New Testament Reading—Mark 4: 30-34
The Bible tends to be a bit biased when it comes to things like faith and hope, so this morning I thought each you deserved to hear a more balanced perspective. Just as it is good to sometimes familiarize oneself with both sides of an argument or read op-ed pages from two competing newspapers, I want to read to you this morning a perspective that is different from the one in our scripture for today. I found it a few days ago when I was digging holes outside my office door to plant a few more blackberry bushes. As Joan Blair and John Bradley know, that is just what our church needs. This different perspective came in the form of a letter and it reads:
“To whom it may concern: I am a mustard seed. Because it is easy to forget us mustard seeds, let me remind you who we are. We are the smallest of all seeds, and no one, I repeat, no one, has it as bad as us. The sesame seed and the poppy seed like to moan and groan, but they are lucky compared to us. People appreciate sesame seeds and poppy seeds. They’re best sellers when it comes to bagels, but not us mustard seeds. They mash us up and add yellow food coloring because we are not good enough as we are. If that isn’t bad enough, they then squirt us out of bottles onto these slimy and sweaty carcasses of meat called hot dogs.”
“But our problems begin much earlier when humans first get their rotten hands on us. It’s then that they plant us way down deep in the soil. And, to think they believe they are doing us a favor? How would they like it if some big hand came down from the sky and planted them miles underneath the ground where they are surrounded by dirt with no tunnels or elevators to get out? They don’t realize how hard it is for us to get back to where there is sunlight. When we do finally get back up there, we then have the misfortunate of growing into shrubs. Who wants to be a shrub? We’re not like the mighty cedars used by kings to build royal palaces. We are just lowly shrubs, lowly shrubs who everyone else pesters and abuses. Think of all the birds that land on our branches, poke us with their claws, and then make nests on top of us. It’s hard to believe humans complain about something as small as lice. They haven’t had any hawks making nests on top of their head.”
“Some might ask how we possibly manage to cope with the misfortune of being a mustard seed. What is the religious meaning and significance of all this pain and suffering that we go through? Well, I believe in karma, and I believe that one day all those pampered and self-absorbed humans will come back as mustard seeds. Then, they will find out how hard life really can be. Signed, One Angry Mustard Seed”
Yikes, that puts a damper on today’s reading. Well, if we are going to listen to both sides of the story, here is another example: In 1998, Danusha Goska attended a conference on Spirituality and Ecology in the basement of a Catholic Center in Bloomington, Indiana. A number of participants had told their stories of noble deeds and struggles, but the drive and hope of these few was not felt by all. Not everyone can plant trees in Africa or boast of their involvement in the early feminist movement. Eventually, out of frustration, a woman said, “I want to do something, but what can I do? I’m just one person, an average person. I can’t have an impact. I live with the despair of my own powerlessness. I can’t bring myself to do anything. The world is so screwed up, and I have so little power. I feel so paralyzed.” Perhaps, it was this last word that especially upset Goska. Goska at the time had a debilitating illness that on some days literally paralyzed her. The illness is called perilymph fistula and has symptoms similar to those of multiple sclerosis. On bad days, Goska could hardly stand and had to stay at home. She had no health insurance, and Social Security had turned down her claim despite the assessments of their “own physician and vocational advisors.”
So it was that Goska raised her hand at the conference and began to explain what it meant to actually be paralyzed. She explained how her illness had taught her that her own laments about powerlessness were “bogus.” Sure, there were days when she couldn’t move or see, but there were also days when she could. She said, “The difference between being able to walk across the room and not being able to walk across the room is epic.” Goska then gave an example of what she could do with the power that she did have. At the time she was a graduate student at Indiana University, and every day that she went to campus she would walk along a railroad track. As she walked, she found the tracks “littered” with the hollowed “shells of turtles that couldn’t escape the rails.” There were also turtles that were still alive. She would pick these up and “carry them to a wooded area” nearby. The power that Goska did have was enough for those turtles.
Goska had actually done much more than that. She had been in the Peace Corps. She had worked with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity order. She had also worked as a nurse’s aid earning minimum wage to put herself through school. In doing this rather uncelebrated job, she managed to see her work as a way to serve the sick and dying. She gave the patients the gift of being emotionally and physically touched. She helped make “them comfortable.” She “made them laugh.” She “challenged them.” In return for all that she gave, they shared with Goska what she considers “the most precious commodity in the universe: their humanity.”
Ultimately, Goska’s life has been like that of a seed, a seed that could have given up the hope of making a difference in the world, a seed that could have decided to never even try stretching forth, but instead Goska decided to be a seed that refused to remain smothered underneath the soil. She chose to grow and stretch forth despite the limitations that she faced. It’s because she made this decision to grow that she becomes peeved by people who “live in houses, drive cars, [and] enjoy [good] health,” yet “see themselves as naked, starving, homeless, penniless wretches waiting to be rescued by whomever is in charge.”
She admits that she has her own “three-in-the-morning moments when all of life seems [like a] one exit film noir, where any effort is pointless, where any hope seems to be born only to be dashed like a fallen nestling on a summer sidewalk.” Goska says that when she has those moments, she reminds herself of the neighbor who gave her a ride home when she had had an attack while walking back from the campus in the snow. She reminds herself of the diverse array of volunteers at the food bank who have also given her rides home. She reminds herself of the poor peasants in Nepal who fed her their best food when they found her lost and exhausted in their village. In other words, she thinks of all the people who have been rays of sunlight and drops of fresh water helping her to survive and thrive, even when their efforts often went unnoticed and unrewarded by the rest of the world.
The lessons Goska is now able to impart to others are in some ways similar to the lessons Jesus gave to us. When Jesus told the parable of the mustard seed, he was challenging the Jewish peasants of his day in much the same way that Goska challenged those around her at the conference. The peasants of Palestine were living in the backwaters of the Roman Empire. If anyone had the right to claim they were utterly powerless in the face of such an empire, they did. Yet, Jesus told them this seemingly absurd and ridiculous parable. Whereas the Roman Empire was like the giant cedar tree dominating the landscape, Jesus essentially told the peasants that one day the Empire which ruled over them would be replaced. What was now the tiniest of seeds, the Kingdom of God, the Empire of God, would one day reign over all the land. All the other nations would one day seek refuge in its branches.
For many people today, the idea of being socially active in the quest for a decent and humane world seems absurd and ridiculous. James Hillman is a psychologist who has written about how people find and develop their own calling or vocation. An interviewer once asked him what he thought of “the common belief that social activism is…a distinct calling” that’s “okay for some” people, but “unsuitable for most.” Hillman replied that it was “‘simply nonsense’ to think of public engagement as a separate path, appropriate only for the select few.” He believed that “any true calling impels us toward service to the community, even as the shape that our service assumes will always be determined by the particular passions, strengths, and gifts we have to offer.”
There are countless stories of persons who at first seem to have potential the size of a mustard seed for social activism only to later become highly regarded for such work. One of my favorite stories is that of Suzy Marks. Marks was a housewife in West Los Angeles who had never done anything socially active. During the 1960s and 70s, she had “paid little attention to the Vietnam War” as she concentrated on “raising her kids.” Then, in the 1980s, her rabbi invited her and her husband, a real estate agent, to “a meeting on the nuclear arms race.” Bit by bit, Suzy began to get involved. She stretched herself beyond her comfort zone. A nun invited her to a peace vigil. With trepidation, she went. At first, she stood on the corner with her face covered by a placard. Only every now and then would she show herself before hiding again out of fear “that a friend might pass by and recognize her.” Eventually, with some coaxing by the nun, she began to duck out from behind her sign more and more. Suzy has since “gone on to help spearhead a statewide initiative aimed at converting military facilities to other uses.” She has been arrested for demonstrating at a nuclear test site in Nevada. She has organized against an anti-immigrant proposition. She has joined a group of women who have gone to Guatemala to bear witness to the plight of people there. She has also worked on behalf of “a community-based foundation that supports grassroots organizing among the poor and disenfranchised in L.A.’s ghettos and barrios.”
Suzy started off as a hesitant seed, barely sprouting, but eventually, she realized, as Gloria Steinem once wrote, “that growth comes from saying yes to the unknown.” There is not only the unknown of the world out there, but there is also the unknown of the world in here. As one psychologist has said, “each passage” in life calls upon a part of ourselves that has not yet been realized. As individuals and as a church, there are still beautiful and incredible parts of ourselves waiting to be discovered, if only we are willing to take that first step of faith, to say yes to a life of growth and potential regardless of what may come our way. From one step to the next, we can live taking on the new challenges that life affords us, until one day we can look back and take deep satisfaction in having accomplished what at first seemed absurd and ridiculous. Amen.