Insignificant?

Yet the future of the species depends on this tiny, easily overlooked flower, that despite its miniscule size, still gets pollinated, and still produces seeds.

And we heard in last week's Gospel reading that Jesus took a little child in his arms and said Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcome me and the one who sent me.

What a wonderful bit of Good News!

And then in today's Gospel, the parallel bit of bad news: If any put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.

What a dire warning!

One can use the term “little ones” to refer to children or to beginners in the faith of any age, and the warning is severe in either case.

With that in mind, let's hop back over to the Good News side.

With which sort of flower would each of us like to be compared?

A few of us might recognize themselves as lily-types....they are the ones who don't even have to be seen for it to be known that they are present.

A few might be hybrid tea rose types... who need to be tended carefully and gently.

We would hope that quite a few would be like our window-box petunias that just keep blooming and blooming.

We surely need lots of folks like that!

A few may be the dramatic ones like the dahlias we have blooming at the office door these days.

But I have a suspicion that many feel that they are like the flowers of annual clary, rather small and insignificant, and easily overlooked.

But guess what! These overlooked ones are precisely the ones whom Jesus also gathers up and through whom he also intends to do some of his work!

Other flowers will get quite sufficient attention for other reasons, but these, the ones who think that they are not important, just may have very important places in Jesus' plans.

Such as...

A small child, whose singing of Jesus loves me melts a hardened heart.

A shut-in who can take on the task of naming us all in prayer day after day.

A person who takes the time to put together a school kit which makes it possible for a child in a far-off land to succeed in school.

A person who sews a quilt who sews a quilt which enables a family to survive the cold after a disaster strikes.

A person who quietly refuses to go along with the crowd in jeering a minority or a handicapped person.

A tiny infant, whose very being alive suggests to parents that it is time to seek out a church connection.

All of these and so many more are the tiny flowers which Jesus honors and uses.

There is a second illustration which Jesus uses in the lesson today which heads us toward the same point; this one concerns salt.

He says Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.

How can there be un-salty salt?

It is an impossibility, isn't it?

I was reading earlier this week about a Middle Eastern trader who thought he had cornered the market on salt for a particular area by filling a number of warehouses with cakes of salt.

Unfortunately, the warehouses had dirt floors, and before the trader could get around to selling all that salt, the sodium chloride had mostly leached out of the cakes of salt that were touching the ground, rendering them useless.

They still looked like salt, the impurities were still there and they kept the shape of the cakes, but the saltiness was gone.

They had to be thrown out and trodden underfoot in the road, good for nothing.

Is that the kind of thing that Jesus has in mind?

Is he thinking of people that have the appearance of useful cakes of salt but who are actually good for nothing?

And further, what are the purposes of salt that Jesus would have known and that we still know?

Salt seasons, it preserves, it helps other actions to take place, it cleanses.

Perhaps there are more purposes, too.

So what are you and I to be doing that will be fulfilling those sorts of functions?

I'm suspecting that often we'll be saying something like..”The little things that I can do are so insignificant; they don't really matter much:

:helping a few kids in Sunday School

:gathering up soda can tabs for the pastor to take to Ronald McDonald House

:sending a greeting card to a shut-in

:giving a money offering for a missionary

:coming help the quilter group on Wednesday morning

:helping prepare Luncheon Fellowship meal

:weeding a flowerbed

:visiting an ill person

Are these actions of the Good News?

Are they worthy of our attention?

Are they part of the commission of the Lord Jesus?

Are they part of the salt that makes the whole of the body of Christ seasoned and lively?

Then they are not insignificant in Jesus' eyes.

Just one more story about perceptions of what is significant or not.

Years ago when visiting out in Minnesota, my aunt and I went to visit a home to see a landscaping job which was supposed to be extra special, and very expensive.

My impression was that the landscaper made, shall we say, a handsome profit on the job.

The impression was bolstered when I saw what he had chosen as the centerpiece of the entire scheme.

It was not something exotic flown in from Mongolia, but something which I have growing in my wildflower garden, and indeed grows in the cow pasture back home...a nice clump of Queen of the meadow which also goes by the less-elegant name of Joe Pye Weed.

The place of honor in this fancy garden was held by this very ordinary weed.

That is what our Lord Jesus has done with us: taking us who know that we are just regular folks and telling us...

Because I have chosen you, you are given honor, and charged with responsibility to bloom where you are planted.

Don't say that who you are and what you do are insignificant...I'll make that determination.

Call together all who will listen.

Praise God.

Care for a needy world.

We may be little, common, and feel like we are insignificant,

but we are chosen by God,

gifted by God,

commissioned by God,

and that makes all the difference in the world. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.