July 19, 2026 Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Luke 13:10-19
“This Divine Moment”
Douglas T. King

The Vietnamese Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh writes this about being fully alive in the present moment.  “To return to the present is to be in contact with life.  Life can be found only in the present moment, because the past no longer is and the future has yet to come…The place of our appointment with life is in the present moment.”

There has often been a distinction drawn between the Buddhist focus on the present moment and the Christian focus upon what is to come, eternal life, Christ’s return, the full arrival of the kingdom of God.  And there have been times in the history of the church when this has been the case, when the church has told its people to ignore whatever suffering they are experiencing in this life because everything will be better in the life to come.  
The French existentialist, Albert Camus, was critical of the church and its preoccupation with the afterlife which he claimed undermined its ability to be ethically engaged in the current concerns of the world.  Camus was correctly raising the concern that too often holiness has been defined as disengagement with present day realities.

This focus on the future presents another risk as well.  The Franciscan priest Richard Rohr notes that “The future is by definition the unsayable and the uncontrollable, filled with paradoxes, mysteries, and confusions…If you surrender to the fear of uncertainty, life can become a set of insurance policies.  Your short time on earth becomes small and self-protective, a kind of circling of the wagons around what you can be sure of and what you think you can control—even God.”

The Jesuit, Jean-Pierre de Caussade presents an antidote to these risks.  In his book, Abandonment to Divine Providence, he discusses how holiness can be found in the midst of the mundane activities of our everyday lives.  Caussade argued that even the parts of our lives that are distasteful and boring are important moments in our growth as Christians.  “Every moment is given to us by God and so bears God’s will for us.  Thus, when we accept what we cannot avoid, and endure with love and resignation things which cause us weariness and frustration, we are on our way to holiness.”

He described the “sacrament of the present moment.”  “Just as Christ, in the Eucharist, is visible to the eyes of faith under the appearance of bread, so to the faithful Christian it should be evident that God’s will is truly present, though disguised, in what might otherwise be dismissed as ordinary and commonplace.”  Caussade taught that we might imagine each moment of our lives as a veil or shadow behind which the will of God awaits our discernment.  The present moment, this very second, the smallest unit of time imaginable, this is the mustard seed, this is the treasure offering abundant growth that often goes unrecognized and overlooked.  

Life is filled with millions and millions of mustard seed moments.  Some of them are lovely and meaningful, the graduation of a daughter from college, a twenty fifth wedding anniversary with a beloved spouse, a breathtaking sunset shared with friends. Inevitably, there will also be plenty of tedium moments.  We will stand in line at the grocery store.  We will get stuck in traffic.  We will get up in the morning and brush our teeth for the ten thousandth time.  There will be numerous moments that feel like throwaway moments, a useless passing of time.  And there will be moments we would do anything in the world to throw away, moments of sorrow and pain, hospital moments, pink slip moments, moments of conflict with those we love, and moments when we are hurting and cannot even quite name why.  

But there is not one single moment of our lives when God is not intently present.  The divine is ever inviting us into deeper relationship, ever offering us healing and transformation.  Perhaps offering us the opportunity to learn patience while standing in line or recognizing the beauty of creation as we are stranded on the 64 by the zoo.  And perhaps those hardest of moments like at the bedside of a loved one under the care of hospice we can recognize that God is present in our midst suffering beside us, and we can somehow see God’s glory even in the midst of our grief and confusion.  

Caussade believed that the way to happiness and holiness in the midst of our very imperfect lives is attention to every moment as a distinct revelation of the divine in our midst.  

Matthew and Mark place the parable of the mustard seed in the midst of lengthy teachings by Jesus.  But Luke uses the parable in a different context.  He places the parable of the mustard seed immediately following Jesus’ healing in the synagogue, on the Sabbath, of the woman who had been crippled for eighteen years.  Any moment can be a mustard seed moment, a revelation moment.  Any tiny moment can reveal the large grandeur of God and grow our faithfulness.  Do you think that woman who had been suffering for eighteen years had any idea that moment of God’s healing was about to occur when it did and, on the Sabbath, a day when healing was not even considered lawful?  

God’s glory can be unveiled at any time.  Each moment is a tiny mustard seed with the potential to transform itself into an experience of divine revelation; a moment of divine healing and transformation.  There are no moments in which God is not deeply present.  There are only moments when we allow our perception to being open to recognizing divine presence, and moments when we do not.   Let us recognize how precious and holy each moment is and keep our eyes peeled for the glory of God.  

Thanks be to God.  Amen.  

Du Caussade, Jeanne Pierre, Abandonment to Divine Providence,
 TAN Books, Charlotte, 2010.
Rohr, Richard, The Naked Now, The Crossroad Publishing Company,
 New York, 2013.