Creekside Church Sermon of February 7, 1999 "Little Things Make a Big Difference" Matthew 5:13-16	Rev. David Bibbee
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John Wooden is the most celebrated coach in college basketball history. During the late sixties and early seventies, his UCLA Bruins were basketball Goliath's, having won eight national titles and owning an incredible winning streak of 83 games. Some of you may remember the streak was broken by Notre Dame. Someone asked Wooden, "What is the most important lesson you teach your players?" Wooden smiled and said, "I teach them how to put on socks. I take at least one hour of our first practice every year to teach the guys how to put on a pair of sweat socks. Feet are the key to the game, and if they don't keep the wrinkles out of their socks, they're gonna get blisters. Nothing cuts playing performance faster than a blister on the foot."

Little things make a big difference, and no one knew this better than Jesus. He didn't describe God in grandiose concepts. He spoke of God in simple, intimate terms, assuring us we can come to God as children to a loving father. He used simple things to teach spiritual truths. The illustrations he used to describe God's rule seemed so small and insignificant. A mustard seed. A pearl. A lost coin. A lost sheep. Yeast in the leaven. A poor widow's tiny offering. Children. Birds of the air and flowers of the field. Today's lesson adds two more to illustrate our calling as followers of Jesus Christ.

Jesus used salt and light to tell us what we are to be in the world...enhancement and illumination. These versus from the Sermon on the Mount stress the importance of not just hearing the message or even agreeing with it, but instead becoming the message. Jesus did not say, "You should be the salt of the earth." He didn't say, "You might be the light of the world after you've completed all the coursework." No, "You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world," Jesus said.

At the very least this means we have been placed in this world to provide a service and make a difference. The purpose of Christianity is to witness through ministry. To minister simply means to be of service or to give aid. In this sense, the waitress serving your meal is a minister. The mechanic who fixes your car is a minister. The paperboy is a minister. The Roto-Rooter man is a minister. But "Christian" ministry is something more. What defines this ministry is salt and light. In Jesus' presence the blind saw, the deaf heard, the lame leaped. People were better for having been in his presence. We also are to be people who make other people's lives better for having been around us. We are like salt that adds flavor to life. We are light to help others see more clearly.

The ability to improve the lot of others is not the exclusive domain of Jesus. We do more than admire his influence. What's his is ours. He is only too glad to share it. Salt and light. Such simple things with which Jesus shows us the way we are to extend his reach in the world. The world, however, stresses strength and size, and measures success by numbers, and the church too often understands its role in these terms. If your church is small, it must mean you are doing something wrong. The effective churches are the "mega" churches. They have memberships in the thousands. Having influence means joining the Christian Coalition, or snuggling up to the government so we will really have some power.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have big churches or shouldn't work in the political realm. Jesus didn't say much on this point.

In last Sunday's lesson we read in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians:

"Take a good look friends, at who you were when you were called into this life. I don't see many of the brightest and best among you, not many influential, not many from high society families. Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose people that the culture overlooks, exploits, and abuses, chose these nobodies to expose the hollow pretenses of the somebodies?"

Christians go about ministering in ways which hardly appear influential. I've lost count of all the times I've talked with people about coming to church only to get a lecture on how they would never darken the door of a church that's so full of hypocrites. Then I respond, "You've got that right! We've got hypocrites aplenty. We also have self-absorbed people, hot-headed and hard-hearted people and immature people. We have alcoholics and folks with family problems. Hospitals are full of sick people but I don't see other sick people refusing to be admitted because of it. You can come to church knowing we won't be put off by your kind. We believe in a God who makes new creations and shapes us in ways that no other community can. We believe God is building his kingdom, and is doing it through ordinary folks who live by a different set of assumptions than the world's."

A pinch of salt. A ray of light. Little things make a big difference.

Stanley Hauerwas remembers a pastor who served in a small southern town in the midst of school desegregation. A white citizens group formed to fight the order, and called a meeting at the high school to discuss tactics. The auditorium was packed full of people and tension as speaker after speaker condemned the order. The Baptist minister, with great dignity and solemnity, entered the auditorium, sat down, and listened. The presider saw him rise and asked him to speak. The minister had served in that town for years, and he spoke in a controlled, but grave voice:

"I am ashamed. I have served here for years. I've baptized, preached to and counseled many of you in this room. I might have thought my preaching the gospel had done some good. Tonight I think differently. I can't speak to those who are not of my congregation, but to those who are, I can only say that I am hurt and ashamed of you and might have expected more."

The pastor walked out and the meeting continued, but one by one the Baptists left until the room was half- empty. The meeting adjourned with no action taken. The school's integrated a month later with no incident. Here was an ordinary salt of the earth pastor who ministered to ordinary people whose light resulted in a bold Christian witness.

The tools and personnel for building God's kingdom often appear meager. The world tells us how things work. The world smiles on our trivial, inconsequential activity and tells us about the "real" world. But we buy in to a different reality.

What the world dismisses and devalues, we embrace. The church is a place for people like Nettie, an emotionally impaired woman I remember from my home church whose offering each Sunday was two cents. The church places value upon people like Henry Schmucker who sees it as his solemn duty to represent our church whenever there is a funeral in this city. In my first pastorate during Love Feast I saw a Notre Dame professor who weeks before had addressed the United Nations General Assembly, on his knees washing the feet of a man who was an airport parking lot attendant. This week I saw a humble looking woman sit by herself in a crowded Wendy's and bow her head to pray. I watched those who watched her prayer of gratitude for daily bread, and thanked God for the light of that little witness. The church is a place where a recovering alcoholic, who many in the world would consider a failure, is the very person that others in church go to to share their woes. What is not normal in the world is very normal in the body of Christ.

Today we see abundant evidence that our culture is on a slick slide downward. No examples are necessary. We see them every day. The period in history known as the dark ages came about because Roman society disintegrated from within. The institutions of law, the family, and education collapsed and were replaced with corruption and moral decay. Beginning with the collapse of Rome by the barbarian invasions, Europe was in chaos for centuries. Cities and cultural centers disappeared. Western civilization nearly became extinct. What saved it? Monks and nuns preserved the scriptures and classical literature in monasteries and convents scattered throughout Europe. In this dark period, they built schools and hospitals and communities of care and compassion. Civilization was restored one little caring act at a time by salt and light christians.

These two simple taken for granted things remind us that as Christians we are in a distinct minority. This is not a christian nation in which we live. We are surrounded and outnumbered. It would be easy to give in to discouragement and despair...were it not for Jesus Christ and his instructions about assisting in the coming of God's kingdom. Salty, light-bearing Christians dare to be different and show the world what God wants it to become. History pivots on the hinge of ordinary Christians who are obedient to the Lord in little things.

God reminded me of this here at the church on Wednesday evening. In the meditation room, the prayer group was praying. The children's choir was practicing in the sanctuary. The New Location committee was in the library and I was in my study researching this sermon. A few weeks ago I amazed you with my power to bring down a banner by pointing a finger at it. On Wednesday, I had just written the word "darkness" when all the lights went out. Everyone was trying to feel their way through the church in the dark, then someone lit a candle, and another, and another. The kid's choir then gathered in the hall, enveloped in an orange glow singing, you guessed it, "This Little Light of Mine." The church went about its business shining in the darkness. It couldn't have been a more fitting parable. Little things do make a big difference.

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