Robert Tappan Morris was a PhD student at Cornell University. At the time, the internet was relatively small, but Morris wanted a sense of how large it was.
So he wrote a program.
The program would look at the computers to which the computer was connected, and send itself to those computers. Those computers would run the same program, and send the program to the computers they were connected to. In this way, the program would reach all of the connected computers.
On November 2, 1988, at 8:30 PM, Morris released the program into a computer on the MIT network. And the program began to spread.
But if computer A is connected to computers B, C, and D, and A sends the program to B, C, and D, aren’t computers B, C, and D also connected to computer A? They are. And they send the program back to A.
Morris included in the program that if the program was already running on a computer, any new attempt would only start 14% of the time.
So if I’m sending the program to everyone I know, everyone I know will send it to me again, and 14% of each of those times I will send the program to everyone again.
The program spread quickly, and soon computers that had already sent the program were receiving the program again, tens, hundreds, thousands of times. And computers had so many copies of the program running, they slowed to a near halt.
All from one program started on one computer, thousands of computers were affected.
Let’s go to God in prayer.
God of wisdom, may the words that I speak, and the ways they are received by each of our hearts and minds, help us to continue to grow into the people, and the church, that you have dreamed us to be.
Amen.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus talks about mustard seeds and yeast.
I’m guessing he skipped computer worms because his audience wasn’t very computer literate. Or maybe because the mustard seed and yeast were not considered destructive.
But he was talking about how small things can make big changes.
Some years ago, I was talking with a clergy person who was wondering whether her ministry meant anything.
I told her:
The first day I returned to church, you were there at social hour. And you invited me to the planning group for the women’s retreat.
As a transgender woman who was often excluded from women’s spaces, and as someone who was as new as one could be to the church, that act of inclusion was very meaningful to me. It helped me to believe that I could be ordained.
In the years since, as I was going to seminary, I was asked to preach at a few churches. A week after one sermon, our music minister said “Cindi, I did what you said.” It turns out she heard something in my sermon about church conflict, and applied it to a relationship at her work.
So that one small thing you did when we met changed my life in a way that changed the life of someone you never met in a way that changed the life of someone I never met.
A little goes a long way.
The choices we make, both negative and positive, affect the people around us, but that effect doesn’t stop there: it continues to people two, three, four, and more steps away.
A single unkind word can sour a person’s mood, and that person can carry that negativity to others. On the other hand, a simple act of kindness can brighten a person’s day, and that person may be kinder to others.
So even the smallest acts matter.
So when we’re making choices, we need to think about whether we’re planting a seed that will grow into a large shrub, or starting a leavening process that will leaven the whole loaf, or infecting a computer that will drag thousands of computers down into uselessness.
And that’s the challenge for this week:
that we be a bit more aware of the choices we make, maybe especially the smallest choices we make.
If what we do were to be multiplied hundreds, thousands, millions of times, would that make for a better world? Or a more challenging one?
May we live with mercy, so that the world may be more merciful.
Amen.
Let’s sing CH 73 There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy
* Scripture quotations marked NRSVue are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. https://www.friendshippress.org/pages/about-the-nrsvue
* Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James version of the Bible.
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