Mustard Seeds and Hidden Treasure

Sermon On the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

St. James Episcopal Church

San Francisco, California

July 27, 2014

By Elizabeth Nelson

Lectionary:  Genesis 29:15-28;  Romans 8:26-39;  Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

                 

            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.

On Listening: Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost

Jesus said, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”  (Matthew 10:39)  To be a disciple of Jesus is to live a dying life.  We have to die before we can live.  What does this mean?

My mind immediately moves to heroic action in opposition to evil, being a martyr for justice like Mahatma Gandhi or Dr. Martin Luther King.  Or at least the kind of renunciation and single-minded commitment to serving the poor exemplified by Dorothy Day or Mother Teresa of Calcutta; dying to privilege if not literal physical death.  I’m not a hero or, in all honestly, all that single-minded in my devotion to serving the poor.

Does that mean I’m off the hook?  That living a dying life is only for spiritual elites, not regular schmucks like me?  Does this mean I can’t follow Jesus?  I don’t think so.  Such comparisons are not very helpful.  In fact, I think they can lead us astray as much as they can inspire us.   The Dr. King and the Blessed Teresa we that we revere represent the end of a long process that begins in a very ordinary way.  It begins with listening. 

The dying to which we are called is first and foremost the dying that we experience when we cultivate the practice of listening.  Authentic listening is always a little death.  It requires me to set aside my preconceptions and preoccupations so that I can be present to another.   At least temporarily, I have to allow my ego to die, to let go of the imperative to impose my will and instead cultivate a stance of receptivity.  Such listening is quite different from screening out what I don’t wish to hear, or seeking only what will help me to express more powerfully an essentially preformed response.  When I really listen, I open myself to the possibility that I may be changed, even profoundly changed.  I may discover that I am not who I thought I was, or who I want to be, or that I am becoming someone quite unexpected.  I listen, so that I may discover my true self.   

This is so whether I am listening to another person, or to the interior dialogue – cacophony really – that is usually going on inside me.  How much more so when I come to a place of listening to the deep silence that lies below the surface of the interior and exterior voices calling for my attention.  The deepest listening is attention to the silent abyss from which both interior and exterior voices emerge and return to rest.   This can occasion a real dying; the realization of an ultimate unity of being that de-centers the ego and opens us to the flow of life as it is.  Here, we touch into a truth and a power that may give shape to subsequent word and action.  From the Silence a creative Word emerges and we intuitively know how to respond with creativity and insight to life as it is given in the moment.

The deepest listening frees us from bondage to the internal and external voices that divert us from attending to our true self.   St. Paul speaks of this as the death of the old self, crucified with Christ so that we might not longer be in bondage to sin – sin, understood here, as anything that separates us from our true self in Christ.  Dying in this way, we are raised with Christ and alive in God.   This is what it means to die so that we may live.  Obedience – the root meaning of which is “to listen” – is acting in accordance with our true self. 

Christian disciples are people who are obedient to Jesus – people who learn to listen to the true self that Jesus reveals in the pattern of his own dying life.  Jesus, said, “What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.” (Matthew 10:27) Living a dying life begins with listening, and then acting from the true self who speaks from the still point of our being.  Listening sets us free so that we can respond to life in ways that allow others to attend to their true self. 

Such freedom can be scary.  It can bring us into conflict with those who prefer our old self, the self that is familiar to them, comfortable, easy to predict or even manipulate; the old self that confirms the status quo.  It requires patience and courage to listen to what Jesus is saying to us, to listen to our Christ nature or true self, especially when what we hear contradicts Mom or Dad or the President or the Pope.  This is the sword of which Jesus speaks, not a literal sword, but the conflict that arises when others resist listening.  Conformity requires a certain kind of deafness.  People who listen are always a threat to the status quo, because one of the things they hear first is the cry of the poor and the oppressed.  Those who listen deeply eventually reach a point where they can no longer keep silent.  It is then that they take up their cross and follow Jesus.  But not all listening is so dramatic.  It can lead to quite simple, yet profound service to others. 

In his book, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen, Mark Nepo eloquently describes his experience of progressive hearing loss.  He resisted acknowledging the loss initially, but eventually embraced it as an invitation to a deeper interior silence.  His deafness has heightened his appreciation of the power of listening. 

“Now,” he writes, “I go to a café near our house where the young ones know my name and make my hot chocolate ahead of time if they see me in the parking lot.  What’s beautiful is that they know everyone’s name and everyone’s drink.  This is the sweetest kind of listening.  And you’d think, having lost a good deal of hearing, that noise wouldn’t bother me.  But in fact it bothers me more.  I find it overwhelms me.  Even when I turn my hearing aid off.  So I ask the kind young ones to turn the music down and they do this now, without my asking, as they make my hot chocolate.  This too is instructive . . .

To honor what those around us need in order to hear is an ordinary majesty.  The young ones in the café are my teachers in this.  Not only do they do this for me, but it’s their ethic regarding everyone.  It’s the relational environment they create – a place to gather where everyone can hear.  Their simple caring has made me ask, do I honor what those around me need in order to hear?  Do I help them find their center point of listening?  I ask you the same” (Nepo, p. 8).

“A place to gather where everyone can hear and find their center point of listening” sounds like a good definition of Church to me.  Here at St. James, we are inviting people into a season of listening.  Next month, following the 10 am service each Sunday, you are invited to participate in a small group gathered to listen to one another reflect on those things that bring you joy in life and those concerns that keep you awake at night.  The point is simply to listen to one another as an end-in-itself, trusting that nurturing a culture of listening is one way that we can live a dying life as disciples of Jesus.

Some of you already participated in these groups or one-on-one conversations during Eastertide.  While participants found it to be a positive experience, some initially expressed skepticism about the process.  “Why are we meeting?”  “Are you going to asking me to do something?”  These questions reveal the cynicism of a culture in which genuine listening is rare, and manipulate agendas often are masked by pseudo-listening – even, sometimes especially – at church!  We are inviting a little bit of vulnerability, and trust that we can be a community where everyone can hear and find their center point of listening. 

In closing, I want to briefly comment on the story of Hagar and Ishmael that we heard today, a story which may be unfamiliar but is relevant to theme of listening.  Recall that Abraham and Sarah are the great biblical exemplars of faith, who respond to God’s promise that through them a great nation will arise and become a blessing to all people.  The only problem is that Abraham is old and Sarah is barren. 

Abraham and Sarah persevere through many challenges to travel to the Promised Land, but they promised heir doesn’t appear.  In attempt to take matters into their own hands, Sarah gives her slave, Hagar, as a concubine to Abraham so that Hagar may conceive a son for them.  She does so, but her pregnancy arouses Sarah’s jealousy, who then accuses Hagar of becoming uppity.  Sarah treats Hagar harshly, and so she attempts to run away.

While in the wilderness, an angel of the Lord appears to Hagar, telling her to return to Abraham and Sarah, and promising that her son, too, will be blessed and become the progenitor of a great nation.  The angel also instructs her to name her son, Ishmael, which means “God hears,” because God had given heed to her affliction.  Hagar obeys – listens – and returns to Abraham and Sarah.

The birth of Ishmael is complicated by Sarah’s eventual pregnancy and the birth of Isaac, initiating another round of jealousy and the final expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael.  Near death in the wilderness, the angel again appears and assures Hagar that “God heard the voice of the boy” – in other words, “God hears ‘God hears.’”  God will be faithful to God’s promises; even when, like Abraham and Sarah we doubt the promise, try to take matters into our own hands, and jealously exclude others from sharing in it.  God will be faithful to God’s promises, even when, like Hagar, we are outsiders, bereft in the wilderness and feeling abandoned by God.  God hears the cries of the exploited, the nobodies, who also are promised a share in God’s blessing. 

The God who promises blessing, is first and foremost a God who hears.  It is from the primordial silence, the patient listening through eons of time before time, that God speaks a creative word and brings the universe into being.  It is this God who listens to Hagar the Egyptian slave and to the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, who speaks a liberating word and brings freedom to those who are oppressed.  This Word becomes flesh in Jesus, who invites us to listen as God listens, and so live a dying life that the whole world may become new.  Meister Eckhart said there is nothing so much like God as silence.  And we are never so much like God as when we listen.