Seed, Yeast, Pearl, & Fish

(Scriptures: Genesis 29:15-28
Romans 8:26-39 Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52)

I’ll open today’s sermon with what is perhaps a familiar story: the story of the ten blind men describing an elephant. Since they were blind, they could experience the elephant primarily through their sense of touch. The ten touched and handled different parts of the elephant. Asked to describe the elephant, the one who touched the trunk said, “The elephant is like a snake, slithering back and forth”. One who touched the leg said, “The elephant is like a tree trunk, very thick and sturdy.” One who touched a tusk said, “The elephant is curved and very hard and pointy on one end.” One who touched an ear said, “The elephant is like a leaf, flapping in the wind.” And so on. All were right – about the part of the elephant each touched – and all were wrong in assuming that what they experienced is all there was. The elephant was, in part, like all of these things, but in its entirety was like none of these things.

Today’s sermon title may look like the name of a law firm – “if you’ve been injured in an accident, call the law offices of Seed, Yeast, Pearl & Fish….” – but in reality it’s a combination of the various metaphors Jesus uses in today’s Gospel to give his listeners a glimpse of the Reign of God. I think the wide range of images tells us that the Reign of God Jesus describes is something that’s nearly impossible to sum up in just a few words, something that is not just one thing, but many things. It’s sort of as if, in order to explain what this Reign of God is, Jesus is having a sort of “show and tell” time with his listeners, pulling different images out of his mind and sharing them with his hearers, and explaining how each of these images tells something about God’s reign.

The first two images describe the Reign of God as something that grows, that starts out very small and has power far beyond the size of its origins. In the parable of the mustard seed, Jesus is playing with images that would have been familiar to his Jewish audience. The Ezekiel, 17th chapter, verse 22, provides a classic Old Testament image of the coming of the Messiah: “God will a twig from the top of a cedar and plants it on a high mountain, so it will produce branches and bear fruit and becomes a mighty, noble cedar, and in its shade, every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest birds of every kind.” In this parable, the birds represent the Gentile nations; it’s the image repeated elsewhere in the Old Testament of a time in which Israel will be a blessing to the Gentiles, to the nations, and people would come from the north and south and east and west to be blessed by Israel. In his mustard seed parable, Jesus plays with this image – he may have had his tongue in his cheek as he was speaking - and brings it down to earth: instead of the noble cedar tree, the common mustard bush. While mustard could be grown as a spice, there were also wild mustard bushes that you might not necessarily want in your garden, that could grow like a weed and take over any ground in which it landed. So Jesus’ image of God’s reign is equal parts ‘mighty oaks from little acorns grow’ and “you give it an inch, it’ll take a mile.” But it also includes the image of shelter; the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. All sorts of people – Jew and Gentile – will find shelter, will make their home in the expansive reign of God. The parable of the yeast parallels the mustard seed image; a tiny bit of yeast in three measures of flour – which in our measuring would have been about a bushel of flour - can make loaf rise into a huge amount of bread, to provide nourishment for many. Like the image of the mustard bush, there’s some ambiguity in this image as well: remember that while under the kosher guidelines leavened bread could be eaten most of the time, in preparation for Passover, observant Jews were to purge their homes of any leavened bread. So these images of the reign of God are very down to earth, not speaking of something far away on a mountain top and or set apart for high holy days, but something that’s common, something that ordinary people could experience every day, but something that has enormous power of growth and transformation. Sort of like the old camp song you may remember: “it only takes a spark to get a fire going, and soon all those around can warm up to its glowing/ that’s how it is with God’s love, once you’ve experienced it, you spread His love to everyone, you want to pass it on.”

The next two snapshots of the kingdom – treasure hidden in a field, a pearl of great price – to show that responding to God’s reign isn’t just a priority, one of many, but rather the priority. The response of the person who wasn’t even looking, but stumbled onto a treasure – and the response of the merchant who was looking for something, but found a treasure far beyond expectations – is not moderate. Apparently they never heard the saying, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Their reaction isn’t like that of a stockbroker who prudently wants to keep a balanced portfolio of investments – some stocks, some bonds, some money markets, a little of this sector, a little of that. No, in both cases they sell everything else in order to acquire the treasure. And Jesus is saying that that’s the response he seeks from us – our commitment to God’s kingdom isn’t to be one commitment among many, one of the many balls we juggle and try to keep in the air – but rather the commitment, our foremost commitment, the commitment that makes us get up in the morning and put our shoes on and face the day.

And finally, the parable of the fish caught in a net. This parable is sort of like last week’s parable of the wheat and the weeds – all sorts of folk will respond to the invitation of the kingdom. When we evangelize, we’re to cast a wide net, inviting in as many as possible. It’s not our job to sort people out, but rather to invite them in - “Love them all, and let God sort them out.”

Whew! What a strange collection of images! How do you bring all this together?

I guess one way to look at it is to consider what these images are not. These images are not about tidiness, not about moderation, not about straight lines and neat boxes. They’re also not about heavy-handed power from above. Rather, they’re about growth that runs wild, about a kingdom that draws everyone in and provokes extravagant responses. It’s also a kingdom that doesn’t look like much at first glance, and involves all kinds of people. Just as God chose an aged, childless couple named Abram and Sarai as father and mother of a nation, just as God uses the trickery of characters like Jacob and Laban to produce the 12 tribes of Israel - God’s realm is the same way – all kinds of folks are to be found there, and all sorts of folks have a part in God’s plan. We expect something that resembles a mighty oak tree or cedar, but we end up with a mustard bush growing out of control, or yeast bubbling up inside a lump of dough. There’s immense – even supreme - value there, but it’s hidden, hard to find, like the pearl of great price.

So today’s message seems to be – wake up! Keep your eyes open. Be aware of your surroundings. And expect the unexpected. God reigns, but likely in the last place we’d care to look, or among the last people we’d expect to find it. And when we find it, we are to respond with everything we have, joyfully being willing to put everything else on the shelf in order to respond to God’s call.

I was at the morning funeral for our former pastor, the Rev. Dr. Gene Grau. Gene Grau was one who followed the Lord wherever the Lord called – to Ghana, to an interim pastorate in England, to numerous pastorates in southeastern Pennsylvania, including of course here at Emanuel. At the funeral, in addition to folks from Brownback’s United Church of Christ and numerous other UCC congregations, there were two rows of people from Ghana, some in African dress – and who but Gene Grau could have drawn such a wildly diverse collection of people into the same room. Truly, like yeast, God’s love got into the life of Gene Grau, and his life story is the account of his extravagant response to God’s call. Like a mustard seed, God’s love was planted in Gene Grau, and as God’s love grew in Gene, people from around the globe found shelter through Gene’s many ministries over his lifetime of service.

And what happens when we make this extravagant response, when we give ourselves to God’s work? God doesn’t promise us a rose garden. There are risks. We can think of the early disciples, faced with hostility both from the Jewish religious establishment and the mighty Roman empire. They were few, they were weak, they were persecuted, and some were martyred….and yet they turned the world upside down, sort of a mustard seed producing a huge bush in which birds could find shelter, or yeast making a lump of dough rise. Even facing all that hostility, they had assurance of God’s care, similar to what we find in our reading of Paul’s letter to the church at Rome:

"We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose….If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
'For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.'
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

God worked through that small group of early disciples, as God worked through Gene Grau, and I’m convinced that God is working through our small gathering here at Emanuel, just as God worked mightily through the small group that founded Emanuel congregation back in 1861. At first glance, we may not look like much, but neither does a mustard seed, or yeast….and yet when we put ourselves in God’s hands, God will use us far beyond what our numbers and resources suggest. When we put ourselves in God’s hands, we are more than conquerors, and nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God. So let us allow ourselves to be surprised by joy at what God is doing and what God will do through Emanuel Church, here in Bridesburg, and in places we’ll never know about until that great day when we see God, not dimly as in a mirror, but face to face. Amen.
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Please join us on Sunday mornings at 10 am at Emanuel United Church of Christ. We're on Fillmore Street, just off Thompson. www.emanuelphila.org