Small Things, Grand Results

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

January 11, 2003

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¹⁵As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,^{£ 16}John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with^£ the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹⁷His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

The Baptism of Jesus.

²¹Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, ²²and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved;^£ with you I am well pleased.".

Last Sunday the Mars rover named "Spirit" touched down on the planet's surface. It is now sending back beautiful color photographs of the red planet.

I don't know if you have seen pictures of the rover; it's about the size of a small coffee table. A few wheels, an antenna on top.  It rolls along until ready to photograph something, then a little arm comes out of the front of the little coffee table, and out of that unfolds another contraption which acts as a camera and the most amazing snap shots are snapped and beamed through radio technology back home millions of milels.

A lot of NASA's hopes are riding on this little robot. There's something to be said about the big influence of small things.

Its little bit like the Scottish minister who told his congregation about dreaming he had died. When he came to the pearly gates, to his dismay, he would be denied entrance until he presented his credentials. Proudly the Pastor articulated the number of sermons preached and the prominent pulpits occupied. But Saint Peter said no one had heard them in heaven. The discouraged servant enumerated his community involvement. He was told they were not recorded. Sorrowfully, the pastor turned to leave, when Peter said, "Stay a moment, and tell me, are you the man who fed the sparrows?"

"Yes," the Scotsman replied, "but what does that have to do with it?"

"Come in," said Saint Peter, "the Master of the sparrows wants to thank you."

Here is the pertinent, though often overlooked, point: great and prominent positions indicate skill and capacity, but small services suggest the depth of one's consecration. We overlook the big influence of small things.[1]

Have you ever heard of the Divine Number?  1.618?  Also known as PHI?  Mathematicians and scientists consider PHI, 1.618 the most beautiful number in the world.  It's a strange little number isn't it.  Not quite as small as 1 and certainly smaller than 2, it holds some of the most amazing secrets in the universe.

When ancient scientists found the secrets of this little number, they named it "God's number."  This little number 1.618, they felt, was God's building block for all of nature. 

          Also called the Divine Quotient, 1.618 is the ratio by which so much of nature can be predicted. Apparently, if you counted up the total number of honey bees in any beehive in the world, you'd find that the female honey bees outnumber the male honeybees.  If you divide the number of female honey bees by the number of male honey bees, you'll get PHI, 1.618.  In other words for every male honey bee in the world, there are 1.618 female honey bees.

          If you measure the rings on a nautilus, or one of those spiral seashells you might find at the beach and hold up to your ear to hear the surf pounding, the ratio of how much bigger each ring on the spiral in relation to the previous spiral is always, PHI, 1.618, the Divine Proportion.

          If you look closely at the head of a sunflower, you'll notice two significant things.  That in that big center of the sunflower, in the center of all those big beautiful flower petals, are rows and rows of hundreds of seeds, thats where those sunflower seeds come from, right in the flower' head.  You'll also notice that the sunflowers are arranged in spirals as well emanating from the cener of the flower head.  Once again, the ratio of how much bigger each ring on the spiral of sunflower seeds in relation to the previous one is always, PHI, 1.618, the Divine Proportion.

Pinecone petals, insects, the arrangements of petals on the stalks of plants all of them are created and arranged and laid out with PHI, the Divine Proportion, the little number 1.618 somehow playing a role.  (94-95, Davinci Codes)

We overlook the big influence of small things.

And so it is with Jesus' Baptism. It's a small thing for Jesus to do. It was not necessary for him to be baptized since there was no sin in his life for which to repent. But he submits to John's Baptism of Repentance anyway. Why? To identify with our sins. He joined in the popular movement of his day. It was a grass roots movement started by a desert monk named John the Baptist. John was calling for the repentance of Israel. Jesus chooses to be baptized because he wants to participate with the people in their desires to be close to God.

It's a small thing Jesus does but what a big influence. It forever marks baptism as the way we Christians publicly declare our repentance and dependence on God's grace.

So the Holy Spirit, the namesake of the little machine doing  so much amazing work, millions and millions of miles from home, descends from the heavens, lands on Jesus and in one little act oopens a door to the heavens for us all.

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Those who are baptized in Jesus do not need to strive after a new life. They have already attained new life through dying with Christ. But they do need to nurture that new life so it can grow and mature. And nurture doesn't mean a big grand and spectacular event, but a lifetime of little seemingly insignificant moves.  That's what church is for. That's what Bible study is for. That's what prayer is for. It is like the Parable of the Sower. Many of those seeds sprouted up, but only a few grew into maturity. The rest withered and died.

          Each of those litle things add up to create a Godly life, each little tiny thing adds up to make a great big, grand whole.

A wealthy businessman was horrified to see a fisherman sitting beside his boat, playing with a small child.

"Why aren't you out fishing?" asked the businessman.

"Because I caught enough fish for one day, "replied the fisherman.

"Why don't you catch some more?"

"What would I do with them?"

"You could earn more money," said the businessman. "Then with the extra money, you could buy a bigger boat, go into deeper waters, and catch more fish. Then you would make enough money to buy nylon nets. With the nets, you could catch even more fish and make more money. With that money you could own two boats, maybe three boats. Eventually you could have a whole fleet of boats and be rich like me."

"Then what would I do?" asked the fisherman.

"Then," said the businessman, "you could really enjoy life."

The fisherman looked at the businessman quizzically and asked, "What do you think I am doing now?"

          For each of these men, the moment spent sitting idly on the dock isn't just a little unconnected, minute sliver of time, alone and meaningless in the expanse of these men's lives.  It represented a little thing that when added upon thousands of others, amassed a wonderful thing - a life enjoyed.

          For the businessman, the life enjoyed happened when each little thing was added up, added to the thing before it, cemented to it to build a strong foundation of little things made strong together to create a life full of resources, more  fish, more nets, more money, more boats, a whole fleet of boats.  Those would enable the humble fisherman to amass more toys, have more ability to move and travel, more options in life, more possessions more power.  All these little miniscule things would, for the businessman, add up to create a life enjoyed.

          For the fisherman, the tiny moment of solitude itself is the building block.  All the moments of silence, the sound of the water lapping up against his boat, the warmth of the setting sun on his back, the satisfaction of having caught enough fish to ut food on his table and the greater satisfaction of being able to sit and repair his nets so that he can go back out there the next day.

          All these tiny moments themselves add up to creating the grand reward of the enjoyed life.[2]

Not long after the turn of the 19th century, there was a man who lived on one of the most thickly settled streets on the East side of New York city. Children coming and going from school would often times see him and stare. He was a little old man with a gray, straggly beard, who dealt in coal and ice. He had his place of business in a dark basement underneath a huge tenement. In winter he sold coal and in the summer he sold ice. He would sell coal by the bucket-load and would carry these buckets up three and four flights of stairs. In the summer, he would buy large cakes of ice, cut them into smaller cakes, and carry them up five, six flights of stairs to his customers. He was always bent under a load. He was called "Humpback," by all those neighborhood kids, though he was really not humpbacked. This little man with the gray, straggly beard, "Jacob the Humpback," died quietly like all humble folks, as he had lived.

"Jacob the Humpback," worked all his life.  He worked hard ahd he worked at a job that maybe to many people didn'tseem to amount to much.  How many little steps had he taken to climb up those tall tenement buildings?  A Million?  2 Million?

          After Jacob the Humpback died, one of those kids who stared at him from the street realized that he had spent his days helping people to stay warm in the bitter New York winters.  He had helped them keep their food fresh, to feed their families by delivering ice for their iceboxes. 

          One of the sons of Jacob the Humpback had become a professor of mathematics in a large university, and another had become a surgeon.

          That little man, with his little life had accomplished more those children on the street could ever have imagined.[3]

Little things add up to grand effects and grand results.

The preacher and seminary professor William Willimon tells about a church gathering where people were taking turns giving testimonies about their religious experiences. One man stood and said, "I was a Methodist for 38 years before anybody told me about Jesus." Willimon said he scratched his head when he heard that. What the man probably should have said was, "I was a church member for 38 years before I really experienced my faith and began to live it." That is, he just didn't understand the weight all those little moments in his life had

Willimon described how the man sounded so smug when gave his testimony.  He made it sound as if there was an instantaneous grand experience that washed away his past, that came out of nothingness. Well, says Willimon, what about all those teachers who put up with him while he was growing up in Sunday school? What about all of those preachers who tried their best to speak the gospel to him? What about all those Christians who tried to tell him about Jesus? Willimon felt like saying, "Listen, pal, it's nice that your faith is coming together, but what do you think we've been trying to get through your thick head for the last 38 years?"

          Little things added upon little things, piled upon other little things, loaded upon thousands and millions of little things create the grand things in life.[4]

And the Holy Spirit, the very same one that descended upon Christ from the clouds in the form of a dove powers the movement behind gathering all those little things together to make great grand miracles.

And Baptism too is one of those little things, and its also one of those cumulative miracles.  One of those little things gathered together by the Holy Spirit to make the Godly life.  Through Jesus' baptism a ritual, a sacrament was born in which we each have participated.  Through each of our baptisms, a life has begun iin the shadow and under the nurturing wings of God, the Creator and Sustainer of life. 

          If we were lucid and maure and adult when baptized, that was a moment of conscious embarkation in living a life renewed and reborn.

          If baptism was at a time in ourlives when all we could comprehend was a parent's warmth or cold or hunger or wet or dry or pain and could only express ourselves through an infantile screaming cry or an endearing cooing smile, then the small seemingly inconsequential step of church membership and recommitment to that early baptism was only a moment, but one that opened the door to yet other grand possibilities.

          Life is a journey of millions of little steps.  Steps of doubt, steps of faith, steps of sadness, steps of gladness, steps of deseration, steps of hope.

          In the 1960's the phrase "one small step for man and one great leap for mankind" was coined as a man took his first steps onto the moon.

          This past week a little robot the size of a small coffee table rolled of a space craft and took some pictures on the surface of Mars.  One even was a small step in the grand possibility of the other.  What other possibilities are out there on the horizon in that journey?

          Where are you in your journey?  Do you remember your baptism?  Do you know how the Holy Spirit has been building and molding the moments of your life?  Do you feel the Spirit moving?  Have you listened the almost silent whispering of its movement?

Jesus took many many small steps in his life, like the first steps into the synagoge to argue with the rabbies at age of 9, like the steps out of Nazareth to countryside beyond his home town.  Like the steps which turned him on the road toward Jerusalem and arrest and crucifiction and ressurection.

Along that journey of a million steps, there were moments of clarity, and sometimes grand miracles Like raising Lazarus from the dead, like when he stood over the city of Jerusalem and knew what he must do and what price he would have to pay, like when he stood up in the Garden of Gethsemane and ended his tearful prayer to God and was resolved that he would be able to carry out what he must, like this moment we see here when the skies open up, a dove descends upon him and the voice of God booms, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

My prayer for each of us is that we too would faithfully and patiently take those little steps.  Those stes that will add up to become a great journey.  I pray too that in our travelling, we will realize as well that the journey itself

is a grand miracle, a gracious gift of God, like that fisherman sitting by his boat and that with each passing step of faith we might find ourselves even closer to our God, to God's wishes for us and for the enjoyment of a Godly life.

Amen.