It is easy to dwell on accomplishments – especially when they are truly great – and miss the truth behind them: it isn’t about us.
an image of something special
Mark 4:26-32
Reading the accomplishments of James Lloyd Breck has a way of humbling a person. Founding seminaries and collections of churches—this sounds like a tall order in the best of times.
For those of us called to share in ministry today, in the midst of a health crisis for which our culture has not truly prepared, it could appear even more so.
As I wrote on my blog yesterday, there’s a sense that we all have to do something. We might not know what, but we’re sure there’s a thing. And yet, we also know that there is no specific thing at all. It’s just us.
How fitting would it have been to draw a saint from a different era? Perhaps one riddled by the plague or the fall of empire. We could steel ourselves with a common experience lived out through monastic piety, transforming our homes into monasteries for worship and service. Perhaps we too could save the faith through its darkest time.
But instead, we’ve got Mr. Productivity. Mr. Let’s-Start-ANOTHER-New-Thing. As if the LAST one weren’t enough.
Reading about James Lloyd Breck makes me feel insufficient.
And yet, that gospel story from Mark reminds us something our tender egos too easily forget and too struggle to remember—
Breck is not the author of his own greatness.
We live in a culture that uses the phrase “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” while completely ignoring the physical impossibility of such a thing. Some of us have a hard enough time getting up from tying our shoes, let alone pulling ourselves up by their laces.
This image, so evidently ridiculous, has been fashioned into a kind of true wish-fulfillment. That our rugged individualism can cause so great a thing as magic. A magic that we author to the world. Our effort can be so great, that we can will ourselves up by our own laces, even when we have no shoes.
It’s a thought nearly as comical as it is terrifyingly deluded.
Jesus reminds us that we are neither magicians nor the true authors of the greatness we encounter. It all comes from God.
And just in case we’re worried that there isn’t enough there for us; that our belief is too weak, too small, too piddly a thing, Jesus throws another one at us.
A mustard seed, the tiniest of things can grow into something truly great.
But that isn’t my favorite part of that teaching. The best part is what that seed grows into:
A bush that is taller than a tree.
A shrub, again, the small seed becomes the small plant. A nothing plant. But it grows so mighty that its branches outperform a mighty oak’s. That birds come and nest in its shade.
So how does that perspective flip it around for us? For those of us scrambling to find purpose in a chaotic moment. Who feel insignificant next to those who accomplish so much.
It tells us that we’re looking at it all wrong.
Even those of us who are seeds, shrubs, God can transform the things that hold us back.
And such a thought is important in this moment. When we are trying new things, creating new communities, and transforming how to be the church in this world.
Breck didn’t found institutions for their own sake. He proclaimed the Good News. God did the work. God does the work.