July 25, 1999
1 Kings
3:5-12/ Psalm
119:129-136 /Romans
8:26-34 /Matthew
13:31-33, 44-49a
You know how they say that 75% of all communication is non-verbal?
The way we really speak to each other isn't necessarily what we
say, but how we say it and what we look like when we do. When
we speak, we look to each other for things like facial expressions,
gestures, eye contact, and mouth positions. Somewhere in between
verbal and non-verbal communication is the sigh.
We all know the different types of sighs that each of us uses. Remember the first time you fell in love and you looked at your beloved and sighed? Perhaps your children or your spouse and even your parents know the irritated sigh. And then of course, there is the perennial sigh of resignation and the universal sigh of relief.
Beneath each sigh is breath — the fundamental source of all life. It is the image of breath that is used in Genesis to describe how God created the world by breathing life into it. The New Testament records Jesus breathing on his disciples when he imparts the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit descends upon the people it comes as a great wind and fire. The Greek word for spirit is also a synonym for wind. It's called pneuma — critical to our existence. Today, Jesus presents us with images of the Kingdom of God that are as real, and yet, as simple as breath, and which we are as conscious of it as our own sighing.
There are several parables presented today. I am going to talk about only two — the mustard seed and the leaven and the bread. Nobody gave mustard seeds much thought, especially in Palestine in the first century, mainly because they were so common. Mustard seeds are just barely visible to the naked eye and when planted, no one would really notice until they grew to eight or ten feet tall. The irony of the story is that no farmer in his right mind would intentionally go out and sow mustard seeds. It would be crazy! It would be almost impossible.
The image of the Kingdom is that God takes the time to work with each of us as meticulously as his own breathing is our own breathing. Something as common as a mustard seed is considered precious to God. The Kingdom that Jesus presents is of you and me, common everyday folk, being tended to absolutely as meticulously by God. It sounds simple, but if it is so simple, how come nobody got it?
The second story is of yeast and leaven — another curious irony in Jesus' parable. He says that the woman has three measures of flour. If you were to convert to modern day pounds, three measures would be fifty pounds of flour. That would be enough to feed one hundred people. So in Jesus' day this woman made about a year's supply of bread with that little bit of leaven, with that little bit of yeast.
Here is the image of breath again. Do you know how yeast makes dough rise? By filling it with thousands of pockets of carbon dioxide. It rises when heat is applied to it and then slowly the bread begins to rise. Where is the image of the Kingdom? Where is God in that mix? I think it is in something as common as the dough. You and I, thrown together in the mix. God creates us. He provides us with warmth and together we rise. Very simple, very common, and yet, something beyond the grasp of many of us.
All we need to do is to trust that God will provide the yeast for us — those people in times in our lives that mold us and shape us, and those times in our lives in which the heat is applied so that we can grow. Together as dough, we become bread, and God sighs and says, "What a wonderful creation I have made!" AMEN
The Rev. Sean A. Cox
seancox@stmargarets.org
20, September 1998