St. James Episcopal Church
San Francisco, California
July 27, 2014
By Elizabeth Nelson
Our rector John Kirkley likes to
organize his preaching rota well in advance, so it was almost three months ago
that I got an invitation and the readings for this Sunday. I did what I usually
do when I’m going to preach on a set of readings: I skimmed through them in
reverse order.
Gospel: Great! Not sure I can fit all those mini-parables
into one sermon, but it’ll be fun to try.
Epistle: Interesting. There’s some stuff to talk about here.
Old
Testament: Hunh.
Whenever I can,
I love to link up the Old Testament stories to the Gospel ones, and then link
them both to where we are now. But this
one? This one, more than most, seemed so three millennia ago. About all I could think of to say, the first
time I read it, was: Well, here’s one time
when Jacob the master manipulator gets out-maneuvered. Serve him right. Let’s move on.
But then … then
a news story started to leak out of Nigeria, back in early May – a story about
more than 200 young girls kidnapped at gunpoint from their school by a gang of
religious-fundamentalist thugs. A video
was published by the leader of the kidnappers, ranting about the sinfulness of
Western education and promising to sell the girls into marriage.
And I thought,
well … damn it. That story that seemed
so three millennia ago is not over yet.
And I have to talk to you about it.
I have to tell
you that, according to studies compiled by the United Nations, more than 64
million girls world-wide are child brides, married before the age of 18. I have to tell you that, world-wide, the
leading cause of death among girls aged 15 to 19 is complications of pregnancy.
But that’s the
other side of the world, right? Mostly? That doesn’t happen nearly so often here
where we are. Well, let’s talk about
what does happen here. Let’s talk about
how here, in the United States of America, one in four women will be sexually
assaulted in her lifetime. Globally that
figure jumps to one in three, but let’s stick close to home for now. Let’s consider that, right here in the USA, 83 percent of girls aged 12 to 16 have
experienced some form of sexual harassment in public schools: taunting, touching, name-calling, grabbing, some
form of physical or verbal sexual aggression.
Men and women
experience the world in different ways.
Men live in a world where not everyone has power. Women live in a world where the rules about power – defining it, getting
it, keeping it – have been determined by
men. I’ll say that last bit again,
because it’s a decent starter-definition for the term “patriarchy:” a
culture in which the rules about power have been determined, and are defended,
by men … up to and including too many of the rules about who has what power
over a woman’s body. Many people – women
and men – have worked hard and are working now to shift that balance of power,
to ensure safety and rights and opportunities for women. Here in the United States of America, women
have had the right to vote for almost 94 years now. Here in the United States of America, a woman
is free to open a bank account in her own name and to hold a full-time job
outside the home – as long as she doesn’t mind working for 73 cents on the
dollar, and as long as she remembers to wear shoes she can run in if she has to
leave her workplace alone after dark.
And on the other side of the world a woman can be beaten or killed by
her male relatives for the crime of having been raped, and little girls take
their lives in their hands by going to school.
But “we know that all things work together for
good for those who love God.” Right?
When Paul wrote
that, I don’t think he was writing out of mindless optimism. He’d known his full share of trouble and
sorrow. I believe he was writing out of
a profound faith that encompassed this life and the next. I also believe that I would not dare to quote
that scripture to any of the mothers and grandmothers and sisters and aunties
of those girls in Nigeria.
But I will talk
to anyone, anywhere, about fields full of treasure, and mustard seeds.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.” It’s true that a mustard seed is tiny. It’s not true, or not in this climate, that a
mustard seed grows into a shrub or a tree; in California, mustard plants grow
to about the size of a really big dandelion.
But a mustard seed has some other outstanding characteristics. For one thing, if you do sow a tiny mustard
seed in your field, you’re going to have mustard growing in that field for ever. Mustard is a persistent little sucker; it
grows and re-seeds itself just like a weed.
And maybe that shows us a picture of how Jesus imagined the kingdom of
heaven growing and spreading: not up into grandeur and power, but out and around, seed by seed, taking root from field to field. And what’s the harvest? That’s where you get to another outstanding
characteristic of mustard seeds: bite
into one, and you discover that it packs a heat and a flavor all out of
proportion to its size. Add a little
mustard to whatever sauce you’re stirring up, and the whole meal starts to
taste a lot more interesting.
The kingdom of
heaven is like a mustard seed. The
kingdom of heaven is also like a field that hides a treasure – a treasure that
might be … well, a mustard seed. The
kingdom of heaven is like a lot of other things too, because God is good and
because Jesus really loved parables. For
now, though, let’s concentrate on the mustard seed and the field of treasure.
The kingdom of
heaven happens, for instance, when women are like mustard seeds. It happens when women persist in sharing
their life and their strength and their truth, root to root, seed to seed,
field to field, un-weed-out-able. It
happens when they tell their stories and speak their truth to power and defy
oppression with voices as clear and sharp as the taste of mustard – even when
speaking up puts their lives at risk, even when their voices are dismissed as
hysterical or “shrill.” (When men speak
with passion and conviction they’re often described as speaking
“powerfully;” when women speak with
passion and conviction they’re often described as “shrill.” That’s just the pitch of our voices,
right? Couldn’t be for any other
reason.)
The kingdom of
heaven also happens, for another
instance, when men are like fields that receive and contain a treasure. It happens when a man listens to a woman talk
about the violence she deals with in a patriarchal society, and instead of
jumping in with dismissals or why-don’t-you’s or claims of his own, he just …
receives what he’s hearing. Maybe his
first reaction as he listens is, “But I don’t
do those things” … and that may well be true.
But he goes on listening, and he realizes, “Okay, this story is not about
me, it’s about her. And she deserves a
better story than that, because anybody does.
What needs to change, how can I help?”
He asks. He listens
to the answer. He behaves like a partner
instead of like a patriarch.
That’s when a
tiny seed can fill up the field with yellow flowers and spice. That’s when you discover the treasure. That’s when the kingdom comes, for all of us.
“Nothing will be able to separate us from the
love of God in Christ Jesus.” No
matter how ingrained our training is to seek power and hold on to it, the love
of God – love as generosity, as compassion, as creativity, as vulnerability –
will not leave us alone. The strength of
men’s entrenchment in power will not separate women from God’s love … or men,
either. The strength of women’s anger
will not separate men from God’s love … or women, either. As often as our entrenchment and our anger
separate us from one another, we need to remember the mustard seed and the
field full of treasure. We need to trust
God’s love to show us how to love each other.
Bring Back Our Girls.
Amen.
