The Rev. Margaret Watson
St. Margaret's Episcopal Church & School
1 Kings 3:5-12 | Psalm 119:121-136 | Romans 8:26-34 | Matthew 13:31-33, 44-49a
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that a woman takes
and mixes in with three measures of flour.”
Do you have a bread story? I have a bread story. Young
inexperienced, Eastern Oregon, cooking for cowboys — That’s when I
was called Maggie and I wore boots! We were 600 miles, or so it
seemed, I know it was 6 hours from the closest store and we needed
lots of bread everyday. And we went through yeast like crazy. So
being the Californian that I am, I decided that I would make
starter, and then I won’t have to worry about the yeast and we
could have all bread we wanted all the time. So I made starter,
but I put in just a little more yeast because I wanted a lot of
starter. And I put it on the sill next to the sink where it was
warm in the sunlight, in March, in Eastern Oregon, and went about
my chores: Splitting wood, checking the chickens, you know those
kinds of farms things. And when I came back, oh-Lord-have-mercy.
The starter was quite successful. It had come off the sill, filled
up a double stainless steel sink, and had grown all over the sink
onto the floor and was making its way across the kitchen and my
fear was that some cowboy would come in and shoot it! And I might
get in the way. Who knew that the mess I spent cleaning up for
hours was like heaven, was like God’s Kingdom come, but it was! It
was common, ordinary, everyday stuff. But it was kingdom stuff.
Overflowing abundance.
Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven is like a tiny tiny little seed
which grows so large that it can become a tree and a home for all
the birds of the air. The Kingdom is like a tiny bit of yeast
mixed into 3 measures of flour, (that’s 50 pounds of flour) and
there’s enough yeast for all of the 50 pounds and it makes enough
bread to feed the whole neighborhood. The Kingdom is like a
treasure, hidden in a place which does not belong to us. So we go
out and sell all we have to purchase it. The Kingdom is like
looking for that fine pearl and finding it and it costs us
everything we own. The Kingdom is like that net that drags in
every unlikely thing in the ocean. This is powerful stuff, but
this is ordinary stuff and it points to the fact that the Kingdom
is here and is along side us in wonderful powerful ways.
As I was meditating upon these lessons this week, and as I
listened to the news, I thought to myself what do I do with this
Kingdom of Heaven stuff in light of what I’m hearing on
television, - in light of the death and war in Iraq and
Afghanistan, in light of the bombing and attempted bombings in
London and Egypt? And what do I do with this Kingdom stuff in
sight of my own fears, your fears, and our vulnerability in this
world? What do we do? Where is the Kingdom in all that? Show me
Lord, show me.
But these parables do say that the Kingdom is made of rather
ordinary stuff and that the Kingdom is here in the midst of us,
right alongside of our daily lives, right in the midst of that
pain and that suffering and that vulnerability, because God didn’t
come to take us away from that ordinary stuff — he didn’t come to
take us away from our weaknesses our fears our sins. God came to
redeem those very things, and to redeem us and make us his
children. So what do we do? What do we do with that knowledge of
that Kingdom?
There is much we can do. We can gather as little brothers and
sisters of Solomon seeking and finding God’s wisdom not in
ourselves but in the one we name Wisdom, who is Jesus Christ our
Lord. We trust that the prayers we lift before the altar are made
perfect because we pray in Christ’s name. We trust that we are fed
with the Body and Blood, and we become what we eat which is food
for the world. We rejoice because God takes the most
imperceptible, the smallest, the tiniest seed or bit of yeast and
does more with it than we can ever think or imagine. Yes, we
gather, we trust, we rejoice. But how do we move from that place
of yearning of discernment, or puzzlement? How do we move from
that place which brings us to our knees of acknowledging our
weaknesses and vulnerability to that place of trust and rejoicing,
worthy to stand before God in the name of Christ?
Look again. In the Gospels today, Jesus gives us five short
parables. Listen to them closely. The first two, a seed, a bit of
yeast, both have to do with God. It is God, not us, who is at work
here; it is God who is growing a huge tree from a tiny seed. It is
God, yes, like a woman, who takes a tiny amount of yeast and makes
enough bread to feed the neighborhood. This is incredible! This is
abundance. And we cannot see with our own eyes what a seed does,
we cannot see what yeast does. But the seed and the yeast do not
happen suddenly, they do not happen in unworldly or super-bionic
ways. It is natural, it is on-going, and it is God’s activity,
always present always at work. Trust Him. Because this is what the
Kingdom of God is like: from in-perceptible to grand, continuous
and ongoing. God is at work in the everyday stuff around us. God’s
Kingdom is not a place of ethereal detachment it is not a
spiritual or other worldly place. It is here. God’s Kingdom is as
close as the punching and folding and kneading that it takes to
make bread.
The 5th and last parable today is also about God—the net. It is
not a parable of judgment; it is not a story merrily about casting
out the bad. This is a story of what the net brings into the
Kingdom. All things. Because, remember, the bad fish get thrown
out; but don’t get all pleased and puffed up about that, because,
remember, just like the wheat of last week—what happens to the
good fish? We gut them and eat them, food for the world. This
parable is not about judgment; this parable is about God’s glory,
God’s power, God’s wisdom, that brings all things into his
Kingdom. He decides. So rejoice.
And then there are the two parables in the middle and these may
describe the human response to God’s culture. This may be the
human side of Kingdom, and who is there? A trespasser, someone
looking for buried treasure on land that does not belong to them.
A wheeler dealer, looking for the best deal in town. You know, it
sounds pretty much like us. But the difference is, when they see
the Kingdom, they know it, and nothing else matters. They sell
everything they have, trusting and rejoicing. So what do we do? We
should Gather, Trust, Rejoice. Yes, faithfully tend that seed. Let
us continue to call all the birds of the air to plant nests in its
branches. Let us mend that net. Let us seek true Wisdom as Solomon
did, not asking for long life or riches or revenge upon our
enemies, but for Wisdom. Let us discover prayer as did Paul. Let
us pray in our weakness knowing already that we do not know how to
pray as we ought to, but trusting that we pray with the Spirit who
is interceding for us with sighs too great for words. And when we
are called upon, trust and rejoice. And no matter what it looks
like, the Kingdom is upon us. Let us sell everything we have, let
us give our lives to each other and to this world as Christ did.
There is a poem I found that says all of this so well. It was
composed by a woman, her name is Mary Oliver, she lives on the
East Coast and is a teacher. It is called “A Summer Day”. It goes
like this.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down onto the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and that too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Amen.