Proper 12A

For the past couple of weeks, we have been sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to an incredible array of parables. For the most part, they have been based on agrarian models of weeds and wheat, sowers and seeds, things we find in the field. But today we shift into other imagery with much shorter descriptions for each. No matter what we have heard, the images have been united by a single phrase that has been repeated throughout: The Kingdom of heaven is like….

The Kingdom (or realm, or dominion) of heaven is like:

• a sower who sowed seeds that grew according to the soil in which they fell;
• a field where weeds that are sown amongst the wheat are allowed to grow until the final harvest;
• the mustard seed that grows into a large tree providing shelter for the birds of the air;
• the leaven that a woman puts into bread causing the bread to rise;
• the treasure that a man hides in a field so he can buy the whole field with the treasure after he sells all his worldly goods;
• the pearl that a merchant finds and sells all so that he may have it;
ª the net that collects fish of every kind — good and bad.

The parables give us so much imagery it is hard to focus on just one. And though there are interpretations given to some of the parables, most likely these interpretations are not originally of Jesus but of the writer of the gospel who wanted to tie things neatly together. Yet for Jesus the power of teaching laid not in the explanation but in the process of drawing the disciples into the story and making them figure it out.

+

Like the disciples, we want hard and fast answers. Like the crowd beyond the disciples, we do not always hear the inner message of the parable Jesus has just told us. Like both the disciples and the crowd, we want to know exactly what Jesus means in his stories.

But like the good rabbis of his times, Jesus does not tell us the exact answer. Instead he replies over and over again, The kingdom of heaven is like…, and leaves the figuring out for us. We do not like that; we want to know and understand everything. But that is not always for us to do.

+

It would be convenient to have some authority that could tell us why people kill others, why there is suffering in the world and why it afflicts indiscriminately young and old, rich and poor and every class and race of humankind. It would make life a lot easier if someone or something could wrap all our questions up neatly in a box with big bow on top saying, ‘There. All you need to know is in here.’ But that is not how life or faith works. We are called to engage in the questions and figure out the parables for ourselves. Sometimes it means having to parse things closely and sometimes it means letting things be as they are and dwelling in the mystery and questions, something that is very hard for our modern and concrete mind.

+

So I imagine us sitting on the grass alongside the lake where Jesus is teaching and our asking Jesus what he means by these stories and why is life so complicated sometimes and why are there things we don’t understand. And I hear Jesus answer us as we have heard over and over again these past few weeks: The kingdom of heaven is like…. We do not get an easy or even a clear answer to our whys and our other questions. The answer I imagine Jesus giving us this morning, and it could be from any one of the many parables we have just heard — is another one that begins with: The kingdom of heaven is like… And it is an answer that seems totally off the track and much too vague. But if we search, we might find some answers. And that is one message found in this morning’s gospel.

+

One of the one-liner parables gives another message. Let’s go back to the parable about the woman with the yeast and do some parsing. This baker, who is God, takes about eight pounds of flour and adds yeast to the entire quantity to yield over a hundred pounds of dough. As bakers know, yeast dissolves in the liquid that goes into the dough. Once yeast comes together with the liquid and is added into the flour, we end up with dough. Or looking at the end result, there is not a moment when the dough is without yeast. Yeast is something unseen but without which nothing happens. We know what happens when we don’t use it; we know what happens when we do. Once integrated into the flour, yeast becomes inseparable. We can’t strain it out or remove it. Unlike seeds which can be removed, yeast is in there for good. And it’s something that works quietly and over time.

This parable suggests that there has not been a moment when God’s Spirit has not been in this world, this lump of dough. The dough is all of us — the world — the world that cannot grow and be of God unless the Spirit of God is added to it. God’s Spirit enters the world at its creation and has been with us ever since and even before the creation of the world. But like yeast, we cannot always see the Spirit at work.

As you know in making bread, the dough needs to be kneaded, poked and prodded for something to happen. Perhaps we are the dough, needed to be poked and prodded so that we can rise to become whole and that for which God has purposed.

What is so hard for us to realise is that God — the Holy Spirit, Jesus the Crucified and Risen One and God the Creator — is constantly with us, working in us, even in those moments when everything seems to point against God’s presence. I am not going to say that the heartbreak in this world — in the form of bombings, earthquakes, strife, disagreement, premature death and all the other incomprehensible events that strike us — are of God’s will. I am not going to say either that we blithely ignore them because they happened somewhere else and not here. They do affect us because we are all children of God. Nor am I going to say that if we only pray, everything will be all right. I do think though that somehow, mysteriously, unknown and unseen to us, God is working somehow in this broken, tragic world. Somehow, even in the midst of these unanswerable questions, we have inbreakings of the kingdom of God.

One inbreaking of the kingdom that we experience again and again is what happens when we gather around the table for eucharist. At that moment, all our brokenness, the sadness and tragedy of the world, the questions and uncertainty are offered up, transformed, and given back to us as Christ’s body and blood, the food of the heavenly banquet. We can stay the course despite it all by coming together for nourishment so that we can then go out and serve God, be instruments of God’s peace and, yes, be the dough in which God’s Spirit works quietly and patiently. And perhaps through us others can begin to find some answers to their big questions, too — answers that ultimately will also lead them to this table of life.