Nothing so Small as to be Insignificant
The Last Sunday after Pentecost, Christ the King, November 20, 2021
2 Samuel 23:1-7 • Revelation 1:4b-8 • John 18:33-37
When I was growing up, every year, after school ended for the summer, we would go camping in the eastern Sierras. We camped along Lee Vining Creek, near the town of Lee Vining and Mono Lake. I remember spending nights just looking up at a blanket of stars and being in a state of awe. I could see so many more of them than I could from home. The air was clear and they seemed so much brighter! I remember looking into what seemed like a dark spot in the sky, but found little specks of light ever so faint that greeted my eyes. My fascination and wonder at the night sky remains with me. When I can get away someplace where the air is clear, and where there are few lights, I love looking up and wondering, and just feeling this sense of awe that, in the middle of this vast expanse, we find ourselves right here.
I took astronomy in college and loved it! It was astronomy for non-science majors, so it didn’t involve a lot of math! I remember my professor giving us a sense of how large the universe is and where we find ourselves in it. He explained that, if you imagine the known universe being a sphere that’s roughly 9 kilometers wide, the Earth would be somewhere within that sphere, and, on that scale, it would be about the size of one seventh of a proton. Of course a proton is a part of an atom – it’s much smaller than an atom. Imagine that scale! I remember my professor saying something about how insignificant we are. I imagine a lot of people say something like that, as they look up at the stars, or learn about the expanse of the universe. That this is all just so insignificant.
But the whole of our faith tells us the exact opposite – that the opposite is true. The whole of our faith teaches us that nothing is so small as to be insignificant. This little spec that we call our “island home,” in the vast expanse of God’s created universe, is so, so significant. It’s so significant that God loved all of this into being over billions of years. It’s so significant that God lovingly moved over the whole of Creation, calling it “good.” It’s so significant that God lovingly delivered God’s people from bondage and affirmed their dignity. It’s so significant that the prophets lovingly called God’s people to maintain the covenant God made with them by seeking justice and caring for the most vulnerable. It’s so significant that God came among us in human form, with a baby-sized heart full infinite love, born of a young woman, in a small livestock stable, in a little back-woods town of a little dusty corner of the Roman Empire. It’s so significant that, with words and acts of love and peace, Jesus grew into his ministry and brought healing to those he encountered, and that he called others to do the same. And it’s so, so significant that in the face of his own death, Jesus stood before the Empire and declared God’s truth.
The truth of which Jesus spoke is the truth of God’s reign, or, as Bishop Marc offered, the Beloved Community. It is a reality where violence is replaced with peace; where consumption is replaced with sharing; where the last is made first; a reality where the widow, and orphan, and alien are cared for; a reality where no one sits on the margins; a reign not of power, but of Love, and Mercy, and Justice, and Peace.
In his poem, “The Kingdom,” Welsh poet and Anglican priest R.S. Thomas writes:
It’s a long way off but inside it
there are quite different things going on;
festivals at which the poor man
is king and the consumptive is
healed; mirrors in which the blind look
at themselves and love looks at them
back; and industry is for mending
the bent bones and the minds fractured
by life. It’s a long way off, but to get
there takes no time and admission
is free, if you will purge yourself
of desire, and present yourself
with your need only and the simple
offering of your faith, green as a leaf.
“It’s a long way off, but to get there takes no time.” The truth – the truth expressed through Jesus’ ministry – is that the reign of God is not only beyond the horizons of our lives; it is also right here, right now; we’re in the midst of it. The reign of God is a reality that God draws us into through “the simple offering of [our] faith, green as a leaf.” God’s reign – this Beloved Community – is made real to us here and now, and we reflect it when we accept God’s invitation to love. We are invited to love God, and love our neighbors, through acts of mercy, hospitality, justice, and generosity. And, in God’s Beloved Community, in this community, on this our “island home,” no act of mercy, or hospitality, or justice, or generosity is so small as to be insignificant.
As we commit to making gifts of time, talent, and treasure – as we gather all of our gifts today, know that these gifts, given in love and hope, are an opening for the enormity of God’s love to be shown and shared abundantly. Know that these gifts are an opening for Beloved Community to be more fully realized and expressed. Know that these gifts – of time, and talent, and treasure – are given in love and in hope by you, people who are already gifts to the world – people who are already sources of love and hope for God’s people. And that is so, so significant. And so are you.