Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 30, 2017, "Mustard and leaven--pervasive and persistent"

Proper A12 Ord 17 BFC 2017

Matthew 13:31-33

July 30, 2017

Just take a look at us
Aren't we ridiculous?
It's safe to say we've got no common sense, yeah
Just take a peek at us
The free song, the mini-bus
The geeks you like to throw into the fence, yeah

You know it really hurts someone loving
You know it really hurts, but we'll rise above it
You know it's gonna hurt
Woah ooh ooh oh, we know what we're worth
And you'll get what you deserve
When all the geeks inherit the Earth, yeah

Hey, aren't we absurd?
We're just a bunch a nerds
Is safe to say you're much cooler than them
So, take your punch at us
Go ahead and steal the lunch from us
We'll take the blow and play our part in the end, yeah

You know it really hurts someone loving
You know it really hurts, but you can't stop it
Right where it really hurts
Woah ooh ooh oh, we know what we're worth
And you'll get what you deserve
When all the geeks inherit the Earth, yeah

You toss your sticks and stones
And we'll just lick our wounds
Beware the underdog
Payback is coming soon

Don't blame the Universe when the commas reverse
Just look at yourself

            That’s a song by singer/songwriter Hailey Knox titled, “The Geeks.”  For a moment, it has us imagine the violence some of the people in grade school and high school experienced, the exclusion and the underdog status they lived in, “Just take a peek at us; The geeks you like to throw into the fence.”  But the song also has us imagine a future that is quite different, a future when the geeks inherit the earth.  “Payback is coming soon,” she relates.  We might imagine that with four-year or even Master’s degrees, good-paying jobs, perhaps white-collar jobs, and legal battles over intellectual property.  Knox even uses language from the Beatitudes (“When all the Geeks inherit the earth”) recognizing that the gospels have a parallel reversal.  We learn that God seeks out transformation.  The world is not as God wills it.  Some of us may have been the kingpins in grade school and high school, the popular kids, the head cheerleader, the football star, with the power to wear the letter jacket proudly and push people around.  We were gods then. 

          But maybe, Knox imagines, maybe this is not the end of the story.  Maybe there is more to write. 

And so it is with God.  We learn that the way we see things may not be the way God sees things.  The way we see ourselves, may not be the way God sees us.  God takes what is a teachable moment in our lives, takes all of our expectations, and turns them on their head.  We may see that play out as we move through grade school and high school into adulthood, but is that possible when we are the poor of the earth?  Is that upending of expectations something we even want to contemplate as the lone super power on the planet?  We might like Knox’s song because we can partially or wholly identify with those geeks, says the pastor with the pocket protector, but is our faith such that we want our expectations, our lives, the world upended?  And does our faith actively call us to see that upending of expectations?

          For the parables taught by Jesus were like that.  They took teachable moments and turned those moments on their head.  Expectations for where people stood in the world, how God saw folks, were used to create a suspended moment and then, through parable, Jesus would open a space where expectations might change, how God saw people might transform.

          Parables begin with things that are familiar, invite us in, make us believe we know the ending of the story.  Biblical scholar, John Dominic Crossan, then talks about a dark interval with parables—a place where reality is suspended for a moment while our whole brain, body, and community receives new information.[1]   Parables flip expectations and give us new perspectives.   But parables do so in a way such that our life cannot be the same as it was, for the reversal is usually done in a place where we are highly invested. 

          Each of these parables begins with a familiar image for the people of First Century Rome—empire.  Empire was the way people described the activity of the Romans in Galilee—how they violently and oppressively kept people in tow.  They dominated the landscape.   Rome had wiped out cities in Galilee[2], cities had been built in tribute to Roman Emperors in Galilee[3], and taxes were all about a trickle-up enterprise that overstuffed the wealthy and leveraged debt to destroy the life of the poor.  People knew the activity of Rome’s Empire.  Jesus was quite clearly invoking the term “empire” for its familiarity and coupling it with a term that immediately opened up a space for seeing empire differently—God.  Or in Matthew’s gospel, Heaven.[4]  Jesus used the Empire of Heaven to ask how heaven might do things differently than Caesar.  How would Heaven’s activity, Heaven’s Empire be any different in perspective?

In the particular Scripture passage from Matthew today, Jesus changes expectations, opens space through parable.  The Empire of Heaven is like a mustard seed or leaven.  As I shared last week, we have often heard these two elements as just how something small can take over and change the very essence of the host where it is planted.  The mustard seed planted becomes a bush that grows wild and takes over the garden, the field, or the land.  The leaven inserted causes the bread to rise and expand.  What we have not often heard is that these two elements, mustard seed and leaven, are considered unclean and make the field and bread unclean.  The Empire of Heaven is like something unclean which planted or inserted takes over and changes the very nature of things.  All of the field, all of the flour has certainly been transformed.

          So why would Jesus use images like a mustard shrub and leaven to talk about the Empire of Heaven?  The image of power and strength and protection within Mediterranean mythology was the cedar of Lebanon, according to the prophet Ezekiel, “with fair branches and forest shade, and of great height, its top among the clouds.  The waters nourished it, the deep made it grow tall, making its rivers flow around the place it was planted, sending forth its streams to all the trees of the field. So it towered high above all the trees of the field; its boughs grew large and its branches long, from abundant water in its shoots.  All the birds of the air made their nests in its boughs; under its branches all the animals of the field gave birth to their young; and in its shade all great nations lived.”[5]  Would this not be the image of power and strength and protection that would most closely rival the Empire of Heaven?  Is the character of Heaven, the activity of Heaven, like a weed that grows into a shrub or a tall and proud tree?

          Or is the character of Heaven, the activity of Heaven, like a woman who hides leaven in the loaf?  One of the things that is apparent from this parable is that Jesus was a brilliant storyteller.  For in one short sentence, Jesus provides a multitude of everyday images that would have created a dark interval by using familiar, everyday images and coupling them in strange and odd ways.  Jesus is not only creating dark intervals.  He is probably blowing the minds of people who hear him.

It begins with equating the character and activity of Heaven to a woman who is working in her household.  Women were the unclean, the religiously impure in Mediterranean societies.  Men were considered the pure.[6]  The Empire of Heaven is equated to a familiar, everyday thing that women do in the household. 

Leaven, in the ancient world, was a symbol for moral corruption.  How leaven came into being in the ancient world supports the idea that it was a corrupting influence.  Bernard Brandon Scott writes, “Leaven is made by taking a piece of bread and storing it in a damp, dark place until mold forms. The bread rots and decays, unlike modern yeast, which is domesticated.”  Leavened bread then invited images of the everyday unholy, rotten,  and profane.  Unleavened bread, on the other hand, invited images of the sacred and holy feast—particularly Passover.[7]

Finally, this woman is not kneading the leaven into the dough.  She is hiding it—using the Greek word (krypto).  This hiding has a more negative connotation than using the Greek word kneading (phyrao), or covering (kalypto).[8]  The hiding suggests that maybe the unclean leaven’s activity is Heaven’s activity.  One would have to be involved in the character and activity to even know what is happening. 

Three images brought together, a woman, leaven, and hiding.  All of those images conveying something about the activity and character of Heaven that would have been considered an insult if used for the activity and character of the Roman Empire.  But in the hands of Jesus, they become about re-imagining a world that invites us to see God as a Bakerwoman who is secretly, hiddenly, changing the whole character and substance of society.

          In societies like first century Rome, two tiers of people existed.  In the top tier were people like rulers, the ruling class, and some merchants.  The bottom of the second tier was occupied by people who were considered the unclean and the expendable.[9]  The disciples of Jesus were among those considered unclean and expendable.  First century Roman philosopher Cicero wrote:  “And the most shameful occupations are those which cater to our sensual pleasures:  ‘fish-sellers, butchers, cooks, poultry-raisers, and fisher[folk],’ . . . .”[10]

          So what would it mean among the unclean and expendable people who followed Jesus, farmers and fisherfolk, prostitutes and tax collectors, to hear that the Empire of Heaven is not like the powerful and proud cedar of Lebanon but like the mustard shrub or leavened bread?  Can we imagine the good news that broke forth in that teachable moment when how God sees us gets turned on its head?

          How often do we find ourselves aspiring for the powerful and proud cedar of Lebanon when actually, truly the God of Jesus meets us and makes a home in the places where we are unclean and broken, expendable and outcast?  We so often struggle to make our faith about what is respectable and what is moral when God, all along, has been trying to share with us a different perspective, a different way of seeing the world, a different way of seeing ourselves.

          God sees us with different eyes.  God sees us with different eyes.  In the places where you are wounded and harmed, bleeding and outcast, God wants you to know that you are precious, and cherished, and loved.  Because, because if you know you are golden to God in those places, the good news will be that this love and compassion intended for you cannot be contained.  This love and compassion will well up to overflowing and where there is wound and harm in the world, the bleeding and the outcast, we will be there to tend and heal.

          You are a weed sown in a field.  You are leaven mixed into bread.  It is not so much that God wants power from you, but wildness and freedom, to not be caught up in the culture and the schemes of the world.   God asks us not to be dominated or over one another, but pervasive and persistent in our work together.

          As Hailey Knox’s song might teach us, we need to remember that our perspective may not be God’s perspective.  Go.  In your uncleanness, grow wild and free.  Be pervasive and persistent.  Do not worry that our movement is not talked about in the halls of power or plastered on the tabloids.   The revolution will not be televised.  Or tweeted.  Learn in the ways that the world calls you unclean, that you are precious, cherished, and loved and that you are in keeping with the character and activity of Heaven.  In that teachable moment, turn the world on its head, so that all who are called unclean may hear the good news and begin to transform the suffering of the planet, not into a haven where people with pocket protectors are safe and powerful, but where the poor and oppressed, sick and dying, the outcast and excluded grow and flourish and change the nature of the garden.   May it be so.  And may we be faithful enough to follow and lead.  Amen.

---

[1] John Dominic Crossan, The Dark Interval:  Towards a Theology of Story (Polebridge Press, 1988).

[2] Sepphoris (near Nazareth) and Emmaus (probably not around at the time of the Biblical story).

[3] Tiberias and Caesarea Maritima

[4] Although not afraid to use “God” throughout his gospel, the author of Matthew to refer to the Empire or Kingdom.  Scholars have long surmised that this is because the author of Matthew honored Jewish tradition and did not want to insult the author of Matthew’s audience.  But why use the name of God elsewhere?

[5] Ezekiel 31:3b-7

[6] Bernard Brandon Scott, Hear Then the Parable (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 1989), p. 326.

[7]Ibid, p. 325.

[8] Ibid, p. 326.

[9] William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech:  Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed (Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), pp. 58-59. 

[10] Cicero, On Duties 1.42.