be released from the tiny atom. We try to believe that this power, latent in the atom, can be used for great good. We know it can be used for untold harm. The atom is too small to be seen with the naked eye or with most magnifying devices. But, despite its smallness, it is known, respected, even feared by every sensible person. We, of our time, ought, more than any generation of people before us, to be acquainted with the might of little things. Yet we are not the first to know that there is power in small things.

Jesus of Nazareth was acquainted with the power of little things, though for far different reasons than ours. His parables of the mustard seed and of the leaven illuminate his acquaintance. Both of these parables are short --- only a couple of dozen words or so; and they make the same point. One of these parables describes the swift growth of the mustard plant from a tiny seed. One of the smallest of plant seeds, the plant from which it grows become a large shrub, or small tree, in size. [Matthew 13: 31, 32]. It is like the reminder that mighty oak trees grow from small acorns. The other parable tells of the way in which leaven (many of us call it yeast now) permeates the meal, or flour, used in making bread. [Matthew 13: 33].

Both of these parables dealt with things quite familiar to every one of Jesus’ listeners. They, like Jesus, had seen these things almost every day of their lives. The mustard tree flourished in many valleys of Palestine. It was alive with birds feeding on its seeds. The birds were at home there. The people who heard Jesus may have been able to look out and see the mustard plants as he spoke. Bread was baked daily -- sometimes for each meal -- and leaven was needed for it, except on those days of special religious observance when Jews expected to eat unleavened bread in conformity to their law.

Perhaps there are not many of us who have seen a mustard tree. We are not familiar with the plant. And many of our children know bread chiefly as it comes from the counter of the bakery or the shelf of the grocery store. Many of us live on the food that others have prepared or have made available to us from a grocers shelf. I do not know what memories the parable of the leaven may stir in you, but I have a few memories. When our own children were being fed home-baked bread, it was usually leavened with modern, packaged yeast from the grocery store. In the South Dakota farm home where I was nurtured as a child, the bread was usually started with dry yeast, also from a store; but not always. Sometimes the dough was treated with a bit of the dough from a previous batch, which had been saved for that purpose as a “starter” for the next baking. In any event, that leaven was the mysterious ingredient which made the difference between baked pasta or the fluffy, golden-crusted loaves which so tantalized my appetite as Mother took them out of the oven.

If Mother ran out of yeast cakes, or had no starter from the previous baking-day, it meant a trip to the village store or to a neighbor’s home to get some more. Without it the flour and water, mixed in a big bowl, was a paste mixture with no possibility for dinner. But, with the addition of the mysterious leavening yeast, the paste became dough, heaving and bulging in the warm pan; and the dough became bread in the oven, and the bread from the oven became food fit for a king!

Quite likely Jesus had been one of the millions of children who have crowded around a mother on baking day to see how the dough was mixed, kneaded, and prepared for the oven. He, like any other child, probably watched every move with an eye that missed no detail and a mind that sensed the meaning of all that he saw. On the occasion of some family feast, he may have seen Mary prepare an unusually large amount of food. Taking three measures of the ground-up wheat, she put a little leaven into the big batch of dough, and it leavened the whole amount! The leaven, then as now, could act up. It could go sour and spoil the meal even as it worked on it. When that happened, everything had to be thrown out and a new start made all round. Jesus had that in mind when he warned his hearers, saying “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees” [Mark 8: 15] which he felt was corrupting religion by reducing it to form and ritual alone. He concluded that they spoiled everything they touched because they themselves were evil.

How richly Jesus used the illustration that came from his boyhood experience, as he tried to get his disciples to see their place in bringing the kingdom of God to reality. He saw in the leaven or yeast which Mary put into the kneading trough filled with wheat or barley flour, the kingdom of God being put into the world by God through him and his disciples. They were few in number, and unimportant in influence or power. Yet, through them, the entire family of mankind was to be molded and shaped by the power of the kingdom of God. Jesus knew the might which resides in little things. It is as though he were saying to his disciples three things: (1) small things can transform large ones; (2) time is required for the transformation (the leavened dough must have time to rise before it goes to the oven); and (3) someone must do it, must know what he is doing and believe in it completely.

Most of us learn, sooner or later, not to underestimate the power of little things, at least in some areas of life. When a tea party or reception is being prepared in one of our homes, the unimaginative male eye may suppose everything to be in readiness a couple of days in advance. But not so the eye of the ones who have charge of the final decoration! They say there are a “few little things to do” and then the house will ready. And those “few little things” involve decorations in several places -- a bowl of flowers placed just right on a strategically-located table; various accents which bring a quality of unity and beauty in appearance, dressing up the whole house.

When one reads a bit of the history of the church in Wisconsin, one finds the name of Rev. Stephen Peet written rather large in Protestant annals. Stephen Peet was the “missionary agent” of the Presbyterian church who helped people to start their churches in the pioneering lumber and mining communities of the Wisconsin wilderness. Not only did he work with those of Presbyterian preference; he also helped to organize Congregational churches for those who preferred that kind of local ecclesiastical government and expression. In his later years, Rev. Mr. Peet had one Congregational pastorate, and helped to establish Beloit College, a church related school.

But Stephen Peet knew that churches had not only to be established, but kept growing through the years. There must be ministers available to help in the spiritual and numerical growth of the churches. And these ministers must be trained men. So he took a moving hand at helping to establish, in Chicago, a seminary for ministerial training. It was the beginning of what became the Chicago Theological Seminary, and it was to prepare many hundreds of men and women for Christian leadership in the churches of the Midwest, and all over the growing nation, and to the ends of the earth. Of the nine latest pastors of this church, eight were trained at that school. Many of the other churches in Wisconsin have been served by pastors who were educated for their calling at the Chicago Theological Seminary. Other men and women have gone into service with the churches of Illinois, Iowa and the other states near and far, from New England to Hawaii. Some have entered missionary service in other countries. Some have gone into denominational leadership; some into chaplaincy. It was a great and awesome and confident venture of faith that led Peet to join with others in founding a Seminary through which God could add to the kneading trough of emerging churches the leaven of a faith that has been justified by the fruits of what they did. The leaven of faith continues to work wherever it is given a chance to work, when people put it deep within some area of great need.

We are surrounded by gigantic events and by the tremendous events of contemporary society. And, faced with this magnitude, each one of us is tempted to throw in the sponge and to say, “What can one person do in all this?” This is not necessarily the cry of the chronic quitter; it is likely the honest question of the earnest person who wonders whether or not he can really get something done with his own life.

What can one person do? The answer needs to be phrased carefully. Harold Bosley says it can be given in these words: One man can do “not as much as he wished but much more than he thinks.” And instances of this abound in every field.

Years ago, the Rev. Graham Taylor, a teacher in the Chicago Theological Seminary, decided that academic teaching was not enough for him to be doing. He moved his family into a needy neighborhood in the city of Chicago, and they made of their home a neighborhood house that became the Chicago Commons. Desperately discontented people were invited to “spout off” their grievances at the neighborhood meetings in the home. All sorts of self-help community ventures were launched from the neighborhood meetings. An impact was made on the City Council, and the Chicago city fathers learned to respect what came to their attention from this source. Graham Taylor made regular contributions to the newspaper, alerting the city’s news readers to various kinds of need for civic action.

Students at the Seminary where Graham Taylor would come to teach in the morning learned that his lectures were apt to begin with the last thing that Taylor saw as he came in the door. It was all the influence of one man --- not much, but enough to help stir the conscience of a whole city. He put his life, like leaven, into the metropolitan life --- especially in an area of great need. He encouraged others to do likewise. And they put a permanent mark on the character and conscience of that great growing community of people.

The parable of the leaven helps us to understand some things that have happened in the history of the United States. In the 1770s, great confusion, and much debate, raged over what course the colonies should take in relation to England. The colonial people were in trouble with the Mother Country on numerous counts. The Stamp Act had been passed and was a grievous source of bitterness for all, even for those who tried to remain loyal to England. What should they do? Few had any adequate answer, until Thomas Paine put a little book called “Common Sense” deep within meal of colonial life and thought. He said in that book that the aim of the colonies was summed up in a single word: Freedom. “Freedom is our natural right,” he wrote, “and therefore it is our lawful objective and purpose. Let all that we do be done in the name of Freedom and let us live and die for her.”

The leaven of “Common Sense” spread quickly. Soon the little book was plentiful and was eagerly read. Whatever may have Thomas Paine’s shortcomings, Americans and others owe him a continuing debt of gratitude for having the insight and courage to serve the cause of freedom as he did nearly two centuries ago. If we take freedom for granted, or try to, and turn our gaze away from it, someone tries to steal it, or stifle its workings. Freedom continues to be a leaven; it continues to need people of vision and courage who will put it deep within the life of a world addicted to various kinds of totalitarian power over fear-ridden peoples. If it appears a little thing, remember its divine power.

When I was a theological seminary student, it became my assignment to make studies of the life of John Wesley, the Anglican clergyman whose followers later established the Methodist Church. Wesley lived in a time of slow decay in the morals of 18th century England. No one knew it until Wesley inserted himself, with dynamic faith, deep within the life of the country. When church doors were closed to him, he took to the fields in order to reach the ears of hostile coal miners who had no use for the religion of mine owners and operators. His influence reached into every area of English life in the 50 years of his unconventional, but effective, ministry. It is instructive to know that responsible historians assert that the great Wesleyan influence saved England the kind of bloody revolution that France went through.

Wesley’s dream of re-forming the established church, of which he was a lifetime member, was never realized. And his followers founded another church. But his confidence in God was such that he knew some other great good would come into being because of the workings of God through this ministry.

A couple of centuries before Wesley, Martin Luther and John Calvin waged telling moral warfare against corruption in the church on the European continent. It was done at the risk of their lives. Not only was the Reformation set in motion, but the cleansing movement within the established church called the “counter-Reformation” resulted from the reformers’ influence.

What could one person hope to do in the face of things as they were in the First Century? Rome reigned ruthlessly. Judaism was subjugated, but seething with revolt. Religion was fettered, if not stifled by formalism and superstition. What could one person do? Phillips Brooks tells what one man did under the heading: One Solitary Life. “Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another obscure village. He worked at a carpenter shop until he was thirty, and then for three years he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never owned a home. He never set foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He had no credentials but himself.

“He had nothing to do with this world except the naked power of his divine manhood. While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. His executioners gambled for the only piece of property he had on earth, while he was dying -- and that was his coat. When he was dead, he was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

“Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone and today he is a center piece of the human race and the leader of progress. I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, and all the navies that ever were built, and all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as that one solitary life.”

So says Brooks about the life of Jesus. Strange as it may seem to put it this way, each church that bears his name is a part of his continuing effect upon mankind. The leaven of his life, and the kingdom of God, which he put so deep within humanity in the first century, continues to work for the realization of that kingdom in the lives of people. And this process will continue.

What can one person do? It depends on several things: on the person; on the truth of what he wants to do; on the completeness with which he spends himself in the doing of it. Spectators need not apply for honors. Only those who give themselves -- all that they are and have, will believe in the power of small things enough to succeed.

Howard Thurman has written: “Again and again, we are impressed with the fact that little things can make big differences. A little act of kindness at a moment of great need makes all the difference between sunshine and shadows. A smile at the right moment may make an intolerable burden lighter. Just a note bearing a message of simple interest or concern or affection may give to another the radically needed assurance. A simple ‘Thank you’ has softened many a hard situation, or punctured the crust of many a ‘hard-boiled’ person. There is always a place for the graceful gesture, the thoughtful remark, the sensitive response. It is what may be called ‘living flexibly.’ There is often confusion between formality and ungraciousness, or informality and graciousness. One may be gracious without fawning and affectation. There is no finer compliment to be given than to say: ‘You are very kind. To know you is to make life itself a more satisfying experience.’ This means that such a person has learned, or developed, or been born with, the fine art of gracious living. It is the antidote to much of the crudeness and coarseness of modern life. Our reputation for bad manners and for rudeness in unenviable. The derogatory names that we use to tag other peoples, and other races, the supercilious flippancy used as the common coin of daily communication, all these reflect a carelessness in living that hurts and bruises, often where there is no intent to injure or destroy. It is true that little things often make big differences.”

All of us who are in the church need to have a continuing look at these parables of little things like mustard seed and leaven. We need to be saved from cynicism, from futility, from callous ignoring of the power of little things.

There is, everywhere, an alert awareness of the seriousness of these days. There is a widely held, and profound, conviction that the Christian gospel has a saving word for mankind. Christian people, and the church, must be willing to be thrust deep within the mass of problems and dangers in today’s living in order to speak the divine word from within.

Let the 20th century be remembered as the age in which Christians took seriously our heritage of love and put it so deep within the thought and life of nations and peoples that it brought into being a saving unity, compassion, and community among them. Let the “age of the atom” become the “age of saving love.”

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, September 22, 1963.

Imiola Church, January 11, 1970.

The Union Church of Istanbul, April 5, 1970.

Waioli Hui’ia Church, January 21, 1973.