Do You See What I Hear?

Lisa Rzepka, July 24, 2005
Scripture: Matthew 13:31-34, 44-52

	Text: "Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually." Psalm 105:4

"Have you understood all this?" Jesus asks his disciples.

We're told the response was "Yes" but I'm not quite sure if the answer was a strong, affirmative, confident "Yes." Maybe we'd understand that after leaping from seeds to weeds to yeast to treasure to pearls to fish that the answer from the disciples might have been a tentative "Yes" or even more likely a "No, this is a lot to take in - can we form a committee to study it and get back to you on what exactly our questions are?"

I'd be on that committee because one of the reasons I chose this text this week is because I've come to realize the Kingdom has a variety of interpretations, many of which come from the desires of our individual hearts. Let's think for a moment about the Kingdom of God or, as Matthew prefers to say, the Kingdom of Heaven. My favorite quip about the Kingdom was from a Benedictine nun who was sitting with her mother as she lay dying. In an effort to reassure the dying woman the nun said, "In heaven, everyone we love is there." Her mother replied, "No, in heaven I will love everyone who is there!" (Norris, 1998, 367)

What's your image of the Kingdom? Thinking about heaven reminds me of an evening not to long ago when we were sitting outside with friends. The late evening sun was setting, the kids were content, a warm, balmy breeze was blowing through the huge backyard trees, and cool drinks kept us hydrated. One of our friends said, "This is exactly how I imagine heaven is."

When I was younger I always thought heaven had a Wizard of OZ-like quality. Or, that it's the feeling you have on vacation or at summer camp… We often have a paradise image, probably akin to our interpretation of the Garden of Eden. My image of Eden was greatly altered when I mentioned paradise in relation to the Garden to an Old Testament professor. Abruptly he said, "Okay, show of hands, how many of you think Adam and Eve were sitting around the Garden sipping Margaritas? Turn to Genesis 2:15 he said, "God took the man and put him in the garden to till and to keep it." (NRSV) There was work to be done even in the Garden.

This morning we find Jesus never mentions or describes a specific place as being what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. Instead Jesus is more challenging; he tells a series of parables, stories from everyday life that make a single, specific point. They are not analogies - they're stories with one point, and the intent is to confront the listeners' worldview - tease them into imagining something other than conventional wisdom. It's as if Jesus is trying to rearrange the furniture of your brain. Did you ever walk into a familiar room and the furniture's been moved? Reorientation is required. Did you ever hear something or see something that caused you to rearrange your thinking?

Jesus is good - what he does in a mere story it takes some "30 Days" to accomplish. Have you seen that TV show - 30 Days? The host is the guy who made the movie Super-size Me, a documentary that came out last winter. He ate McDonald's food for thirty days to see what effect it would have on his body. Well, now he has a TV show that pairs people with contrasting worldviews and has them live together for thirty days. There was one show where a Christian went to live with a Muslim, and practiced the same spiritual disciplines for thirty days. Then there was one where a conservative Christian lived for thirty days in a gay community and worshipped in that community. Now, I'm not here to draw conclusions on content or to encourage you to see the show but to say that it is interesting to watch how worldviews, people's perspectives, get stretched and rearranged. Have you ever thought about how once you're worldview is stretched you aren't ever the same. Isn't that why mission trips are so meaningful?

Susan Andrews, pastor at Bradley Hills Presbyterian, here in DC tells a story about an exercise that most people entering the professional ministry vocation must take. It's the Rorschach test where a psychologist shows you a number of inkblots and you have to tell them what you see - the first image that comes to mind. Susan says she dutifully responded to about twenty-five inkblots and at the end of the test the woman administering the test just stopped and stared. Then she said: "You are the first person whom I have ever tested, who took the cards and held them exactly as I handed them to you. Not once did you turn the card upside down or sideways. Not once did you experiment with various angles or possibilities." She went on to ask, "Is that how you approach life, taking each day as it is handed to you, accepting all the shoulds and oughts and the right way to do things? Perhaps you might want to start exercising your freedom and your imagination. Then you might find new angles for interpreting your world." (Andrews, Lectionary Homiletics, 71)

Exercising your imagination…Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that every act of faith is an act of imagination - a mind / heart interpretation of the world - not as it is handed to us, but from the angle of how God sees it. Taylor says that theologically we experience it as revelation - God revealing some portion of God's mystery to us - but the process of doing so involves exercising our imagination…There are Native Americans who call this 'looking twice' at the world. (as quoted by Andrews, Lectionary Homiletics, 71)

Jesus is encouraging his disciples to look-twice. They were anxious as Matthew's writes about when the denominational leaders were not too excited about Jesus - no session or Synod or General Assembly has blessed his ministry and they don't like the attention he's usurped. Jesus tells the disciples to have another look because not having institutional approval isn't going to stop the coming of the Kingdom. Surprisingly, Jesus even told John the Baptist in chapter 11 to look twice. John sent his messengers to find out if Jesus is "the One." Jesus doesn't answer "Yes," he tells John to look again - the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. (Matt. 11:3-5). Today it might be reported is that Money and Wealth and Status lose their grip in individual lives, AIDS victims are healed, LIVE 8 concerts that focus on concerns for the poor begin to capture the imagination of the generations rather than sex and violence and egocentrism. Yet, Matthew's disciples are confused and perplexed; they look around and think "they're not getting it." (Why -- just a little while before even Jesus' family is questioning him). Today we ask, "Why aren't they coming to church?" Jesus very plainly tells them in a previous parable that there are those who hear and those who don't. The world's reality is: An evil sower has sown weeds among the wheat - you have to be careful of the evil ready to choke the life out of you.

Just as real, Jesus artfully continues, is the good news. You find it in the most unexpected places -- the garden, the kitchen, the wheat field and the seashore. Places in our everyday lives in which to know the Kingdom of God. Jesus starts with an ordinary mustard seed that in reality would never grow more than six feet - but - by the power of God, the mustard seed is going to be a great tree. Think about trees in the Hebrew tradition, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the tree of life, when I was in Poland symbols of Holocaust victims were tree trunks, symbolizing a life cut short. Trees are important and at the time trees were symbolic of imperial power. And, from the tiniest seed grows the power of God, bigger than any power you could imagine.

Well, we're impatient. We want to see the tree bearing fruit and we want to see the power. Jesus takes them to the kitchen. The kingdom is like yeast - mixed into a huge amount of flour more flour than one woman or one family would need. It's enough flour to feed a village. And ohmygosh, yeast, by glory, a parable about the kingdom and yeast! In those days yeast symbolized evil and corruption - and it's pervasiveness. But the notion of yeast is turned upside down and the action of the woman is key in the turbulence. But we might miss it because those dear translators have covered over the fact that the original Greek is closer to the word hid - she hid the yeast in the flour. God's power is sometimes hidden to us - like it was hidden in a Cross. But eventually we will see abundance.

And - That's a relief! The kingdom is not dependent on us - we're so used to thinking about our own progress and yet we're reminded that God is already at work in every grain of flour - permeating all creation. Our challenge is seeing in new ways what may have previously been hidden.

Well, if the Kingdom of God is not dependent on us that raises another theological issue: Is the Kingdom present now or is it future. Some theologians (you are all theologians, some are professional) argue for its end-time aspect. I think that's where our visions of paradise or an ideal state of being made manifest - our hope lodged in God's sovereign power being consummated everywhere. Does that mean we simply sit and wait and hope for it?

Still other great theologians and movements have argued for the ability to realize the kingdom here on earth. Matthew, our gospel writer recorded the Lord's Prayer as "your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." (Matt. 6:10) (Luke left this out of his version of the prayer.) Our own Presbyterian confession is that through the Great Ends of the Church we will strive to show evidence of the Kingdom here. This attitude easily becomes that if we work hard enough, we can turn the world around. Yet, if we look around us we know the world is not saved by evolving progress. We do know the world is saved by incarnation. The incursion of God, the breaking in of Christ made flesh in our lives. So before you give up all your committee meetings and all your social justice commitments I hope you'll to think about the Kingdom as being already / not yet.

Something happened this summer that is one way for me to think about the already / not yet aspect of the kingdom. John and I were out planting a tree in our yard one evening. A young family was taking a stroll in the neighborhood when Jake pulled up in his car. As he got out of the car I heard a little voice ask, "Are you a grown-up?" The little boy wasn't quite sure… I don't know all that clued the little boy in but there were signs, Jake's size, 5 o'clock shadow, he was driving. Jake responded with a laugh, "Not quite." Jake was wrong and he was right. In many ways Jake is already a 'grown-up' and in some ways, he's right - not yet.

Mystic Evelyn Underhill speaks of the already / not yet concept of the Kingdom of God as the passive / active aspect of the Kingdom in our souls. She writes that God has planted that mustard seed in every one of our hearts - its there, passively waiting to be welcomed and to grow to heights unimagined. The active side is our "self-offering for purposes of the kingdom, here and now in this visible world of space and time...Each act of love, each sacrifice, each conquest of prejudice, each generous impulse carried through into action counts…in giving birth to God's power and reign in creation. Underhill and many like her believe that Jesus' teaching means that the coming of the Kingdom is perpetual. Again and again freshness, novelty, and power from beyond the world break in by unexpected paths, bringing unexpected, [previously unimagined] change." (Underhill, 2003, 172-3)

In the kingdom parables, Jesus invites the disciples, invites us, to find the buried treasure - the unexpected - in the fields of our own living. When something unexpected happens, change happens. It reminds me of a story told at last week's denominational conference on Transformation that I attended in NYC. Presbyterian Professor Roger Nishioka told us about his PhD dissertation involving a study of young adults in the Presbyterian Church in the 20 to 35 year old age range. He researched possible causes as to why, after being raised in the faith and after confirmation; these young adults were not present in church. He conducted 'focus group' meetings with much of his work being done in NYC. He said the young people he met with were phenomenal. They were bright, articulate, spiritual, and doing great things in mission. But they were not in church. He asked all sorts of questions. "Well, if we did this would you come?" Response: "That would be nice, but probably not." He'd try again, "If we did that would you come...No, probably not..." If they were anything, they were honest.

Roger said he went home and in bed that night he tossed and turned, tossed and turned. God help me - help us - What is the answer he prayed? Then he said something that has only happened twice happened - he heard a voice. And the voice said, "Why do you expect them to come to you? Why do expect them to be like you?" Jesus and the disciples were struggling with the same perspectives from their denominational leaders. They weren't observing Sabbath correctly, they were associating with the wrong people, and so on.

Why do you expect them to come to you? Why do expect them to be like you?" The One asking the questions is at work in every grain of life and perhaps is breaking in with new vision - rearranging the furniture of our minds.

Does that mean we are to toss out Church? I am not suggesting that what we do here is not important; I believe with all my heart that worship is critical in a life of faith and not something we can do on our own! The exchange of ideas, the exchange of visions, listening to and prompted by God's Word exercises our imaginations and should happen in this place. But is it restricted to this place - and - can what happens here ever change? Jesus said, "Every scribe who has been trained for the Kingdom of heaven is like a master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old. (Matt. 13:52)

What happened when I looked twice at the Kingdom parables was to realize that most important in the parables of the Kingdom of God is our attitude of faith and our openness to God in our midst. Frederick Buechner writes, "We discover the Kingdom of Heaven and how to be a saint by embracing adventure like Don Quixote or Frodo the Hobbit." We are to be on the lookout for God's new breath of freshness with faith that it is happening all around us - and God will not disappoint us - instead fill us with surprise, excitement, and wonder. May God's kingdom come!

Bibliography

Andrews, Susan R. "Looking for Buried Treasure: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52."

Lectionary Homiletics. 24 June 2005.

Underhill, Evelyn. Abba: Meditations Based on the Lord's Prayer.

Eds. John F. Thornton and Susan B. Varenne. New York, NY: Random House, 2003.

© Copyright, 2005, Rev. Lisa Rzepka
All Rights Reserved.
Providence Presbyterian Church
Fairfax, Virginia