Tuesday, March 28, 2017

The Little Things

1 Samuel 16:1-13; John 9:1-41; Psalm 23
March 26, 2017
So often it really does come down to the small details, the little things that mean a lot. I am notoriously lousy at the little things. Ask anyone who has ever worked with me … and, while you’re at it, lift up a prayer for Beth and every other administrator who has ever worked with me! Oh, and, surely another one for Cheryl.
But seriously, you’ve heard about folks who cannot see the forest for the trees? My challenge in life is the opposite: I can see well beyond the forest, but I’m quite likely to smack my head up against a tree that I never even noticed.
Still, even as I am rubbing the sore spot on my forehead, I recognize the importance of the trees and of all of the smaller things that make up the system that supports the tree that stands in the forest that stands in mountain range that stands at the edge of the ocean.
The story of David, from beginning to end, turns on the small things. It starts when God nudges Samuel to notice David’s eyes – the little things lead to David’s anointing. It continues when David picks up five smooth stones, and there is a straight line between the small stone and the fall of the Philistine empire. David’s own fall from grace begins with a small thing: a glance out the window where his eye catches sight of Bathsheba.
The entire story turns on the little things. That’s not unusual. Most of our lives turn on little things – a glance, a moment, a choice, a distraction. The small things add up to huge ones. Every crashing wave is made up of tiny drops of water. The cancer that devastates a body begins with one cell mutation. The life you lead began with a single heart beat.
The smallest unit of a community is one individual. The smallest unit of a nation is a single citizen. The little things matter.
With David’s five small, smooth stones in mind, I’m going to mention five little things this morning. They don’t have any great theological heft to them in and of themselves, but I think they matter. I’m guessing that one or more of these will make you squirm just a bit as you think of your own choices around them. I’m OK with your squirming, because each of these small things is, in fact, something that I either continue to wrestle with in my own life or have come to some resolution only following some lengthy squirming.
The first one is simple – as simple as it is hard: hang up and drive. No, seriously, do that. No call – and certainly no text – is as important as the life of the pedestrian crossing the street in front of you or the guy riding the scooter through the intersection whose red light you missed because you were distracted.
Obviously, there were neither cell phones nor scooters in scripture, but there is great emphasis on paying attention, as the story of David’s anointing reminds us. God doesn’t exactly tell Samuel to hang up and drive, but God all but says “shut up and listen.”
And, yeah, this one is personal. But it’s way more than that: almost a third of all traffic crashes involve at least one driver using a cell phone. The research on this is abundantly clear: it’s not the hands holding a device, it’s the brain distracted by the conversation that matters. The last two years have seen the biggest spike in traffic fatalities in the United States in more than a half century. Traffic experts are clear about the cause: it’s drivers on devices.
If you receive calls that are so important that you can’t let it go to voicemail, then you need a driver. Seriously. If the boss complains when you say, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t answer immediately because I was driving,” give ‘em my number. I’ll refer them to my sister.
The next one is also simple – and, of course, a challenge. What’s for dinner? Or lunch? Or breakfast? Yes, our food choices matter. They matter to our bodies, of course, but they also matter to the wider world, indeed, to the planet, itself.
Food matters throughout scripture, and one imagines that it played a significant roll in the celebration of David’s anointing. Though their concerns were different from ours, scripture frequently focuses on food choices, food preparation, and food justice.
The one personal change that any of us can make that will have the largest impact on climate change is to cut back or cut out consumption of beef. Moreover, how we think about our food not only says something important about how we think about larger systems, the decisions we make about food shape those systems. For example – one small example – take the egg, and, please take the one that came from a cage-free chicken. Choosing to buy cage free chicken eggs is not so much about the life experience of a chicken – although who’s to say that the stardust that became me is more important in the grand scheme of things than is the stardust that became the chicken. No, the choice is about the agricultural system that so profoundly separates us urban and suburban consumers from our rural neighbors that we have completely forgotten that we are, in fact, bound together.
So, yes, what I’m saying is that the entire phenomenon of Donald Trump can be explained by looking carefully at the life of chickens. I’m not going to do that this morning, but if the whole point is to remember that little things mean a lot, then we begin to see how social change results from the accumulation of countless small choices.
Our “yes” to some things and “no” to others matters. Which brings me to the third small thing: RSVP. Or, better, the lack thereof. What I mean to ask is, whatever became of the RSVP? I am far from alone in noticing – and mourning – its loss in the culture.
As one blogger noted a while back:
Prepare thine hair shirt as penance: Lizzie Post, the great-great granddaughter of the most correctly etiquetted person in the history of the world has decreed that "We are worse at RSVP-ing than we have ever been," and this critical mass of incompetence is ruining everything.[1]
I don’t know if it ruins everything, but it sure does make it hard to plan for food! From my own internal struggles with this, I’m convinced that our failure to respond and make commitments to invitations is symptomatic of a culture that is so awash in choices that we’ve become overwhelmed to the point of paralysis. We so fear committing to one thing because something better might come along that we wind up stuck.
The story of the anointing of David would have been short and pointless if the elders of Bethlehem had ignored Samuel’s invitation to conversation because they hoped a better invite might be coming. Also, as I said, it makes it hard to plan for food.
Our inability or unwillingness to say “yes” or “no” bleeds into a fourth small thing: lack of civic engagement. We, the citizens in the great democratic experiment of the United States, have too often become passive consumers rather than active participants in the civic arena. Progressives and other Democrats can complain about last fall’s election outcome until the cows come home, but the truth is, when more than 40 percent of eligible voters don’t bother to cast ballots the problem lies not so much with an archaic electoral system as it does with a systemic failure to engage.
This is a huge issue, so it might seem out of place in a list of little things, but really, on an individual level, it is a small thing: as small as a post card or a text or a call to a public official.
Samuel could have ignored God and anointed the first of Jesse’s sons. After all, he was a strapping, good-looking, strong lad who looked the part of king. Samuel could have said, “I vote for you,” and then just gone home to tend to his own garden and complain about the new king.
Voting, of course, is the lowest level of engagement. Sitting on the sidelines complaining about the officials is for fans at a ballgame. If you are bothered by policy decisions of local, state, or federal officials, then get out of the stands and into the game.
The opportunities are endless, which, no doubt, is part of the challenge. When there are so many issues, how do I decide where to put my energy?
Well, what do you feel most passionate about? What cause or issue grieves you the most? Angers you the most? Or most makes your heart sing when things go well? Give your energy there. It’s a big country. There are plenty of other voices for other concerns, but the country desperately needs every one of our passionate voices.
The fifth small stone may seem like the least significant in a list of little things, but it might just be the stone that brings down the giant. Create beauty and choose joy. That’s it. That’s the small thing: celebrate the small things.
In Leonard Wolf’s memoir of the war years he writes,
One of the most horrible things at that time was to listen on the wireless to the speeches of Hitler—the savage and insane ravings of a vindictive underdog who suddenly saw himself to be all-powerful. We were in Rodmell during the late summer of 1939, and I used to listen to those ranting, raving speeches. One afternoon I was planting in the orchard under an apple-tree iris reticulata, those lovely violet flowers… Suddenly I heard Virginia’s voice calling to me from the sitting room window: “Hitler is making a speech.” I shouted back, “I shan’t come. I’m planting iris and they will be flowering long after he is dead.”
We cannot choose the time we are given, but we can choose what to do with it. God said to Samuel, “How long are you going to sit there grieving the old king? Get up and get going!”
We do not get to choose so many of the things that happen around us or to us, but we always get to choose how to respond. If the times are ugly, create small beauty and celebrate it. It’s a little thing, but little things mean a lot.
These are five small stones that I carry around, that I wrestle with, that sometimes weigh upon me but that, at other times, remind me and inspire me. Each of them, ultimately, is about making a choice: to what will I pay attention? What will I consume? To what will I commit? How shall I engage the wider world? What attitude will I bring to the decisions, the commitments, the engagements, the beauty I choose?
This morning, I invite you, in a time of prayerful quiet, to think about the small stones you carry. Which ones are like a pebble in your shoe, that irritate you, that hobble you, that you need to get rid of? Which ones are like a reminder that you carry in your pocket, a touchstone that, when you feel its presence, inspires you to act? What are the little things that mean a lot in your life?







[1] http://jezebel.com/were-all-a-bunch-of-noncommittal-assholes-who-cant-rsvp-1672425886