While the directness of “Fake it ‘til you make it” appealed to me as a newcomer to AA, I find that it doesn’t always translate into other settings all that well… it’s not something I would necessarily say to someone who was struggling with their faith, although I think I probably have said it… I imagine we have all had those moments, days, months or even years when faith was hard; when everything in life pointed away from faith and we had difficulty connecting to God and perhaps even to others; or maybe we watched someone we cared about struggle; sometimes that’s even harder to sit through because we want to alleviate the pain that another is going through and we just can’t.
I think the parable of the mustard seed is helpful here… we know that mustard seeds are small… Really, any seed is pretty small compared to the plant and fruit they produce. What I think about when I hear this parable is that we all have to start somewhere. Faith is a gift that doesn’t always feel like a gift; it’s hard… it takes work… I’m no gardener, but I know that for a garden to grow well, there is much work that has to be done; digging, watering, feeding… few, if any gardens grow without some really hard work… faith is pretty much the same way… there are a few people who talk about their life of faith as if they have never had to struggle with it but I know that that is not the case for most of us… for many, it is more of a spiritual tug of war that is hard and sometimes very lonely and very painful.
For me, the mustard seed analogy shows me something about willingness. Being willing to believe, being willing to be faithful, being willing to forgive, being willing in just about any aspect of the spiritual life is sometimes enough. I think that’s what the AA old-timers really meant… be willing to believe, be willing to accept that serenity is possible…
The new creation that Paul speaks about in his letter to the Corinthians sometimes seems out of reach, doesn’t it… we say that we are a new creation in Jesus, and then we look at our lives or we look at the environment we are in, or the world around us and we wonder where the newness is, where this new creation is being born… it’s easy to get discouraged when we are struggling; it’s hard to do the work of the Spirit when life has gotten in the way of the Spirit’s voice, or when we are doubting the very existence of God…It’s hard to think that we can take on one more thing, one more project, when we are already overwhelmed and having a hard time balancing our budgets of time and money and emotional health…. it’s hard to tell someone else why you and I do what we do when others think the whole church thing is just silly on the best of days.
Beloved, we are a new creation; but even God took the time and the rest to get his beloved creation together; everything had to start somewhere… and I think that willingness goes a long, long way to getting us there… When I was new to AA, I did anything people asked of me; I made coffee, I shared in meetings, I organized pamphlets… I did that stuff because I was willing to believe that there were answers there that I needed to have. When I discovered the church as a young adult, it was very much the same; I did what I was asked to do, because somehow it was apparent to me, that this community, the church, imperfect and annoying as it sometimes was (and still is) had something incredible going on within it… perhaps in spite of itself… but I knew that there was something very real about the whole thing, and I knew that somehow I wanted to be a part of it and that there were answers I desperately needed… and so, I made coffee… again… I joined groups of various kinds, I read the bible, I participated in worship… and some days it didn’t feel very good or very life giving… yet somehow being willing to just show up was enough… Being willing to just believe that somehow this group of imperfect people had found the answers to living a more peace filled, and fulfilling life, that somehow they had found Jesus, however they defined him, was enough to keep me coming back even on the worst days…
A mustard seed isn’t much to look at, yet it is the start of a new creation, because, after all, you’ve got to start somewhere… willingness is a mustard seed of sorts… small, imperfect, not particularly filled with confidence, yet it is a start… doubt and fear are all a part of this spiritual life, and they are part of what helps us to grow as individuals and as a community… and sometimes, we have to be willing to be pulled along by others who are more willing to believe than we are…
Some days are hard… Some days it seems like coming here to worship a God who sometimes appears to not listen or care isn’t really worth the effort… be willing to believe and let the faith of the community carry you when you are in doubt; there isn’t anything we cannot do if we are willing to want to believe… And, the good news about the mustard seed of faith is that you and I aren’t’ the gardeners anyway. Jesus is. He is the one that waters and tends to the garden. Sometimes we are the ones who make that difficult. I hope that we can be willing to let him tend to our faith gardens. We can all start somewhere…. willingness is a great place to start….