How Much Flour??!! - February 13, 2022
Sermon: Feb 13, 2022 by Carolyn Smith
The kingdom of god is like a woman who mixes leaven into 3 measures of flour,
turning it, and the translation says “hiding” it. - until it was all mixed into the
dough.
Leaven 2023 years ago pre refrigeration was not little dry happy grains but it was a
pot in a dark shed outside of the living areas, ickier than sourdough starter, a
smelly mass of bubbly goo that was pretty gross and you didn’t want it smelling up
your house, or getting on your clothes or spoiling your food, so it was kept hidden
away, bubbling away for times you wanted the magical leavening action to turn
flour into lovely bread.
And a man didn’t come close to this gross unclean stuff - In the purity scale of the
time, like our sense of climbing the social ladder, that was beneath him, and the
ickiness might taint him.
And I wonder why it was 60 pounds of flour because to use it all would be enough
for 100 people, wasteful and dishonourable. On that purity scale, of course, the
well-to-do educated fellas looked down from the top at the lesser men, and
outsiders, and further down the social ladder at the women, and the sick ones and
the strange ones, and the messy kids. Leaven was messy and untouchable and only
a woman would mess with it to work its magic, and I wonder if maybe she meant
to mix up bread for 100, or if she accidentally tipped the messy bowl over
contaminating everything. This story is messy as a parable, and yet Jesus slides it
in here and lets it sit and bubble.
This is like the Kingdom of God, he says. Says the one we call wonderful teacher.
And this teacher ate with cheats and outsiders, the ones on the bottom of the ladder,
he chatted with questionable women and he healed lepers, He insulted the
authorities, and said the kingdom of god is like lazy loafs who take dad’s money.
He’s the one who turns the tables of expectation and good behaviour, and upends
the purity system, Jesus talks about messy things.
And it is exactly normal that you recoil at this. We are grossed out by mess, and
squirm about being lumped in with the wrong people. Stuff like that gets jammed
into the closet. We work pretty hard to decide who is us and who is them. We
strive to be good, dressed in our Sunday best, pleasant and squeaky clean on a
sunny day.
Except the kingdom of God is a mess. We don’t always understand at first.
The Kingdom of God is like when I was at Emmanuel College where we learn
about being a minister and we were headed to a soup kitchen with our pencils and
notepads for a field trip, and one of our classmates bumped into his work friend
there, who was there for lunch, at a soup kitchen for his only meal of the day.
The kingdom of God is like my old buddy who texted me last week to say “I saw
you support vaccines. I’m on a bus to the city to protest the unacceptable rise of
communism. Are you with me? Why the heck not? Can’t you see?”
Or when you ask your kid or your spouse ‘hey how are you?? And they don’t roll
their eyes and say “Fine,” like every other day and instead they turn and say “I feel
depressed and don’t know what to do anymore.”
The kingdom of God is like that... I wonder how do you show up? I wonder who
shows up? Who is scurrying away? Who rolls up their sleeves and pulls on the
boots and bravely turns towards the mess, who sees hunger and fear and hurt and
prays for courage and wades in. I wonder what happens magically like leaven,
like Spirit that grows and ends up somehow like nourishing bread. How is a living,
calling, hopeful God at work in such uncomfortable, hiding places?
What are some other hidden, icky things.... Earthworms ewwww. Except our soil
hardens and loses its capacity to grow anything without earthworms and microbes
and other creatures at work in the dark.
Or bees! That sting and buzz and crawl and without these pollinators our entire
ecosystem and food structure collapses. Thunderclouds at night we don’t see -
clearing the atmosphere and bringing rain.
Fungus that thrives in dark moist places and ends up scrumptious tossed in a wok
with veggies and onto your plate. The kingdom of God is like that, alive,
bubbling, at work in dark places and doesn’t care who sees it, but if you do, you
are part of the bubbling work.
And what else.... What is tough hard work that gets messy before it gets better?
Firing people. Picking yourself up after being fired. Budgets when funds are
low. Calling a trans friend by their dead name. Ending oil subsidies that lead to
some job losses. Racial justice work and Reconciliation How about politicians and
prophets- the ones who see no one else stepping up and they brave ridicule and
muddy systems and - well, for good or for ill, roll up their sleeves because
someone has to. I, we, have messy work to do.
Such dark things don’t work in clean, bright, orderly places. Dark things like this
invite you in for transformation. My colleague felt pretty dark as he faced the new
understanding about this hungry friend, and more than their friendship grew from
that. I felt pretty dark about my buddy on the protest bus, but I won’t just turn
away. Health care frontliners and teachers mask up and wade into the mess again
and again. Relationships need us to muck around and find our loving path
forward, even if it is the murky way of separation. And depression, or worry or
tough times don’t get better if we leave them alone, leave each other alone, and
pretend like it’s all sunny. These dark things take icky work and they are like the
Kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is like the promised land. The kingdom
of God is like broken hearts mended and second chances. The kingdom of God is
like the rainbow after the storm.
A parable is a story that needs some working time, needs to bubble a little, and it
works away in the dark, transforming. This one little verse is so often set aside
because the other parables were a bit easier. But this woman, at work in the dark,
heaping the leaven mass into not 1 measure of flour but more and more and more
... from the dark places, the places at the bottom, There is beautiful risen bread to
share.
Blessed are the ones last and the least, blessed are the ones in the dark, blessed are
those who wade in and discover all that can rise. Give us courage, Jesus our
teacher, and faith to follow you. Amen.