Small Is The New Great

"Small Is the New Great"--July 25, 2018

"Now a certain man named Simon had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria, saying that he was someone great. All of them, from the least to the greatest, listened to him eagerly, saying, 'This man is the power of God that is called Great.' And they listened eagerly to him because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic. But when they believed Philip, who was proclaiming the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Even Simon himself believed. After being baptized, he stayed constantly with Philip and was amazed when he saw the signs and great miracles that took place." [Acts 8:9-13]

There is a familiar line of Mother Teresa's that is in danger of becoming a cliché—nonetheless, I'm willing to risk that by repeating it one more time here as a way of entering into the story of this man named Simon.  Mother Teresa has said, "We can do no great deeds, only small deeds with great love."  The life of Simon (sometimes also called Simon "Magus", which is just the Latin word for "magician," not a last name) is evidence to us that Mother Teresa's statement is not just sentimental schmaltz.  It is hard to be told that we do no "great deeds."  It humbles us—it deflates our puffed up egos.  That will be the case with Simon, who will have an ongoing struggle with giving up the need to be "great" in order to really understand that he belongs to a God who is great, but whose greatness is most clearly shown in smallness, in weakness, in a cross.  This reminds me of another challenging saying, this time by theologian Richard Lischer, who says, "A profession summons the best from you. A vocation calls you away from what you thought was best in you, purifies it, and promises to make you something or someone you are not yet."  That is Simon's challenge, too—he had a good racket going before becoming a follower of Jesus.  Maybe even that is too hard on him—he had an impressive reputation as a doer of great signs.  Maybe he had the best of intentions to be the greatest entertainer around, or maybe he even thought that his "magical powers" would benefit others in the long run.  But the call for Simon to belong to the followers of Jesus meant giving up not just sorcery in particular, but also the idolatry of "greatness."  Simon was called to give up not just his magic wand, but also the whole way of thinking that insists on carrying a "big stick" in the first place.

In other words, Simon might not have completely realized it at first, but he was being called to give up delusions of grandeur and instead to receive a life in which we God's greatness is revealed in our smallness.  You can't help but think he would have gotten a hint of that when heard Philip "proclaiming the good news about the kingdom of God" since nearly every time Jesus opens his mouth about the kingdom of God in the gospels, it involves a new reality in which God lifts up the lowly and pulls the rug out from under the haughty.  The kingdom Jesus announced and taught his disciples about, the kingdom they kept "proclaiming," was a new order of things in which the hungry are filled and the rich sent away empty (remember Mary's song in Luke 1), in which the poor the blind and the lame are invited to the party (remember the parable in Luke 14), and in which a bunch of scattered ex-fishermen are conduits for the power of God's Spirit.  So it shouldn't have surprised Simon what he was getting himself into—or, more truthfully, what the Spirit was getting him into—by becoming a Christian.  Being baptized into the community of Jesus can't help but mean giving up our feeble attempts at "greatness" in order that we may be drawn into the great love of God that shows itself in smallness.

But you can also tell that Simon isn't quite there.  He is drawn by the good news announced by Philip, and he even becomes a member of the disciple-community by being baptized himself, but, ooh, he's still distracted by the signs and wonders Philip does, as though they were ends in and of themselves.  Simon is having a hard time with the idea that "miracles" and "wonders" in the New Testament stories are first and foremost signs that point to what God is up to, so that people can indeed recognize the living God present in the likes of an ordinary-seeming rabbi named Jesus and his band of equally ordinary-seeming followers.  Miracles, healings, and wonders are always signs, and signs point away from themselves, beyond themselves, to something else.   That's hard for Simon to wrap his head around--he's still fighting the temptation just to be wowed, just to be entertained by the next great thing, and maybe even just to be given the power to do those "great" things himself.  It's hard for him to see the things that Philip does as signposts pointing to the God who is doing something new in Jesus, the God who chooses to be made known in smallness and weakness and death and humility.

Maybe that is hard for all of us to see. Before we make Simon into a black-hat-and-mustached villain, we need to see ourselves in his story, because we are all tempted to nurse dreams of being considered "great" and to seek out religious experiences as just one more distraction in our lives.  We are tempted to be drawn to the church that puts on the best "show", however you define it:  the church with the loudest praise band, the church with the highest of high liturgies and incense, the church with the most Power Point slideshow sermons and folksy preaching, or whatever.  Not only that, we are tempted to be the church that puts on the best "show"—we are tempted to pick up on whatever we think will make us seem "great" to others, in order that we can attract more people, who will in turn make us feel even "greater" about ourselves.  We are tempted to puff up ourselves, our neighborhoods, our school districts, our political parties, or our country and to try and project the idea that ours is "greater" than theirs, that at least if we can convince ourselves we're better than somebody else, we will be of some worth. 

It is an unending cycle in human history, from the childish one-upsmanship of kids comparing their toys to nations bragging about their GDP or nuclear arsenals. It's all the same old idol of wanting to be seen as "great"... and it's Simon's story all over again.  

Maybe we have good intentions, or we dress up our thoughts in good intentions.  And indeed, we are people who really are believers, who really have been baptized, and who really have been received in the household of God.  But like Simon, we still wrestle with the idea of wanting what seems "great"—we want to be enthralled and entertained by what seems "great", and we secretly still want to hold on to our dreams of being seen as "great" in the eyes of others.  Most of all, we have a hard time with the idea of God who doesn't seem to think that being viewed as "great" is all that great a priority—we have a hard time, like Simon, with the idea of a God whose most definitive action in the world is a death on a cross and not a glorious parade or a noble battle or at least a parting of some seas.  We have a hard time, like Simon, not just giving up our own need to be seen as "great" by others, but giving up the notion that God needs to be seen as "great" in those old familiar terms of glory and credit and power.  We do not like the idea of a God who meets us in smallness, but as Simon will learn, this is the only God we know.   

This is an ongoing struggle for us.  Like Simon, even after being baptized, even after time in the church, and even after time spent at the side of wise teachers and faith mentors, we still flirt with the idea that our quest is to build up the most impressive reputation or résumé or list of accomplishments.  And we still flirt with the idea that God will work best through us if we are "wowing" people in one way or another.  But instead, God keeps speaking to us, and speaking through us, a message about a new order in which the lowly are raised up, the untouchables get the first invites to the party, and death turns out to be the key to resurrection.  What are the temptations we face today to do "great deeds" rather than "small deeds with great love"?  What are the things we may be summoned to let go of with Simon, and to leave behind?  What are the surprising things we may be dared to pick up in this day?

Lord of great and small alike, surprise us again today in the unexpected places.  Guide our acting and living in this day that we might be blessed in our smallness and might bless others with great love, channeled through surprising vessels like...us.