Kirkepiscatoid

⁵The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” ⁶The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. ⁷“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? ⁸Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? ⁹Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? ¹⁰So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”

Ah, yes, the veritable mustard seed. Carrol got to do the sermon at Trinity this week, since Wallace was on vacation, and I bet she was happy she landed on a "classic" week in the lectionary! But she brought up some good observations about mustard seeds in general. She had bought a little container of them at Hy-Vee in the hopes they would inspire her. By her account, mustard seeds are not very inspirational when you look at them at first glance.

First of all, they're small. Second of all, they're all a little uneven; some are round, some are flatter, some are darker, some are broken open. She made a good point in her sermon...that one mustard seed isn't much, but when you put them all together, they make something, and that is, in a way, what the church is all about.

I got to thinking about that, and my mind added to it. Someone asked at coffee hour, "What do you do with mustard seeds besides make mustard?" and I answered, "I use them in barbecue." Then, on the way home, I got to thinking about the concept of mustard seeds and barbecue. Here in the midwest, people are more into the "red" BBQ sauces. When I barbecue, I like to do a little more of the "Southeast seaboard" tricks. If you ever ate real South Carolina barbecue, it's not a "red sauce" at all; it's a more mustard based sauce. I tend to baste my meat in beer and vinegar with a tad of crushed mustard seed thrown in, then top it off when it's done with a "red" sauce.

That got me to thinking of the power of those little mustard seeds. Just a few seeds change the whole character of the marinade. I challenge anyone to find the little boogers after they've been thrown in the marinade. You could look and look all day and never find them...yet you can taste them. You perceive their presence.

That's a good thing to remember when my faith is flagging and feels almost nonexistent. Maybe at that moment, to me, that faith is a tiny bit of nothing...but when you throw it in the marinade, you know it's there. Its presence is tasted--not just by you, but everyone who's tasting the barbecue. You may not even know who might be tasting it, but they know it's there, too.

Then I got to thinking about another barbecue fact about those little mustard seeds. If you really want the full flavor of them, you have to crush them, you have to break their little hulls to get all the flavor out of them. A thought flashed through my mind: Can we really open our hearts to another, can we really open our hearts to God, unless our own hearts have been crushed? Does the full flavor of our goodness maximally enhance the flavor of that marinade unless our own hearts have been broken open? The more I thought about it, the more I realized, probably not.

One of the things I'm starting to realize as I grow spiritually is that I have to shed the fear of my heart being broken open. I spent a good portion of my formative years and young adulthood "learning not to feel." Being dispassionate is a great protective device. Learning not to feel things, learning to "opt out" of some of your emotional matrix can keep a lot of hurt off your doorstep. But this imperviousness comes at a great price--because the barrier of dispassionateness keeps out the good as well as the bad. It also keeps away the more intense feelings of goodness.

I remember telling someone a few years ago, "I learned a long time ago to stop trying to be happy. I learned to settle for being pleasantly satisfied." I am finding myself eating those words. I am slowly discovering that, (at least in a relatively safe, quiet environment) that if I allow myself the luxury of vulnerability, I can at least experience fleeting, but intense moments of pure joy. The price, of course, is the pain of feeling your heart break open, and that comes with equally intense (but mercifully fleeting) moments of pain and helplessness. But perhaps those moments flavor the barbecue, too. The best tasting barbecue always has a sweet, deep flavor buried within overtones of hot and sour.

I confess I do not like the unpredictable nature of all this...but I'm starting to be a little more willing to take the risk to get to taste a sauce that good.