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Too Small to Notice

Matt. 13:31-32

31 He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard

seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32 it is the smallest of all the seeds,

but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the

birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

You would not notice him at first. Allan Howe looks like hundreds of

others in this winter of polar vortices and record snowfalls. With each

step, the snow squeaks under his boots, curchunk, curchunk. He moves

down the sidewalk, shoulders slightly hunched over, pushing his shovel

like a plow. In the Chicago metro area, Allan is one of thousands of

people shoveling their walks. In the city of big shoulders, Allan is too

small to notice.

Allan was born in Washington D.C. in 1942 while his father was working

in the Pentagon. After the war, Allan’s family moved to Southern

California and his father earned a small fortune in the citrus industry.

Allan went to Stanford; he graduated in 1963.

Here is the puzzle I want to explore: In 1963, Allan could have had his

choice of careers; his family was connected to both the military and to

the business community. The world lay open before him. The path was

smooth and well-paved. He came from what we now call “privilege.”

Whatever misgivings we have about how privilege is distributed

socially, we all wish that, individually, we had access to it. But Allan’s

life is not the story of cashing-in on privilege. Neither is it the story of

choices gone bad. Allan’s life reflects a series of deliberate choices

about what the good life looks like.

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When you approach a major transition in your life, how do you decide

what to do? How do you know whether the thing that looks really big is

really big? What if that small thing is really the big thing? Who can

point out the small things that are really big?

I want to describe how Allan made choices to see what we might learn.

So, what is Allan’s story? Why is this 72 year old man shoveling snow in

Chicago in 2014?

I. Humility and Family

A. Retreat

Allan’s story took a definitive turn on a weekend retreat.

In the early 1960s, the war in Vietnam was still ramping up. In this

context, making sense of right and wrong was not merely academic. So,

while still a college student at Stanford, Allan took a retreat for the

purpose of reading through the Gospels. He would have read the

parable of the mustard seed that we also just read.

B. Context

We aren’t given a context for this parable in Matthew, but we can

connect the dots.

We can imagine that a few years earlier, his mother – the one who had

found favor in the sight of the Lord, the one who had first taught him

how to listen to God -- sat him down and asked: Jesus, what are you

going to do with your life? You aren’t a kid anymore. You’ve got to grow

up, take responsibility.

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But what Jesus actually did was not what his mother had in mind. Jesus

likely faced criticism that his newly established fisherman’s solidarity

union appeared small, and unimpressive; it would never amount to

anything. Further, he wasn’t getting married and settling down. He

wasn’t aiming for the top; he wasn’t even aiming for the middle.

So, Jesus’ family, friends, and enemies asked difficult questions: What

is this 30 year old man doing? What is his story? Is he crazy? Has he lost

his mind?

In response to such questions, Jesus said that a mustard seed is the

smallest of seeds but it grows into a large tree that provides refuge for

the birds.

C. The Parable

This is not a promising parable for discernment. It says that while we

are on the lookout for something else, the fruits of God’s work appear

as if out of nowhere. It says that sometimes the community that

initially introduced you to God misses it. And yet, that doesn’t relieve

you of responsibility for what God has shown you.

D. Allan’s Pacifism

So, Allan went on retreat and read the gospels, this passage and others,

to see if he could see something his home community had not. There

he found a God who re-establishes community with us and with all

creation, while we were still God’s enemies.

1. Pacifism.

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Allan concluded that one could not both follow Jesus and advocate

violent solutions to problems – not the problems of the world, not of

the country, not of a family, not of an individual.

That seems like such a small thing. What difference does it make if one

21 year old college senior in 1963 thinks violence is bad? That is not

even controversial.

2. Theory and Practice

If Allan’s realization had remained only theoretical, it would have made

no difference. But when Allan started to act on this realization, to order

his life to practice non-violence, he began to pay a price, and the small

seed began to grow.

Allan’s family would have been happy for him to aim for the top or

even for the middle. Allan could have had a promising career in the

most powerful military in the history of the planet.

Instead, he filed for and received conscientious objector status.

E. C.O in Allan’s Family

This was no small thing for a young man raised in family with a strong

military tradition. He knew his own family would misunderstand him.

“What is his story? Is he crazy? Has he lost his mind?”

The community that had initially introduced Allan to God could not see

that God’s work might run counter to key aspects of their identity. And

this created a break.

So, Allan gave up family, and houses, and fields. He became a bird

without a nest.

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F. Alternative Service

As a conscientious objector, Allan began his “alternative service” in

June of 1963. He moved to a small church in Chicago. Here he found a

different community.

The church was intergenerational, interracial, and, because it focused

on living with the poor, it cut across socio-economic boundaries.

Church members shared meals, money, and living quarters. They

shared daily conversation about daily life, its joys, its pains, and the

experience of aching need. From expressions of need came a re-

alignment of resources. The common table was the basis for a common

purse. This church was the tree in which many birds of the air found

nests.

Soon after Allan arrived, he was given the job of organizing a bus trip to

the March on Washington in August. It was a heady start in dizzying

times, but it was also what needed to be done.

In January, winter rolled in, and Allan found what it meant to trade

pleasant winters of Pasadena for the winter winds of the Midwest.

With the same determination with which he organized the bus trip in

August, he set himself to clearing the sidewalks of snow. Allan did not

and does not just shovel the walk in front of his own house. He walks

around the entire block shoveling snow, and then he moves to the next

block, and the next. He shovels the walks that connect everyone who

lives in the community. It is what needs to be done.

Seasons of warmth and cold come to every community. Precipitation

from the past doesn’t always bring new life. Sometimes it gets stuck or

frozen in place, and corridors that once connected become barriers

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that divide the community. Every community needs people who can

see what the community needs and who will do it, whether the task is

great or small, whether the doer is considered great or small. At a very

basic level, that is discernment. God cares about walks getting

shoveled. It is no small thing. It is good work; it is even God’s work.

That is how Allan started shoveling the walks.

I. Imitating God

A. Staying on.

Allan had committed to alternative service in Chicago for two years. In

1965, he could have gone back to California and re-entered a life

oriented toward the pursuit of money and prestige. Instead, he chose

to stay.

Something had taken root in him, and his life grew. He went to

graduate school, and in 1978 he completed a Ph.D. in New Testament.

He had offers to make a career as a professor. Again, he needed to

choose.

But how?

B. Framing the Questions:

The relevant facts would seem straight forward, and I won’t tick them

off here. Let’s just say, an academic career could be big. Staying in

community might look like a choice to stay small.

But by this time, Allan had been living in community for fifteen years,

and he had learned to ask a different set of questions. Practices like

sharing food, shelter, and money, and practices like reconciling with

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your enemy teach their practitioners that God can show up anywhere

and in anyone. If God is at work in Jesus, and if that work reconciles

God and the world, where is that happening? Will I best live into that

work if I leave my community for a job? Or should I commit to this

community and let the job take care of itself? Could I be part of God’s

work more effectively in an academic community or an intentional

Christian community?

C. Danger of Conflation.

We need to spend a little time on this distinction between an academic

community and a Christian community. It is easy to confuse or conflate

the two at a college that calls itself Christian.

But, if we conflate academic community with Christian community we

will get an academic view of Christian faith. Christianity will be a set of

beliefs, beliefs we must defend in the academic arena. In turn, students

will learn that to be Christian is to defend Christian beliefs.

Augustine saw this danger. He recognized a startling similarity between

the philosophy of Plotinus and the gospel of John. God is Being, Truth,

Goodness, and Beauty. Perhaps Plotinus is a theist. What more could a

Christian ask for from a philosopher?

But then Augustine turns. He sees that Plotinus denies what is crucial.

Christianity insists that this same God also becomes flesh, takes the

form of a servant, and is humbled to the point of death, all in the name

of love – these things he did not find in the Platonists.

If we confuse academic community with Christian community, our

Christian life will be distorted:

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We will worship an intellectualized God who sits at the top of an

ontological or epistemological hierarchy.

We will think that academic work is the most important, for through

our work we draw the world into closer orbit around God.

Our communities will imitate the characteristics of our god, who

insists on being the top of the pyramid.

But this is not the God revealed by Jesus, nor the kind of community

established by Jesus. Instead,

God is our model of humility in that God takes flesh and gives flesh.

Those who are most godlike are not the most powerful or most

knowledgeable, but the most self-giving.

If you serve this God, writing articles might be good work; but so is

shoveling snow.

To be clear, I am not arguing for the separation of academic and

Christian community, only for their distinction. The choice Allan faced

was a real choice, and it could be a real choice only because Allan had

been formed by both academic communities and Christian

communities.

D. The Decision.

So, should Allan pursue the best job, and hope to find a community

there? Or should he prioritize community, and hope to find a job

worthy of his talents? Allan and his wife Jeanne did not simply decide

by themselves; the community came around them to help discern. But

in the end, the decision was still their own.

Here is how Allan still assesses the situation 35 years later: “The world

has an awful lot of New Testament professors. I think what the world

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really needs is more Christian communities that take the life and

teaching of Jesus seriously.”

Otherwise said, Christian community is doing what needs to be done.

But seeing what the world most needs right now requires a long

training of the eyes. And what we see with our eyes is largely a function

of what we have learned to do in our practices.

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II. Conclusion

Allan gave up possible careers in the military, in business, and in the

academy to be part of a small planting. The Stanford Cardinal is not

going to put him on their website to advertise what you can do with a

Stanford education.

But you would have the wrong idea if you think these choices were

costly, depressing, and unfulfilling. On the contrary. Allan has gained

more than he ever gave up. He has started numerous businesses, both

for profit and not-for-profit. He sits on several boards of directors both

here and in other countries. Allan started and chaired the North Shore

Peace Initiative. He draws on his academic training regularly to teach

classes. Most important, he has been son, and brother, and father to

hundreds of people.

Friends, God is busy all around us. What God is doing may look

imperceptibly small; choosing it may look risky. But the promise of

God is that God will meet you there, and there you will find brothers

and sisters who will also walk with you on the way.

After fifty winters, Allan still shovels the snow. When the snows come,

he pulls on his boots, takes hold of his shovel, and makes straight paths.

For people just making their way to their jobs, his long labor is

impossible to bring into focus. But there is a cardinal in the branches

overhead making its nest in the tree, and it announces God’s pleasure:

“Cheer! Cheer! Cheer!”