In Small Deeds Lies Great Love: The Upside-Down Way of Effectiveness
The Upside Down Way of Jesus (Lent 2024) • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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[The Upside Down way of Jesus..... following Jesus, when we walk the Jesus way, we encounter paradox.... in fact we live paradoxical lives....Talk about paradox..... a statement, or a proposition that contains a contradiction, being true. For a Christian, the way up is down....]
First we considered the upside down way of spiritual growth: to become mature, we must become like children.
Second we considered the upside down way of obedience: being a slave of Christ frees us to flourish
And today, the upside down way of an effective or fruitful life.... most all of us want to live a life that is meaningful, that is effective, that makes a difference in the world, that has an impact....
in small deeds lies great love..... love=to will the good of another...
20 He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
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[ This is a response of Jesus to a question about faith..... but Biblical faith is very much connected to action.... so it really is not a stretch at all to say that If you have acts of love as small as a mustard seed, you can move mountains....and that is the paradox that we are considering this morning.....
In small deeds, lies great love: The Upside down way of effectiveness.
I want to begin by sharing with you something about this saying of Jesus that we just read:
Matthew 17:20 (NIV)
20 Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
There is a tradition that accompanies this saying of Jesus. And the tradition believes that when Jesus said this to his disciples, he was evoking the story of a palace that was built by the great King Herod....the king in power when Jesus was born. The palace was called the Herodium (built 23-15 BCE). It was located just on the outskirts of Bethlehem, and about 8 miles from the city of Jerusalem. As the story goes, Herod wanted to construct a grand palace that could be seen from the city of Jerusalem. But there was no mountain tall enough for that. So what did he do. Using the labour of slaves Herod constructed an artificial mountain, so to speak.
[Explain the picture] - Mustard seed tree with Herodium in the background.
Show picture of MUSTARD SEED.
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Jesus doesn’t explicity refer to this mountain of Herodium, so we can’t be certain that this is what he was trying to evoke in the minds of the disciples....but it is possible. The ancient historian of Jesus’ day named Josephus writes about the construction of this palace and describes it as though Herod quite literally moved a mountain to build it, so it’s quite possible that when Jesus uses the language of moving mountains, that is the story that came to mind for them. I like to think it is.
And if indeed it is, it is like Jesus saying to his disciples.... “recall the great King Herod, you know the one known for his lavish and majestic construction projects, places like Masada, Caesarea, and this the Herodium, on the backs of thousands of slaves he moved mountain, BUT I tell you, through your ordinary acts of love done in faith, you can move a mountain and say move from here to there…nothing will be impossible for you...
That seems to be what Jesus is saying.... in small, ordinary acts of love, you can change the world.
Another thing we should notice about this verse is the connection to a very similar verse earlier in Matthew.
As Matthew writes about Jesus evokes the image of a mustard seed, Matthew is also drawing our attention to something he writes earlier....
31 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”
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Here Jesus is evoking what Ezekiel writes about:
6 All the birds of the sky nested in its boughs, all the animals of the wild gave birth under its branches; all the great nations lived in its shade.
So if we read Matt. 17:20 and Matt. 13 together, and then if we notice how Matthew is evoking these words from Ezekiel, here’s what Jesus is saying....
If you in faith carry out small acts of love and compassion and care and goodness, you will be used by God to build a kingdom of people that come from all the nations of the world!
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The Gospel of Matthew—Volume 2 Chapters 11–28 (Revised Edition) The Small Beginning
Hugh Martin quotes H. G. Wells as saying, “His is easily the dominant figure in history. … A historian without any theological bias whatever should find that he simply cannot portray the progress of humanity honestly without giving a foremost place to a penniless teacher from Nazareth.” In this parable Jesus is saying to his disciples, and to his followers today, that there must be no discouragement, that they must serve and witness each in his place, that each one must be the small beginning from which the Kingdom grows until the kingdoms of the earth finally become the Kingdom of God
“Though few and small and weak your bands,
Strong in your Captain’s strength,
Go to the conquest of all lands;
All must be His at length.”
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No person that Jesus encountered was too small or too insignificant for him. In fact you could say, Jesus was attracted particularly to the margins, the the least, the last and the lost. One writer says that if you look at the Gospels and read about who Jesus healed, it is like reading a who’s who of the rejected, the insignificant, and the trivial people of his time. (Paradoxes for Living, 100).
At one point he healed the daughter of a Canaanite woman (Matt. 15:21-28). His disciples tried to convince him that he should send her away because she was bothering them. And that’s exactly what you’d expect them to do because for Jews, Canaanites were the lowest of the low.... but Jesus says, these are the people I came for!
Jesus healed lepers, those who were paralyzed, mute, blind, demon possessed. He healed Gentiles, the servant of a centurion, and the son of a widow.
That same writer says, “To the average person, they were too trivial and insignificant to care for, but not to Jesus.” (100)
At one point in Jesus’ own ministry, this now shortly before his own crucifixion and burial, Jesus receives a small but sacrificial act of kindness and love from a woman who visited the home where Jesus was staying.
Let’s read the story:
6 While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, 7 a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table. 8 When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. 9 “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”
10 Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 11 The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. 12 When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. 13 Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
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Really a fascinating story....there’s a great deal that we could say about it but I want us to notice just two things:
the reaction of Jesus disciples
the reaction of Jesus
Peter Schuurman writes: “In our idolatrous, bigger-is-always-better world, we need to discipline ourselves to see God’s kingdom in small things. Small is beautiful, wrote E. F. Schumacher in a critique of our economy of persistent growth. God is in the small kindnesses, the details, the
inconspicuous, and even the unlikely. Mother Teresa’s quote is apt: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
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Small is big in God’s economy.
The Gospel of Matthew—Volume 2 Chapters 11–28 (Revised Edition) (The Small Beginning)
(ii) A witness must begin with one man. Cecil Northcott tells in one of his books that a group of young people from many nations were discussing how the Christian gospel might be spread. They talked of propaganda, of literature, of all the ways of disseminating the gospel in the twentieth century. Then the girl from Africa spoke. “When we want to take Christianity to one of our villages,” she said, “we don’t send them books. We take a Christian family and send them to live in the village and they make the village Christian by living there.” In a group or society, or school or factory, or shop or office, again and again it is the witness of one individual which brings in Christianity. The one man or woman set on fire for Christ is the person who kindles others.
Story of Gertie Wagenaar.
Share story of the sign in the window of the pizza / curry restaurant on 6th St. Show pictures.
Picture of Pizza shop
Picture of sign “If you are hungry but don’t have money, let us know and we will feed your for free”
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End with.... the death of Jesus was so ordinary....so small....so common....in the sense that to most people this was just another criminal being punished..... and Jesus submitted to it..... for this was the plan of God...... he knew that unless a seed be buried in the ground, nothing new can grow (John 12:24 )
24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
include quote from John Stott in Biblical Critical Theory p. 426
John Stott
“Any contemporary observer, who saw Christ die, would have listened with astonished incredulity to the claim that the Crucified was a Conqueror. Had he not been rejected by his own nation, betrayed, denied and deserted by his own disciples, and executed by authority from the Roman procurator? Look at him there, spread-eagled and skewered on his cross, robbed of all freedom of movement, strung up with nails, pinned there and powerless. It appears to be total defeat. If there is victory, it is the victory of pride, prejudice, jealousy, hatred, cowardice, and brutality. Yet the Christian claim is that the reality is the opposite of the appearance. What looks like (and indeed was) the defeat of goodness by evil is also, and more certainly, the defeat of evil by goodness. Overcome there, He was Himself overcoming. Crushed by the ruthless power of Rome, he was Himself crushing the serpent's head. The victim was the victor, and the cross is still the throne from which he rules the world.”
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This is where you and I find our life. In Jesus Christ crucified. In Jesus Christ denying himself, taking up his cross, dying for our sake, so that we might live through him..
Think about our last three sermons:
God created us be his beloved children…but we wanted to our own self made persons so we turned away from God
God created us to be his treasured possession, a people who are owned and directed by Him..... but we wanted to break free from him and be our own masters
God created us to love and serve others in everyday ordinary small ways....but we wanted the limelight and the glory of having influence and impact.
…and in wanting to be self-made, to be free, and to be influential, we rejected God and rejected his Messiah. But rather than rejecting us in anger, God took on himself the punishment we deserved. And in doing so, God raised Jesus from the dead. Defeating the power of sin. and even defeating death itself.
Friends do you believe that?