ONLY A SPARK
October 7, 2001
TEXT:II Timothy 1:1-14 Luke
17:5-10
In William J. Bennetts book, The Book of Virtues, is a story
of how Englands
King Richard III lost his kingdom to the Earl of Richmond at his defeat at the
Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.
King Richard sent his groom to get a horse ready for battle, but the blacksmith
had no more iron after supplying the kings whole army for the last few
days. He looked far and wide and found only a lttle. Still, after nailing on
three shoes, he was short.
Bennett writes: I need one or two more nails, he said,
and it will take some time to hammer them out.
I told you I cant wait, the groom said impatiently.
I hear the trumpets now. Cant you just use what youve
got?
I can put the shoe on, but it wont be as secure as the other. Will
it hold? asked the groom. It should, answered the blacksmith, but
I cant be certain.
Well, then, just nail it on, the groom cried. And hurry, or
King Richard will be angry with us both.
The battle wore on, one of King Richards troop lines was broken, and as
the king raced toward the broken line to defend and urge his besieged solders
on, one of the horses shoes fell off, and the frightened animal fell and
then ran away.
The last words of King Richard III, as he waved his sword in the air and begged
for one thing in exchange for what he had, were:
A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse! The battle
inspired a famous saying as recorded by Bennett:
For want of a nail, a shoe was lost,
For want of a shoe, a horse was lost,
For want of a horse, a battle was lost,
For want of a battle, a kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail!
We are led to believe that often it is the smallest and seemingly most insignificant
detail that changes the tides of history and alters the course of civilizations.
What we forget are all the other insignificant details that precede the one final
event that brings about the change. It is like the sports analyst who would reduce
an entire season of baseball games to the very last game between two tied contenders,
knowing full well that any loss anywhere throughout the 167 game season would
result in one of the teams being in second place. Major changes are based on
the accumulation of the seemingly insignificant even as the ocean is made of
billions and billions of drops of water.
The apostles said to the Lord, Increase our faith! The 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. How much
faith is needed to work a miracle? How much love is needed to overcome hatred?
How many voices are needed for peace to come to the world?
What we have seen this past month did not occur in isolation from all that was
happening throughout the world. It was evil manifesting itself after a slow accumulation
of many months and years, breaking forth on one horror-filled morning. Terror
reached its zenith and set off a conflagration that has triggered a chain-reaction
among the nations of the earth. The spark that ignited on September 11, 2001
may yet alter the course of human events even more. People of faith know that
our God has a way of overcoming evil with good, and turning what may be the most
calamitous of circumstances into a final blessing.
There is also accumulating within this world a consciousness of wholeness and
peace, of love and compassion. We may call it the awareness of the Kingdom of
God in shadow form. It lies hidden in the hearts of men and women until such
time as it is evoked by such cataclysmic events. We have seen the heart of darkness,
but we have also seen the resurgence of the human spirit in deeds of courage,
compassion, and patriotism that have bound us together more tightly as community.
We need to affirm that and celebrate that, but we must also recognize that even
among ourselves there is the capacity for evil. We, too, have the potential for
acting like the terrorists we have deplored.
Jesus told a parable of a field in wheat and weeds grow together. There is good
and evil in this world and they know no boundaries whether national, cultural
or religious. We should not blame all Arabs or all Moslems for what has happened
in New York last month any more than we should blame all crew-cut ex-soldiers
for what happened in Oklahoma City in 1995. Let us remember that it was Serbian
Christians who massacred thousands of Albanian Moslems. Let us not forget that
Adolf Hitler praised Martin Luther and cited Luthers book, On the Jews
and Their Lies, as a pretext for Kristalnacht and the Holocaust that followed.
You will find atrocities and crimes against humanity among all the peoples of
this earth. We are all guilty of falling short of Gods intentions for us.
Even as we have a common capacity for evil, we also have among the religions
of the world a common hope for living together in peace and worshiping the one
God who is known by many names. We are not the children of lesser gods, but we
are derived from a common source and we are all on the same planet moving toward
a common goal. We have differences of language, worship, cultural experience,
and ethnicity but God does not love any of his children any more or any less.
We need to find ways of asserting our common humanity.
I believe that is happening. There is the building of a consciousness for the
peace of the world. It happens as silently as the accumulation of snow falling
on a fir tree. You may be familiar with a wonderful modern parable in which the
coal-mouse asks the wild dove, Tell me the weight of a snowflake. Nothing
more than nothing,
came the answer.
In that case I must tell you a marvelous story, the coal-mouse said. I
sat on the branch of a fir, close to its trunk, when it began to snow, not heavily,
not in a raging blizzard, no, just like in a dream, without any violence. Since
I didnt have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on
the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When
the next snowflake dropped onto the branchnothing more than nothing, as
you saythe branch broke off.
Having said that, the coal-mouse flew away. The dove, since Noahs time
an authority on the matter, thought about the story for a while and finally said
to herself: Perhaps there is only one persons voice lacking for peace
to come about in the world.
It only takes a spark to ignite that which has been accumulating since the beginning
of time. It may come in the form of food to a starving Afghan child. It may come
in the gift of bread broken in this service of communion. It may come in a word
spoken without hatred to a former enemy. How much faith is needed? How much love
is required? What is the weight of a snowflake?
Twenty years ago, Ken Keyes, Jr. wrote a book called The Hundredth Monkey. He
begins by telling the true story of a species of Japanese monkey, the macaca
fuscata, that had been observed in the wild for a period of thirty years. In
1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing the monkeys with sweet
potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkeys liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes,
but they found the dirt unpleasant.
An eighteen-month-old female found she could solve the problem by washing the
potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates
also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too. This cultural innovation
was picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952
and 1958, all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes. Only
the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other
adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.
Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number
of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes. The exact number is unknown,
but one morning when, lets say, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes,
something amazing happened. By that evening every monkey in the tribe was washing
potatoes before eating them. The added energy of the hundredth monkey created
an ideological breakthrough.
What is even more amazing, this habit jumped over the sea. Colonies of monkeys
on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing
their sweet potatoes.
The lesson of this scientific observation is that when a certain critical number
is achieved, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind.
There is a consciousness building within the universe whose time is coming. God
is at work in the hearts and lives of millions of people. Christians know that
the experience of Good Friday has given way to the Resurrection, that what seemed
to be defeat ended in victory. When night seems darkest, we see the stars more
clearly. We need to share this hope and pass it on.
As Paul Said to Timothy, For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift
of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not
give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of
self_discipline, so must we continue to do our part to rekindle the flame
of love. It only takes a spark to keep the fire going.
-Harry Serio |