Insignificant beginnings

The Kingdom of God, Jesus says, begins as something small, unregarded, and insignificant (Mark 4. 26-34).

We see this lived out in Jesus’ own life. In human terms his life was small and insignificant, like the mustard seed. His birthplace was described as being least among the clans of Judea. His home town was a place from which no good was known to come. In appearance he was without beauty or majesty, undesired. In his life he was despised and rejected, unrecognised and unesteemed. In his death he was made nothing. An insignificant man who died in a insignificant part of the world.

That ought to have been the end of it but instead it was only the beginning. From that small beginning, Christ’s body – the Church, the gathering of all those who believe in him – has grown so that for many centuries Christianity has been the largest religion in the world; and that remains the case despite secularisation in parts of the Western world.

The Early Church reveals the same pattern to us. Paul wrote to the Christians at Corinth and says, “think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.” He says in this letter that, in the eyes of the world, Christians are foolish and the message of the cross is foolish.

The same words could actually be applied to us: none of us are major intellectuals or academics; none of us have major influence or power in terms of work or politics; none of us, so far as I know, were born into the aristocracy. The reality is that wonderful as each of us are, we are not major players on the world stage and that makes us, in human terms, one among millions of other human beings around the world. When we think of ourselves in those terms it easy to see ourselves and what we do as being small and insignificant.

We may not like to think of ourselves as being foolish, as well as insignificant, but that is how Paul describes the Corinthian Christians from the perspective of those considered wise in their culture. It is no different today, Richard Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion that God is a “psychotic delinquent” invented by mad, deluded people and our faith in God is a “process of non-thinking,” “blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence.”

BUT what Jesus demonstrates through his life, death and resurrection and what Paul states in his letter to the Corinthians is that “the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.” The Message, a contemporary paraphrase of the Bible, puts it like this:

“Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these "nobodies" to expose the hollow pretensions of the "somebodies"? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ.”

What Jesus has done for us, in giving us a clean slate and a fresh start – points forward in history to a time when the whole world will be given a clean slate and a fresh start. In Revelation 21 we are given a wonderful future vision of God making everything new; of God moving into the neighbourhood permanently, joining earth and heaven together, and making his home with us. Wiping every tear from our eyes as death, tears, crying and pain are all gone for good.

Now we don’t have to understand how this happens. Jesus told the story of the man who scattered seed in his field without knowing how the seed grew. Farmers in Jesus’ day didn’t understand the science of how plants grew but they knew that the process of sowing seeds into soil worked and produced corn. It is not necessary to understand in detail the processes of germination and growth in order for the harvest to come.

Jesus is saying something similar to us. Just as we could not have anticipated that an insignificant rabbi for Israel who was killed after only three years of teaching would become the greatest figure in the history of humanity, so we cannot expect to understand in detail God’s plans for the future of the world; how the Kingdom of God will finally and fully come, how the vision of Revelation 21 is to be achieved.

What we do know though is what Jesus has shown us of the Kingdom of God coming through his life, death, resurrection, and through the change that he has made in our lives and those of others that we know. He introduces the Kingdom of God into the world and into our lives. He is the first fruits, the first sign of that coming Kingdom and, because we can trust him, we can trust that the Kingdom will come both more fully in our lives and completely in the new heaven and new earth.

This is not blind faith because, like the farmer, although we do not understand the detail of how the process or plan works, we know that it does work from the evidence of Jesus and from the evidence of his Spirit in the lives of countless Christians throughout history including ourselves.

And because we know that the process or pattern or plan of the small, the insignificant, the foolish being used by God to achieve great change, we can trust that our lives also have meaning and significance as we put our faith into practice in small acts of compassion here and little words of witness there; at home, at home, in church and in the community. We don’t know what God will cause to grow from these actions and words but we trust that they will take root and grow because that is the pattern that we, and Christians throughout Church history, have observed in practice.

So: “Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don't see many of "the brightest and the best" among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these "nobodies" to expose the hollow pretensions of the "somebodies"? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ.”

unregarded

Birthplace,
least among the clans of Judea.
Home town,
a place from which no good was known to come.
In appearance,
without beauty or majesty, undesired.
In life,
despised and rejected, unrecognised and unesteemed.
In death,
made nothing.
His followers,
not wise, not influential, not noble – fools!

The light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the bodies and form of human beings.
Light shining
through the gaps and cracks of clay pots.
Light shining
in the unexpected places, despised faces, hidden spaces.
Light shining
in the poor, the mourners, the meek, the hungry.
Light shining
in the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers.
Light shining
in the persecuted, the insulted, the falsely accused.
Light shining
in the lowly, the despised, the nonentities.
Light shining
in weakness and fear and trembling.
Light shining
in the foolish followers of the King of Fools.

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MOYA BRENNAN - No Scenes of Stately Majesty.