June 13, 2021 – Proper 6 (3rd Sunday after Pentecost)

There is a rabbinic teaching method called “charaz.” It means stringing pearls, and the rabbi would spit out image after image, wisdom saying after wisdom saying, parable after parable in a seemingly random way. It was designed to tell a larger truth by focusing on small details or to tell about a whole by examining the parts, describing a picture by telling a variety of perspectives.

 

If you’re anything like me, you get frustrated by this style of teaching, and I don’t think that the hearers of Jesus’ time were any less frustrated. I’m sure they asked, “Which is it, Jesus? Is the kingdom like a pearl or a net? Do we stumble across it or set out to find it? Like yeast or a treasure in a field? Does it work in secret hidden from our eyes or does it sprout up like a plan to provide shade? Is it something common like a seed, questionable like yeast, or valuable like a treasure?”

 

And then, I’m sure Jesus would answer with a smile and a nod and tell us we are bringing something old and something new out of the treasure. And then we would grumble, throw up our hands, and shout, “Well, which is it? This or that?” And Jesus would simply respond, “Yes. That’s it exactly!” And Jesus’ answer wasn’t meant to be funny, but to be the truth.

 

Talking with Jesus can be exhausting. It feels like he is out to confuse us. We keep skipping over verses where it says he said nothing, except in parables. I think we skip them because they make it sound as if Jesus were messing with us, and we don’t like that. But the truth is that Jesus wants us to understand, but we can’t do it by thinking the way we usually think.

 

We have to learn to see the ordinary and the spectacular together. We have to learn to experience the everyday and the once-in-a-lifetime together. We need to see deeper, to trust more completely, to value what the world throws away and throw away what the world thinks most valuable.

 

Friends, the kingdom asks us to turn upside down, to stretch and reach, to get outside of ourselves long enough to really see the wonder of the universe in a tiny seed. And we are to do it with joy. That is what it means to grow into the new creation. We are to see it in all its multifaceted beauty and all its diverse wonder. When we think we’ve got it nailed down, it slips aways and appears in another way. And we are surprised, blessed, and overwhelmed with the amazing grace of God.

 

We are given the chance to be remade too — just like the kingdom — as Paul describes in today’s second letter to the Corinthians. We are now the parable – we are the mustard seed that grows into that which gives shade, gives welcome and relief, gives justice and comfort to so many kinds of birds that we are amazed.

 

The confidence of which Paul speaks isn’t in ourselves. It’s not the right choices that we [might] finally make. It isn’t the growth we see within and around us. The confidence isn’t in our own salvation, but IN the one who saves us. Paul wants us to let the world know that we are a new creation… that’s what it means to be a living parable of the kingdom.

 

Paul reminds us about standing before the judgment seat in the same passage where he tells us to be confident. Thinking about the form doesn’t necessarily lead us to the latter; unless the confidence isn’t in us but in Christ. Then the image becomes that we stand before the one who worked in us and through us, who will then recognize that presence in our actions. THAT is the new creation that Paul writes of, the indwelling of the presence of Christ. Paul writes, “If anyone is in Christ.” He could have written “If Christ is in anyone.” It’s about as fuzzy as trying to decide if the kingdom is like a seed or a tree or a pearl or yeast. “If anyone” means people like us. And it means people who aren’t like us on the outside. It means anyone who carries a seed’s worth of faith in Christ is claimed by Christ.

 

The joy is that as a new creation, a tiny seed, we can grow. There is always more for us to realize, more for us to live into, not as a burden or duty, but as the joy of discovering more Christ. We are making (not past tense, but currently making) disciples of Jesus for the transformation of the world. And we are making them out of ourselves and our neighbors and the world that God loves so much. Step by step, branch by branch, we grow into the new creation.