A Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

by the Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm
“If you don’t expect the unexpected, it will never happen.”  This is one of those aphorisms that I must have read at some point, although I can’t remember where.  It might have been on a bumper sticker?  Or maybe on one of those inspirational plaques or banners that were popular  in the 1980s and 90s?

This saying, about whether we find something or not, surfaced in my mind as I have been thinking, this week, about the set of small parables we’ve head in our gospel this morning.
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But let me start with a story I enjoy every time I think about it.   I’m going to read you a piece about it that appeared in the Washington Post, some years after the event it describes:
 
In Washington DC, at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, a man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, approximately 2000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
 
After about four minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule.
About four minutes later, the violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.
 
At six minutes, a young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.
 
At ten minutes, a three-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time. This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent - without exception - forced their children to move on quickly.
 
At forty-five minutes: The musician played continuously. Only six people stopped and listened for a short while. About twenty gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.
 
After one hour:
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed and no one applauded. There was no recognition at all.
 
No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold-out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100 each to sit and listen to him play the same music.
 
This is a true story. Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the D.C. Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.
You may well have heard this story before.  We could even call it a parable, in that it meets several of the characteristics that fit the parables that Jesus taught:
 

• It’s about something simple and familiar we can easily recognize from the world of our own experience.
• It contains an unexpected twist that invites us to pause and think, and
• The more we reflect on the story, the more implications and insights it suggests.

 
This story came to my mind, like the aphorism about expecting the unexpected, as they’re both about what we see, what we notice, and particularly, about noticing something unexpected that may be hidden.
 
The parables in this morning’s gospel are part of the large body of parables that Matthew reports Jesus as having taught.  Many of them including this mornings’ parables are about what is translated in today’s version as “the Kingdom of Heaven”.
 
You’ve heard me say this before, but I prefer other terms to “kingdom of heaven”, in part because “kingdom” by definition suggests a patriarchal social order, and in part because Christian tradition has come to associate “heaven” with a realm outside of the world we live in, that we might access after we’ve died.   I feel quite confident that an otherworldly heaven is not what Jesus was concerned about.
 
I prefer the language “the realm of God”, a way of living and being in a community of respect, compassion and justice that reflects the Love that is God‘s self.  Our presiding bishop often uses the phrase “God’s dream”, which is helpful, too, and comes from Verna Dozier’s 2007 book, The Dream of God. 
 
So in his series of parables Jesus is suggesting to his hearers what God’s realm or God’s dream looks like and he compares it to five examples:
 

• a mustard seed planted in a field
• yeast that leavens whole batch of flour
• treasure found buried in a field
• a merchant finding single pearl of great value
• a net that pulls in a mighty but mixed catch of fish

 
There are a couple of common threads in these brief parables.  The first two parables are about something small and seemingly insignificant that proceeds to grow in size and ultimately take over.
 
I find it interesting that mustard seed and yeast would not have had positive associations for Jesus’ community. Mustard was considered a weed, an invasive plant that, once it took hold, would self-propagate and potentially choke out the other crops.  Yeast, likewise, looks quite undistinguished to begin with but then bubbles up and completely changes the nature of a batch of flour, and apparently, is not used by nomadic people because it makes dough hard to manage.  Having come home from Maine, ten days ago, to a crop of weeds the likes of which I have NEVER seen before, I can understand how first century listeners may have been startled to hear God’s realm likened to mustard seed.
 
The treasure hidden in a field and the pearl of great value are both unexpected finds.  Like the mustard seed and yeast, both are small, and both were hidden from view.  Both inspire the ones who discover them, however, to basically abandon all their other priorities to commit to the treasure and the pearl:  both sell “all that they have” in order to possess the one desirable thing they have found.
 
The net thrown into the sea draws in fish of every kind – both those that are desirable to eat AND those that, when hauled up on shore, are just going to be tossed into a basket and disposed of.  This parable seems to be directly connected to the parable we heard last week:  like the weeds that have grown up among the wheat plants, that need to be gathered and destroyed, there are “bad” fish pulled in with the good ones.
 
This week Julie Carew shared with the vestry an approach to Bible study that invites us to look at Jesus’ teachings through the lens of “Beloved Community”, that is, recognizing that Jesus was teaching with love to an oppressed people, and not from the perspective of power and privilege, and I’ve thought about how it might shape our understanding of today’s parables.
 
Adopting this approach, it’s easy to understand how this set of parables about God’s realm would have great appeal to the disenfranchised – both the disenfranchised Jesus’ world, and of our own:

• if what the world offers you is not sufficient or satisfying, while the notion of having your world disrupted by an invasive, mustard seed-like force may be distressing, it offers hope of improvement. 
• For those who are perishing – whether by illness or poverty or the inequities of the world – Jesus’ promises of a powerful, yeast-like force loose but hidden and ready to change the world is good news.

 
For those of us living more comfortable lives, these parables may be scarier to embrace.

• Do I really want the yeast of God’s realm to bubble its way into all of the corners of my orderly universe?
• Am I ready or willing to lose “all that I have” for the treasure of God’s realm?  The pearl of great value?
• Do I even want to THINK about which fish basket I’d land in if the sorting took place today?

 
But the piece of the parable that’s been most thought-provoking to me this week is the suggestion of how subtle and hidden the bubbling up of God’s realm may be.
 
I think we could suggest that God’s realm is like Josh Bell playing the violin in the subway station.  Because we are so much dominated by the schedules and lists and agendas and priorities playing in our heads, what Bach, what Stradivarius are we not noticing?  What opportunities to join in the work of God’s realm are we missing?
 
Where is the work of God’s love taking root and growing, hidden away like a treasure, a pearl of unusual value, or a master musician, playing incognito?
 
As we contemplate the opportunities and the risks of God’s realm, may we continue to keep our eyes and our hearts open

• To see and value what the world doesn’t see
• To act differently than the options the world offers
• To invest in a future trusting in and based on Jesus Christ.