For The Joy of It*

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Homily preached at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, New Harmony, Indiana)

Genesis 29:15-28

Psalm 105

Romans 8:26-39

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Often times…Most times

when I go to make Chocolate chip cookies

I find myself confronted by my brown sugar

That is…I find it, not in soft measurable form

But in concrete form…hockey puck form

Or maybe for those of you who don’t bake

It might be like setting out to get a fix-it job done

and realizing that you need trips to two different hardware stores first

The point is…I have a homily…I do

But I have a few brown sugar rocks to work through

there are a few things that need attention first 

#1:

You know the phrase ‘Bait and Switch’

It is when all the glossy and sleek marketing

let’s you believe you are getting one thing…

            and then it comes in the mail

            and it bears little resemblance to what you thought

            you were paying $49.95 for!

Laban understands this tactic!

Yikes! What about that Genesis text?

Laban, Jacob, Rachel and Leah…and let’s not forget Zilpah!

Honestly I don’t know what to say about it. 

But I have to say something because it is a horrifying story…isn’t it?

I mean…beyond the Bait and Switch, something we can actually understand in today’s world…

There are the women…

The absolutely invisible women - with no voice at all.

They are just property

Property that is judged on beauty

And then given as objects…part of a bartering negotiation

Now I know that was thousands of years ago…I know that

But it is also sacred scripture

This and other such texts have been used through the years to justify all sorts of non-Gospel ways of living

So…Here is what I can say

Hearing this story today

Challenges me/us to listen… carefully

Listen to the stories that meet our ears everyday

Old stories, stories in the news, family stories,

            stories I hear and stories I tell…

I am challenged to listen carefully

for the voices that are not invited to speak

The voices that would most certainly tell the story differently

Brown sugar rock #2

This week I have been at a preaching conference in Southbend

And the subject of one of the talks was how preaching really is a conversation because

We all have an outer voice…we know about those

We also have an inner voice …And we know about those as well…

We know about our inner voice

...but I’m not sure we pay much attention to it really

So as I was listening to some preaching…it WAS a preaching conference

And the homilist said something like

“All preaching is a gift of grace…or all preaching is filled with the Holy Spirit”

something like that

I heard my inner voice!

which…because of earlier talk…I was paying special attention to…

I heard it say:

“I don’t think we’ve been listening to the same preaching”

Now…Yours is talking right now…right?

Maybe it is saying: ‘Where IS she going with this???”

So let’s pause and I ask you to try and recall

what your inner voice was saying when you heard the phrase

“and throw them into the furnace of fire,

where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth”

…

We heard it last week too!

Was your inner voice active?  Mine was.

Did you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

Or did your ears perk up like they do when they hear

Plain ole mean and nasty!

I can tell you that I have never heard a sermon on the wailing and gnashing of teeth!

What does it mean?

My confession is that…considering literary hyperbole

And even though it sounds harsh and mean

I like it…or at least I believe

It offers a valuable insight, a corrective even…albeit in very stark terms.

These end-times judgment passages

remind us that life matters.

Our choices matter. 

The way we live and the way we love matters.

They remind us that there is something ultimate at stake.

What is so very clear in these passages

is that this is ‘an end of the age’ activity

and this judgment belongs exclusively to GOD

I believe that is why we come here 

Doesn’t our very gathering

give witness to the fact that we believe that our lives,

our choices, the generousness of our loving…

doesn’t being here say: ‘YES, we know it matters? 

We know that something is at stake…something ultimate? 

And, doesn’t our presence testify that

by golly, we are trying our darndest to keep getting better at it!

And we church people

are honest about something else

We have found that it is easier to get better at ‘kingdom living’ with a little help from our friends

Okay

Brown sugar rocks out of the way

5 and a half parables to go!!

5 and a half parables…

all nibbling around the mystery of this kingdom of heaven…kingdom, reign, realm…

The kingdom of heaven is like…

The kingdom of heaven is like…

Can you finish that with a parable of your own?

In my life…in my experience…the kingdom of heaven is like…

It is hard isn’t it?

5 and a half parables…but it is 3 and 4 that caught my imagination

1 and 2 play with the hiddenness and invisibility of the kingdom highlighting the promise of growth.

But 3 and 4 have a different emphasis.

My grandmother/Mommom on my father’s side…the Italian side

married…by an arranged marriage…at the age of 14.

And at 15 came the first of eight children – 6 of which survived

My grandfather worked his whole life in the slate quarries of eastern PA.

I suppose you would call them poor

But they didn’t think so

Every square inch of their postage stamp sized lot was filled with something useful 

Something to eat or to trade…there was a chicken coop, grape vines, fruit trees and a plentiful garden

Mommom loved music…she was always singing

…rolling out pasta and singing…keeping rhythm with her rolling pin

Somehow…she managed it, that each of the children received music lessons.

For my Dad it was the clarinet…he loves the clarinet

But he hated that he had to pay for his lessons with eggs,

            or vegetables, or berries. 

He recalled to me recently how he used to complain to his Mom

“why can’t we pay with real money like everyone else does”

The Kingdom of heaven is like a mother who sacrifices much to share the joy of music with her children…even though they don’t get it.

The kingdom of heaven is like something that happens…something people do for the joy of it! 

The kingdom is like the hidden treasure

Unexpectedly found…but not just that…

It is like selling everything for the joy of it!

The kingdom is like being on the hunt and finding what one truly desires.

And then giving everything over for the joy of it!

We are here…In part…Because

The Kingdom of heaven is like us

the people of St Stephen’s gathered on Sunday

gathered to give thanks and praise to God as the assembled body of Christ

in this little corner of New Harmony Indiana

The kingdom of heaven is like the people of St Stephen’s gathering

Because we really do want to be better at taking this sweet taste of the kingdom…

            out there.

And the Kingdom of heaven is more than that even

The Kingdom of heaven is the hope of what might happen out there when we do

The kingdom of heaven is both a gift and a promise

Perhaps Matthew knew already back when he was writing his gospel

That we would need lots of parables about the Kingdom

Perhaps he knew

how much we would need to be reminded

that it is near…very near

Even when it seems so absent.

The Kingdom of heaven is like…

The kingdom of heaven is like…dot dot dot

It is a good exercise to fill in that blank…

Let’s do it

Let’s all try it this week

My guess is that in the stuff of daily life

We will find the makings of some really good Kingdom parables

And maybe if we practice scripting them

We will, in fact, notice the sights and sounds of the kingdom more crisply.

Not rose colored glasses but kingdom-colored glasses

We will hear stories from the perspective of the silenced ones

…the Leah’s and the Rachel’s and the Zilpah’s

We will remember that what we do,

            and how we think, and how we love matters

…or else;)

And with all that practice

Perhaps when we find or stumble upon the kingdom of heaven

            in a field, or in an oyster, or in a stranger…

the sacrifice of giving over our all won’t feel like a sacrifice at all

It will just be for the joy of it