Small Seed, Provocative Witness

                                   
Luke 13:18-21:  He said therefore, “What is the Kingdom of God like?  And to what should I compare it?  It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”  And again he said, “To what should I compare the kingdom of God?  It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

When the reign of God appears in the world—in your life--Jesus says, don’t expect it to look big and spectacular and successful.  Expect it to take a small, humble, unpromising form.  Like tiny seeds.  Like common kitchen yeast.  Or maybe--like a package of baby formula.

On May 12, 2008, China experienced a catastrophic earthquake.  Over 70,000 people died, hundreds of thousands were injured, and millions of homes were destroyed.  But amidst the calamity there were miracles…such as the miracle of the baby formula.  In the wake of the earthquake, a church group wanted to help the victims.  So they loaded up a truck of food, tents, etc--and headed to the disaster area.  A grandmother from the congregation went along.  Before leaving she suddenly thought of taking some baby formula.  So she quickly tucked a box of it into her bag.  When the group got to the earthquake area, they met a family with a small baby.  The baby was already lethargic from hunger and dehydration.  That’s when the grandmother remembered her baby formula.  She rummaged in her bag, pulled it out, and gave it to the child. 

And Jesus says, “What is the Kingdom of God like?   It is like a box of baby formula, that a grandmother tucked into her bag, and gave to a dying child.  And the child lived, and all people rejoiced, and said, ‘God is here, God’s love has come among us.‘” 
There are three things about seeds and yeast that I find helpful as images in thinking about Christian mission and service.  Seeds and yeast are “ordinary,” “provocative,” and “fruitful.” 

First, like seeds sprouting and yeast rising—seeds and yeast just being themselves-- Christian service and mission is usually very very ordinary.  It is carried out by ordinary people doing  routine, unspectacular, ordinary things--and doing them well.
To work in China like we do as workers with MC Canada, Julie and I have to be pretty ordinary.  We can’t be “missionaries” in the traditional sense--the Chinese government does not allow foreigners to do traditional missionary things like evangelism and teaching Bible and planting churches—though we can talk about our faith when we are asked. 

So that means we have to have an “ordinary” job—ours is teaching English.  That‘s what our Chinese hosts want—English, and lots of it.  And in China, we also need to do our ordinary English-teaching job well.   At Chongqing Medical University, where we spent our first five years, our students were asked to evaluate their foreign teachers.  The evaluation form asked:  “Is the teacher conscientious?  Is the teaching carried out seriously?  Is the teacher responsible both in an out of class?   Does the teacher conform to the standards of propriety and morality?”  In other words, do your foreign teachers do their job well?

Even more than satisfying our evaluators, in China we need to do our job well because an ordinary job done well is a powerful witness to Christ.  Many of our students know that we are Christian.  We don’t hide it, we tell them, they know we work for a church organization, they know we attend a church.  But in a country like China, that in the past experienced Christianity as a form of foreign imperialism, doing work well, and walking the talk, is needed to give credibility to one’s Christian identity.

In 16th century Geneva, Switzerland, the great reformer John Calvin exhorted his congregation to see their ordinary, everyday Christian life as Christian witness, and mission.  One day a stranger entered a shoemaker’s shop run by a member of Calvin’s congregation.  When the stranger found out that the shoemaker was a Christian, he said somewhat sarcastically, “Oh, well, then you must make Christian shoes.”  “No,” the shoemaker replied quietly, “I don’t make Christian shoes, but I make shoes well.” 
In China, we don’t teach Christian nouns and verbs, and how to put them together to make Christian sentences.  But we do try to teach English well, and are still learning how.  Simple, ordinary, routine, unspectacular tasks done well—done well because of one’s loyalty to Jesus—become the seeds and leaven and signs of God’s love, God’s presence, God’s good news. 

And then, in China, and, I suspect, today in Canada, in Winkler, a Christian identity can sometimes evoke curiosity, raise questions, even be unsettling. Like that yeast that bubbles and penetrates and pushes the resistant dough, sometimes our witness to Jesus as Lord can be provocative.  It can challenge people to ask, “What do you think?  Why are you doing this?  Who are you, anyway?”

At Chongqing Medical University, there was a weekly Sunday evening English Corner.  That’s an informal gathering where students can come and practice their English.  One evening the topic of discussion was what students thought about dating couples renting rooms in homes or hotels off-campus for intimate afternoon get-aways.  Some students thought this form of dating was alright, others did not, others were not sure.  As students were sharing their opinions, one student turned to me and rather abruptly asked, “Well, what do Christians think about this?”  How did he know I was a Christian?  I don’t know…he was not one of my students, I hadn’t told him…I guess the word had gotten around.  Anyway, his question allowed me to express what I, as one Christian, believed.  Some students seemed puzzled by my quite traditional response, a few snickered, others were quiet and thoughtful.

In Chinese culture, death is a sensitive subject.  But because many of the doctors and nurses I taught at Chongqing  Medical University worked with dying people, I decided to risk a discussion of the topic in my English conversation class.  I timed the discussion to happen around the traditional spring Chinese festival of Tomb-Sweeping Day, when families go to  cemeteries to honor their ancestors. 

First I asked about traditional Chinese beliefs in an afterlife.  Many students mentioned paradise.  For example, one said, “Our ancestors believed that if you have been a good person, you will go to paradise, which is a happy world somewhere in the sky.  Of course,” he added, “if you have been a bad person, you will go to a hell that has 18 layers, the bottom of which is fire.” 

Finally, after more discussion, and because I was feeling pretty comfortable with this class, I decided to risk being bold.  “What about you?  You are modern people.  Do you believe in an afterlife?”  Several students were clear in their disbelief.  “I’m a doctor,” said one.  “I can see that dead people have no consciousness.”  Another said, “From primary school we were told to only believe in science.  There is no God, no spirit, no afterlife--only this one.  So we should make the most of it.”  A third added, “Afterlife is a superstition used by the government to control its citizens.”

Other students were more ambivalent.   One doctor said, “We cherish this hope that we will have the spirit after death, and see our friends again.  But I don’t know if it is true.  I’d like it to be true, but I don’t know.”  Another said, “My son asked how much I love him.  I said, ‘I’ll love you till I die.’  He replied, ‘I don’t want you to die, I’ll be sad.’  So I said, ‘Don’t worry, I will go to paradise.’  And then she added, “I don’t know whether we have life after death.  I believe a little.”

Then someone called out to me, “What about you?  Do you believe in an afterlife?”  So I told them how, as a Christian, I believe that Jesus, at his resurrection, defeated death, and opened the door to life beyond this world.

And then the room became quiet. Why?  Maybe the students were being polite toward a foreign teacher whose beliefs contradicted theirs.  And then, just maybe, some of those modern doctors, steeped in science, and Marxism, and official ridicule of religion, were also grappling with the possibility that death may not, after all, be the end.

“Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks what the hope in you is,” Peter says, in his first letter to Christians, who were living uneasily as aliens in the Roman Empire.  “Tell them why you live the way you do.”  Because followers of Jesus can challenge the status quo.  Especially if you live among people where the Christianity is not the norm, your presence can be unsettling, and raise questions, and be provocative.

And then, like tiny unpromising seeds that produce towering plants, and yeast that transforms stiff dough into tender loaves, Christian witness based in ordinary, yet provocative, words and deeds can be amazingly fruitful. 

Today in China, in the rubble of the earthquake, fruit is being harvested.  The small town of Mianzhu, in the mountains of western China, was among those destroyed.  Also destroyed was the town’s small church building.  But those church members, though devastated themselves, were among the first to help their neighbors.  The result--in the two years since the quake, that church has grown more than 10-fold.  Even the local government was impressed by these sometimes suspect Christians.  It has made the church building part of the rebuilt town center, even offered suburban land from the government or an additional building.  “Who are these Christians, after all?” skeptical Chinese have been provoked to ask.  “Maybe they’re not so superstitious and anti-social.  Maybe they have something to offer us.”  The simple caring of that Mianzhu congregation amidst its own hardship became seed that is bearing much fruit.

And when it comes to tiny seeds of God’s Kingdom yielding fruit, I have to talk about Kindy.   Kindy was a student  of Julie’s in Chongqing.  When Kindy was seven, her grandmother, a Christian, planted a seed in her heart.  “Jesus loves you,” her grandmother, told Kindy.  And because Kindy liked her grandmother, she believed her.  

That seed lay dormant until Christmas in 2005, when Julie invited volunteers from Kindy’s class to come along with us and two other Mennonite teachers to the Christmas eve service in the large Chinese church we attended, and help us sing a Christmas carol which the music leader had asked us to sing.  Seven students volunteered, and one was Kindy.  “I enjoyed the joy from Jesus that evening,” Kindy later said.  And the next Christmas, when Julie issued another invitation, Kindy came along again. 

And then, Kindy decided she wanted to go to church.  She eventually found her way into a young adult musical group, made more Christian friends, and at Christmas 2007 decided to be baptized.  (She now calls her baptism her birthday.)  That early seed planted by her grandmother, and the leaven of Christian sisters and brothers, bore fruit.  But that’s only the first harvest.

Kindy’s second harvest took place after the earthquake.  Kindy was working at a part-time job the afternoon the quake hit, and right away she knew that she wanted to go help.  She prayed, “God, please send me to a place where people need to know your love, and show me what I can do for them.” 

The next Sunday her church was asking for volunteers to help deliver a vanload of supplies to the small mountainous village of Pengzhou that was destroyed.  Kindy volunteered.  But her boss told her she couldn’t have time off, because he had no one to do her job.  So Kindy prayed again, and the next day a replacement worker appeared.  Next day, Kindy traveled to the earthquake area, handing out relief supplies and comforting victims in the rubble of Pengzhou.

But that still wasn’t enough for Kindy.  She wanted to give them more.  “I could give a
person a glass of water when he is thirsty,” she reflected, after she returned.  “I could give her a coat when she is cold.  I could wipe his tears when he drops tears.  I could comfort him with words when he is sad.  However, this is just for temporary help.  It is only God who can placate their heart, heal their spirit, and save their soul.” 

And so, when the Pengzhou survivors expressed thanks to their Chongqing sisters and
brothers for the relief supplies they had brought, Kindy and her friends replied, “Thank God—there is a God who loves you.”  That seed planted in Kindy by her grandmother’s simple words had borne more than just the fruit of her inner assurance that she is a child of God.  That seed also bore external fruit, ethical fruit, leading Kindy to extend herself to others in need.  Through simple words and kind deeds, Kindy joined with God in God’s mission of healing and hope.

And that’s a mission most typically by a life witness of ordinary unpromising seeds and common unspectacular yeast.  Seeds and yeast that can provoke others to ask, “Who are you?  What do you think?  Why do you live the way you do?”  Simple seeds, and humble yeast, that, through God’s Spirit, can bear fruit beyond imagining.   

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