CUPC Sermon July 27, 2014

Sermon:  “Don’t Trip Over God’s Kingdom”

Matthew 13: 31–33, 44–52

The parables and proverbs that Jesus tells in today’s Gospel lesson are about the kingdom of God, but they are also about perspective.  We habitually have a perception problem. We think we have the proper perspective on an issue when in fact we are way off.

Here’s an example of misaligned perspective. A very successful businessman and his wife were driving along when he noticed that their Mercedes was low on gas. He soon found a rundown gas station with just one gas pump. He asked the lone attendant to fill the tank and check the oil; then went for a little walk around the station to stretch his legs.

As he was returning to the car, he noticed that the attendant and his wife were engaged in an animated conversation. The conversation stopped as he paid the attendant.  Getting back into the car, he saw the attendant wave and heard him say, "It was great talking to you."

As they drove out of the station, the husband asked his wife if she knew the man. It turned out they had gone to high school together and had dated steadily for about a year.

"Boy, were you lucky that I came along," bragged the husband. "If you had married him, you'd be the wife of a gas station attendant instead of the wife of a chief executive officer."

"My dear," replied his wife, "if I had married him, he'd be the chief executive officer and you'd be the gas station attendant."

Perspective!  It’s an important factor as we view things, things of earth and things of God’s kingdom!

Sometimes we are absolutely convinced that we have the right perspective on things and that we know the truth.   So often we haven’t a clue.  Jesus understood this. Especially when it comes to things spiritual. So he told a few parables. He said the kingdom of heaven is like, well, things we may pass by and ignore every day, and it provides a home to creatures whom we might expect to find there.

Today’s world encourages us to think “big.”  Bigger house.  Bigger car.  Bigger salary. Bigger recognition.  And of course everything has to be newer as well as bigger.

These little parables of Jesus – especially those first two – are meant to skewer our perspective on size and status and appearance.    The Kingdom of God grows from seeds we often overlook, and sometimes to our eye the Kingdom is definitely not what we had in mind. 

To those who heard Jesus talking about mustard seeds and trees, they were hearing a story about weeds.  If you’ve ever been down south (south of Iowa) you might say that he was talking about kudzu grass.  Yes, the mustard was a healthy and useful herb when it was properly cultivated, but it grew in an uncontrollable way if you just sewed it in a field.  And when it grew up in that field it would be very hard to remove.

From the perspective of a farmer, an uncultivated mustard bush – growing into a large tree – was an eyesore and unwanted.  But as it grew it welcomed other creatures, birds, and gave them a place to build a home and be in the shade.  From the perspective of a bird, that tree was a welcoming and pleasant sight. 

Have you ever made bread?  No!  Not in a bread machine; by hand, the old fashioned way, kneading it yourself and watching it rise into a mound of dough that would produce a tasty loaf of bread.  A great many frustrations and hostility could be worked out in the preparation of that dough. 

In Genesis 18, we read: “⁶And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, ‘Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.’”  Abraham was preparing for a very big feast.  In his second parable this morning, Jesus says: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”  Like Sarah, she wasn’t preparing just a loaf of bread.  Three measures of flour is about 50 pounds of flour! 

In Jesus’ world there was both leavened bread (that is, raised yeast bread) and unleavened bread.  Yeast is a living organism and it has some interesting properties.  It seems like a harmless little thing thrown into a batch of flour, but it creates what amounts to an infection within that flour.  It stimulates the flour to grow exponentially.  To many people in Jesus’ day yeast was a metaphor for corruption.  It was a hidden presence that could completely alter the composition of something.

The people hearing Jesus’ story about the woman mixing up the yeast would not have equated that situation with the glory of God’s kingdom.  First of all, women – like yeast itself – were to remain hidden from the main events of life.  They were meant to work silently in the kitchen.  How could the menial and necessary work of a woman become the agent of something as important and glorious as the Kingdom of God?

We hear these stories and think they’re quaint or cute or just pleasant little proverbs or aphorisms.  The people hearing Jesus tell these stories would have thought they were senseless.  From their perspective these things couldn’t have anything to do with the Kingdom of God!

Jesus is telling us that the Kingdom of God is here, present among us in things that are so ordinary, so common that from our perspective we often miss God’s Kingdom entirely.  It’s what we are looking for, but like the religious leaders of Jesus’ own day, we don’t really understand what it is that we are looking for.  We are looking in all the wrong places.

Not only that, but the Kingdom is a living organism, perhaps already planted or leavened but not yet completed.  But it is here among us. 

Like the birds who find shelter in that wild mustard tree, God’s Kingdom gives shelter and comfort to those whom we might least expect to find there.  In fact, we might have a hard time accepting the notion that we might have to share God’s Kingdom with them.  They might be people we see as enemies.  They might be unwashed refugees, children trying to escape violence and poverty in their native countries. 

Like the yeast within that great amount of flour being kneaded by an anonymous kitchen worker, the Kingdom of God is expanded by the quiet toil of agents whom we might never suspect. 

Jesus told parables to startle people so that they might wrestle with the truths that were hidden in plain sight and in the process come closer to God.  That’s the same reason we read them today, still wrestling with them and being reminded in examples made all the more jarring because of their commonness.

Let me share with you my interpretation of the mustard seed or the yeast, or whatever else hides the power of the Kingdom in plain sight.  YOU!  If you want to encounter the Kingdom of God and watch it grow all around you it must start with your realization and your acceptance of the fact that God loves you.  God wants you.  You too are welcome in God’s kingdom.  But you don’t get to choose who else God has invited or sheltered.

The Kingdom is like this:  God loves you, today, right now, just as you are and invites you to come and share the glory of life.  You may feel that your life carries the weight and the burden of 50 pounds of dead flour.  When you have accepted that bit of leavening into your heart and into your soul, really accepted that God loves you, perceived the reality of God’s love for you, the kingdom will increase all around you from within you in the way that a little yeast can produce nourishing bread even from an overwhelming burden of flour.  

The Kingdom is like you, filled with the leaven of God’s Spirit, and able to bring God’s nourishment to many.

Amen.