From the Daily Lectionary for Thursday in the Twenty-Second Week after Pentecost
Luke 13:18-30
He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”
And again he said, “To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
Jesus went through one town and village after another, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, “Lord, will only a few be saved?” He said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. When once the owner of the house has got up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then in reply he will say to you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evildoers!’ There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out. Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God. Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”
These two parables speak of the unlikeliness of God’s kingdom. A mustard plant is an invasive weed; no one would plant it in a garden. And yet, it grows and provides shelter for the birds. Bread was rarely leavened. Yeast in most biblical literature is a symbol of corruption… a symbol of how falsehood and evil can exponentially infect the world (Jesus warns, “Beware the yeast of the Pharisees!”).
This is testimony to the awareness that ministry is unconventional, improvisational. It is our labor that is redemptive; here, the labor of the gardener and the labor of the baker are examples. Their labor is the thing. It is our labor for the greater good, in the face of convention, challenging the status quo, that brings salvation. Again, this is a reminder that following Jesus is counter-cultural. Also, we should not be surprised that our fellow laborers will not be who we expect them to be. They may not be the ones who have it all together, keep the rules, the upstanding among us. To follow Jesus makes strange bedfellows.
One of my dreams for All Saints is that we reflect that unlikely community. A community’s creativity, its imaginative sensibilities, I think, are directly proportional to its diversity. We are called to love the “other,” so the church should look like an assembly of “others.” If we look like “comfortable and polite society” (you know what I mean), that is to say, ”the first” of our world, then we’re not the church. We’re just playing at it. We need the “last” among us, not so much to rescue them, but to learn from them; to get a better view of what the world is really like; to hear the wisdom from a world which we’ve had the luxury to ignore; perhaps to gain some empathy from the world’s suffering.
This is risky business, this weedy garden, this leavened bread. Such a community is unpredictable, unconventional, scorned by many. But it strikes me that God is at home in the mess of things, in unlikeliness. There is much more possibility in the mess than when we think we’ve got it all neat and tidy and figured out. In one of the prayers for the Easter Vigil, we call the church “that wonderful and sacred mystery.” Mystery defies convention, it is often disheveled, but is attuned to the Truth. I suppose I’m saying let’s be open to such a possibility, a people renewed with willing laborers… an unlikely new church for an unlikely new world.
A Prayer for the Church and the Transformation of the World (BCP p. 291)
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
