In a May 31 story about the deepening grip QAnon conspiracy theories have on some churches, the Axios newsletter reached out for a comment from Russell Moore, a leading Evangelical named recently as Christianity Today’s public theologian.
Moore told Axios he's "talking literally every day to pastors, of virtually every denomination, who are exhausted by these theories blowing through their churches or communities."
Where do God’s people place their trust? Why and where is God in their search?
This week, the lectionary readings can help us frame those questions (among others). More specifically, the story of David’s anointing in 1 Samuel and Jesus’ parables about seeds and the kingdom of God in Mark raise some timely considerations about how everyday believers and seekers learn to trust a God who makes unexpected choices, works across eons and sometimes keeps secrets.
Samuel had good reason to ask questions when the Lord sent him to find a new king for Israel. Samuel felt both personal grief over Saul’s failure and personal concern for what Saul might do if he heard Samuel was party to his replacement. Still, Samuel trusted God and played his part in a covert action to visit Jesse under the guise of making a sacrifice.
Samuel could have asked plenty of other questions as God rejected one of Jesse’s sons after the other until finally sending for the least of Jesse’s boys, the young David who was out in the field with the sheep. David’s qualifications? Scripture only tells us he was “ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome.”
Little could Samuel have known that he was playing a bit part as God worked across generations to fulfill the messianic prophecy of Isaiah 11: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.”
Still, Samuel trusted.
In Mark 4:26-34, we pick up the story much later as that “fruit,” Jesus the Christ, hits his stride. We recognize right away we are on potentially tricky ground as Jesus tells two somewhat befuddling parables in just eight verses. Parables can humble a preacher in short order in how they defy simplistic interpretations. So we better tread lightly.
In the first, we are left to ponder the meaning of how the seed sprouts and grows with little understanding by the planter, who might as well sleep until harvest. But before we can even ask a few questions, Jesus follows with the tale of how the tiny and insignificant mustard seed becomes “the greatest shrub of all” and shelter to the birds seeking cover.
Just as hurriedly, it seems, Mark goes on to undermine any confidence we may have in understanding his parables. He explains that Jesus spoke parables to his followers “as they were able to hear,” but explained everything in private to his disciples. Our congregants have a right to wonder: Are we among those “able to hear”? Are we in the cool-kids group who get the inside skinny? And, what are we to think of a God who seems to reveal divine truths in what sounds like a two-tiered system?
Despite those questions, we are to just… trust? In a never-ending news cycle that doesn’t allow us to digest anything, we are to trust? In today’s post-truth culture, we are to trust? In an ends-justify-the-means age when such a startling number of God’s people reach for political conspiracy about Satan-worshipping child molesters ruling America rather than God’s truth about faith, hope and love, we are to trust?
We Presbyterians, at least those of a certain age, were raised to trust come what may. Like floor mats in a new Chevy or Buick, trust was expected as standard order in our Reformed upbringing.
Somewhere along the way, however, we in the church lost a generation or two. We lost those generations because we failed to fulfill their trust or, worse, we proved just how hateful and hypocritical the church can be.
So, preachers take up these two texts as they digest the most recent news about how trust and membership in the church have never been lower in America. “Americans' membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup's eight-decade trend,” Gallup reported in March. That’s down from 70% in 1999.
Amid that widely reported news, our churches are reopening with far more questions than answers. Any pastor, elder or member who confidently predicts what church life will look like in six months or a year better not be trusted. All we know, as a friend said to me recently, is that life will not look like 2019. Anything beyond that is boastful arrogance or anxious prediction.
What better time, perhaps, to be reminded that life with God requires us to see with new eyes. Our stories in 1 Samuel and Mark can call us to surrender (such a seemingly un-American thing to do these days) to God’s promise. Samuel somehow obeyed the Lord’s unexpected selection of young David. The disciples learned to follow Jesus even – perhaps especially – when they did not get the meaning of the parable, as was often the case. The Lord sometimes works in ways that are like light refracting through a crystal. We are to trust – and even enjoy – the splendor and the mystery.
Another theme that connects these two texts focuses on God’s penchant for using the smallest, least expected things to advance the kingdom (God’s kin-dom) on earth. Even Jesse could not have known that little David would be God’s choice, flaws and all, to lead Israel. Yet that root of Jesse would lead to Jesus, who tells his followers about how God chooses the tiny mustard seed.
What better contemporary example of God’s work in small things than in how the COVID-19 vaccine is healing the world. At 30 micrograms per shot (in the case of Pfizer), what will heal the world comes in what amounts to little more than a teardrop. Yet, with the gift of the miracle of science packed into each shot, the worst pandemic in a century will come to an end, though we must keep in prayer and act justly for the poorer nations where the virus still rages.
I can’t say why or how, but the one-word prayer that has delivered me through this pandemic is trust. It settled on my heart in Lent and it still delivers me through watching the dreams of the congregation I serve ebb and flow.
The days and weeks ahead for us, as with so many congregations, will reveal what post-pandemic life in the church looks like. We don’t know today how we will do hybrid church. We don’t know how we will “gather in” our newcomers who live elsewhere but have come to love our worship and mission through our online offerings. For our congregation, we don’t know if runaway construction prices will delay or cancel our long-held dream to build affordable housing on our campus.
What we do know is that the Lord provided for Israel, even when their trust in God failed and even when the great warrior-dancer-lover-psalmist David fell short of God’s own hopes. What we do know is how Jesus continues to give us new eyes to see how God’s penchant for unexpected choices and mustard-seed solutions seem to always work out.
We are all a work in progress — but invited every day to lean into the mysterious hiddenness of our already-and-not-yet faith. In a world when so many tickling ears turn to empty and dangerous conspiracy theories and other secular sirens, we are invited to be at peace with a God proven to be sovereign across the ages.
This week:
- Where do you see people placing their trust these days? What secular sirens do we hear every day that remind us of the contest between the Word and the World?
- In what do you trust? What helps you recenter your trust and faith on God?
- How do you rise above the din of the world to remember that God is working in both the short-term and the long-term, sometimes in ways we may never see? In our impatient, immediate-satisfaction culture, are the days past when people can trust in a God who works across generations and even eons?
- Do you see God working through unexpected choices, as with the boy-king David? Is God still working through “the smallest” and least expected things? If so, can you point to an example in your life?
- How have you heard the seed/kingdom of God parables that Jesus tells in Mark 4 interpreted through the years? Has your understanding of those parables evolved or changed and, if so, how?
- As the world and our congregations emerge from the pandemic, how can these stories equip us with new eyes to see what comes next in life and in church? What least expected places might we keep an eye on where God may do a new thing?
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