“Great and Small”
Isaiah 5:1-5
1 Peter 1:22-23, 2:1-5, 9-10
Many years ago now, I offered an occasional sermon series called “Songs That Preach.” I would use a secular song, played over our sound system, and pair it with a Bible passage as the basis for a sermon. I preached on songs by Mary Chapin Carpenter, Carrie Newcomer, Bruce Cockburn, Lucinda Williams, and local heroes the Nields, among others. Most people liked most of the songs and, I think, most of the sermons.
But there was, for me, a surprisingly negative reaction to a children’s song called “Great and Small” by a progressive Christian group with great vocals and a bluegrass string-band style. I think it was the bluegrass that triggered some folks.
Which was a shame, I thought, because the lyrics were spot-on and an important reminder for Jesus followers of all ages. The beginning of the song goes like this:
Deep down here inside my pocket
There’s a little piece of paper
Take it out and read it
When I’m feelin’ out of shape or
To keep my fears at bay
It says: “You are great!”Deep down in my other pocket
There’s another piece of paper
Take it out and read it
When I’m gettin’ into shape or
When I’m walkin’ tall
It says: “You are small!”And then the chorus says:
Cause you are great and small
You are tiny and tall
Remember through it all
You are great and small
And that great-and-small message is the essence of our scripture lessons this morning.
On the one hand, they say: Remember whose you are and where you come from. You are a holy chip off the Old Block, the people of the most high God, and God will never leave you or forsake you. This mighty God loves you and, even if things are bad now, you can trust that God will restore you to wholeness, abundance, and peace.
Because you belong to God, you are great!
On the other hand, they say: Remember that everything you are, everything you have, everything you hope to be and do and have, comes from God. Yes, like Christ, you are living stones, powerful building blocks alive with the love and glory of God. But don’t get confused; you are not the builder, God is. Live in such a way that God can make something beautiful of your life. Live in such a way that God can use you for good.
Because God is the maker, you are small!
Beloveds, both of these things are true. And we need to remember them both and let them ground us in whose we are and remind us to let Spirit mold us into who we’re meant to be.
Or, to put it another way: All our scriptures tell us that God will go to the ends of the earth and to entirely new dimensions to make us whole and provide us with all good things. All our scriptures also tell us that we are God’s partners in loving and healing the world, in reconciling all that human fear and greed have torn apart, so that humanity might dwell in peace, creation might flourish, and all creatures might have enough.
There is a wonderful duality to the divine design: God, humanity and creation—which is to say, the Creator and the created—working together for good, the Creator making their creatures in the divine image, and Spirit-filled and -shaped humans moving toward wholeness and union with the divine.
It’s a brilliant design with enormous potential, and one very serious problem: It’s hard for us to wrap our heads around. Because we’re here and we’ve been given so much and have so much potential, it’s easy to fall into thinking that life is all about us. We live in a culture that says it values hard work, and we tend to think we’re self-made people.
And because we live in a world of things we can see and touch, and because we organize much of our lives around things that need doing, it’s easy for us to forget about the spiritual realm. We forget that the Holy Spirit is in our corner and that we are meant to lean on the One who loves us and has promised to bring us home.
There is a reason the poor and disenfranchised tend to be more spiritual than the wealthy or middle class: They know they need help.
There is a reason the newly sober or recently rehabilitated tend to be more aware of and grateful for God’s grace: Their lives contain clear before- and-after moments. They remember who they were before they encountered God’s love, and they realize they have been given been given a new life.
They know what their lives were like before they surrendered to love and embraced mercy, and they give thanks every day that now they are God’s people, made new. They understand that the spiritual life is a process: living one day at a time, trusting that there will be grace sufficient and bread enough for this day. They have some sense of what it means to be a living stone: a precious thing whose edges will need to be smoothed and whose cracks will need to be filled so that the Builder can incorporate them into a beautiful new world.
The rest of us—who sometimes treat our lives like a do-it-yourself project—have so much to learn from them.
Which brings us back to great and small.
Again, it’s a lot to wrap our minds around. As the song says, maybe the best we can do is keep different pieces of paper in separate pockets: One to remember, when we’re feeling small, that God makes us great. The other to remind us, when we think it’s all about us, that we’re actually pretty small.
A big part of the spiritual life is staying connected enough to Spirit that we know which piece of paper we need when. And since so much of the spiritual life is about loving God and loving our neighbors, another key element is learning to know which piece of paper our beloveds need at any given time.
Now, I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that truly loving someone rarely involves cutting them down to size. Further, I’m going to suggest that since it’s hard for most of us to do great and small at the same time, we focus our efforts this way:
On reminding ourselves that we are small, and on telling others they are great, including why they are great.
This is what I try to do when I offer Blessings to Go, as I did at Hampshire Pride yesterday. In that environment, where so many people have been told by their culture, their families, and the church that they are small and wrong and should not even exist, I feel called to tell them they are great because they are beloved of God.
And, I want to tell you the same thing this morning that I said to 50 or 60 people yesterday:
You are a beloved child of God. May you always know that is the essence of who you are. God created you in love just as you are, and God loves you just the way you are. There’s nothing you have to do to earn God’s love, and there’s nothing you could ever do to lose it. It is a free gift and it never ends, and it is poured out on you fresh every day. May you know this truth so deeply that it fills your heart with love and joy that flows out to all the world.
Which is to say: May you, a living stone, let God fashion you into something even more beautiful. May you, a rock from God’s own heart, let yourself be built into a spiritual house.
Because once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.
And once you had not received mercy, but now you have.
Thanks be to God.
