Lame

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
June 13, 2021

6 Proper B 

          Some years ago, Episcopal Retirement Homes bought a low income apartment building in the city where I was the rector of the Episcopal Church.  This seemed like a natural outreach for us, and we developed great relationships with the residents by having a quarterly birthday party for them and hosting other events together.  One Christmas, the outreach team decided to adopt the residents much the way that we had adopted schools for Christmas in the past.  The question was what to do for them.  We talked with the building manager, who knew the residents well, and finally came up with the idea to give each of the 88 residents a $25 gift card to Meijer or Wal-Mart.  This would be a stretch for the church, but that is a good thing.  The problem for me was that the idea of gift cards seemed rather lame.  Gift cards seemed impersonal at best and sort of uncaring at worst-like we had not put a lot of thought into the effort.  However, I kept my mouth shut and between Thanksgiving and mid-December we collected 88 plus gift cards.   The youth group put the cards in envelopes with each resident’s name and decorated the envelopes in the spirit of Christmas which, I admit, did make the gifts a little more personal and thoughtful.

          When the day of the Christmas party arrived, the room was festive and there was lots of great Christmas energy in the air.  The church provided a lovely Christmas dinner for the residents which we all sat and enjoyed together.  After dinner, much to the surprise of the residents, we began calling out names and distributing the envelopes.  As the residents opened the envelopes and found their gift cards, there were shrieks of delight and even some tears.  We heard comments like “Now I can bake Christmas cookies for my grandchildren,” “Now I can make Christmas dinner,” and “Now I can go Christmas shopping for my family.”  I, who had thought the project was impersonal and lame, was stunned at their joy.  Gifts that seemed so small, impersonal and thoughtless to me meant the world to those who received them and told the residents, both individually and collectively, that they were valued and loved.

          This morning, in our scripture readings, we hear about small things with a big impact.  First, we hear about the call of David, the smallest and youngest of Jesse’s sons.  God’s choice of David is a surprising choice.  First, God sends Samuel off to find Jesse the Bethlehemite because God has chosen a king from among Jesse’s sons. Jesse’s grandmother was Ruth, a Moabite so not a pure Israelite, making anyone from her family a surprising choice for a king of Israel. Secondly, Samuel is looking for the next King of Israel, so the oldest son would be the obvious choice and if not the oldest, then the strongest, or the smartest, or the most experienced.  But God says "Do not look on his appearance, or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord does not see as mortals see. They look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart."  God has chosen David, the very youngest son.  David, the least likely son from an unlikely family, is anointed king in the presence of his brothers, and, we are told, "the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward."                                                                                                                               

         This morning, we also hear Jesus say "The Kingdom of God 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." When Jesus began his ministry, his first words were "The Kingdom of God has arrived, repent and believe in the good news." This parable tells us that the Kingdom of God is growing in our midst, starting from something so small as to perhaps look useless and eventually becoming so large that all the birds of the air can make nests there.

          The parable of the mustard seed and the story of the call of David remind us that God will take what we have to offer, even when we believe our offering is too small or too lame to make a difference and use our offering to help bring about the Kingdom of God.  When we think that the time we have to offer is not enough to matter, or the money we can give won’t make a difference, or our one voice won’t make a difference in a problem so large as racism in our community, we are called to remember the mustard seed, or the little boy who became a great King, or the difference a seemingly small gift card made for the residents of a low income apartment complex.  If everyone thinks they will not make a difference, nothing will ever change.  But when we all believe that our lives, our voices, our dollars matter in bringing about the Kingdom of God, amazing things will happen.  We have seen this in our very own community in the past two weeks as person after person has spoken out against the events on Memorial Day that put Hudson on the global map.  Out of a very bad situation, many of us have learned a piece of history that we did not know, which is the role black people had on the development of Memorial Day.  What some tried to silence was shouted around the world.  The mustard seed that is the Kingdom of God may be tiny, but it cannot be silenced or stopped.  God calls us to use what we have, no matter the size, no matter how seemingly small, lame, or meaningless, to be part of the growing Kingdom of God, and then to be amazed at what can happen when we all work together.  For there is a great deal of work to be done.

                                                                             Amen.