How Much Flour??!! - February 13, 2022

Recorded Worship on YouTube

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.

Deborah Laforet