Returning Students

Matthew 13:31-33; 44-52

³¹He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; ³²it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
³³He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
⁴⁴The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
⁴⁵Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; ⁴⁶on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
⁴⁷Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; ⁴⁸when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. ⁴⁹So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous ⁵⁰and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
⁵¹Have you understood all this? They answered, “Yes.” ⁵²And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

Returning Students

We pray,

Weave through our hearts Lord,

Like a mustard weed, vineing through our beings

That we might know we are of great price

That we might be caught in the net of your kingdom

That we might be students of your love yet again today.

 

I cook at home. Subsequently I’ve also sliced pieces off every one of my fingers. I haven’t mastered the knife skills…though I’m not sure any chef really has. They all slice themselves sometimes.

I had a seminary professor who could fluently speak five languages. When I questioned him on this I said, “Really?! Five languages? You’ve mastered five languages?” He answered, “No. I only speak one well. And it isn’t English.” He didn’t consider himself a master of languages, though he certainly had skill.

Most all of our life is geared toward mastery. We go to college. We get a Master’s degree (which is funny because mine say that I’ve “Mastered Education” and “Mastered Divinity”…yeah, right). Some go on to get other certifications, licensures, skills. Some to doctorates, double doctorates, or…the one I’m pining for…honorary doctorates.

Most all of our life is geared toward mastery in one form or another. We must master how to use the new kitchen appliances, the band saw, the new computer software, the GRE, SAT, and a million other acronyms. We need to master acronyms just to figure out all that we need to master!

And then in steps Jesus to eject us from that mindset, the mindset of mastery, into the realm of spiritual wisdom…which has nothing to do with mastering anything, but rather perception, attunement, openness, awareness.

You know, those sorts of amorphous things.

It’s frustrating, you know? I almost wish that Jesus could center our spiritual lives around some sort of technical skill like needlepoint or woodworking. Something that we could gain proficiency at.

Instead we have to work on things like “love” and “forgiveness” and you wonder, at each moment, if you’re becoming more proficient at love and forgiveness or less proficient…

Because sometimes it’s difficult to tell. I had someone last week ask me how I know if I’ve really forgiven someone. The only answer that I could come up with, an answer deep within me, is that sometimes I just have to remind myself that I’ve forgiven someone…or even forgiven myself. That’s as close to mastery as I’ve been able to come…

We also think we have to master wisdom in this world. “Stupid is as stupid does,” we proudly quote. Forrest Gump, the supposed poster-child for not being blessed with intelligence, rightly becomes the mouthpiece of wisdom for a generation of Americans who find themselves more often than not on the losing end of that saying. We all find ourselves there sometimes.

Confucius notes in Analects (which you should read if you haven’t) that wisdom is “knowing what you do know, and knowing what you do not know.”

That’s a far cry from the definition of wisdom touted in the Western world. Wisdom here more often than not is distilled down into having the right answer to anything.

Which is why it’s good that we have these parables before us because these parables, if they do anything, point us to a great spiritual truth and it is this: we are not to master the ways of God. We are perpetual students of God.

It’s why we must gather weekly at the foot of the cross in this place, students sitting at the foot of God.

It’s why Jesus continually claims that infants and children are better at holding the ways of God than adults. Children are in learning mode. They have what that desert-dwelling mystic Father Richard Rohr calls, “beginner’s mind. They are aware of what they know and what they don’t know.

Perhaps Jesus uses the terms “infants” and “children” and purposefully avoids the term “teenagers.” It seems in our teenage years we become less wise. Hence the word “sophomore;” wise-fool. So many adults are sophomores, this one included…

I think some are under the impression that we go to church to master religion. Or master Jesus. Or master the path to heaven. Or learn to master life somehow.

And then Jesus tells us this little story about a person who finds a pearl of great price, and sells everything they have to buy it.

And at the end of that parable, what is the person left with? They didn’t master anything, but rather gave up everything.

Or a person who finds treasure in a field, sells all that they have, and buys the field with the treasure hidden therein.

Or the planter who plants a small weed, a mustard weed, a small seed into a fresh garden knowing it will overtake everything. They haven’t mastered anything…they’ve given up their crops.

The repeating descriptors here in all of these parables: small, hiding, the element of secret-keeping, do you have ears to hear?

These are not stories to master or of mastery. These are stories that master you. They ask you the tough questions like, what is of worth to you? What would you risk everything to have? What might it mean for God to seek you, find you of great price, and sell everything to be with you forever?

What does it mean to imagine God, in her kitchen, has hidden the kingdom of God within the world, within you, like a yeast to infect you?

How is the kingdom of God a weed like the mustard weed, creeping its way through the world inviting you to make a home there?

These are not stories to master. These are parables; they master you. You are the student here. We are always students when it comes to God…

And, perhaps, it might be best to think of your life, our life together, as a parable. Life not as something to master, but as something to learn from. To sit at the feet of life and learn. After all, in the Gospel of John Jesus claims to be the “way, truth, and life.” To sit at the feet of life, to look at all that is to come, all that has been, and to learn from it is to take the parables of Jesus seriously.

That, of course, does not mean that “everything happens for a reason,” or that there is some particular message we are to be learning from this experience or that. Again, that goes back to this idea of mastery…you don’t have to master the meaning. Perhaps there’s not meaning to be mastered, but only meaning to be made.

We’ve even been taught to master ourselves, our own bodies. But the more I practice meditation, the more I realize that I never master my breath, I just learn from each inhale and exhale. That pearl of wisdom, a pearl of great price, is one that I’ve sold all my other mastering attempts for to allow it to live in me. I no longer try to master my preaching, my relationships, my work…I learn from them.

The need and desire for mastery bleeds into all forms of life, causing anxiety. We get anxious when we don’t feel we’ve mastered something, and sometimes this is warranted. A nurse must master putting in an IV. A welder must master the bead of metal and a smooth finish.

But we mistake those tasks for the task of life and the ask of a spiritual life. They are categorically different tasks…and yet so many of us are anxious not over the skills of work, but over life. Spirituality. Faith.

Following Christ in this world does not mean that you seek to master morality, that you seek to master religion, that you seek to master wisdom, master salvation, master God.

The idea that we must master everything is a distinctly Western understanding of what it means to live. Christ was more Eastern than he was Western. And, as the poet Christian Wiman notes, “Even when Christianity is the default mode of a society, Christ is not. There is always some leap into what looks like absurdity, and there is always, for the one who makes that leap, some cost.”

And that, precisely that, is what the parables teach us. They take us on this absurd little trail through a story that seems simple but is more complex than anything we’ve ever heard before, asking us to question what we’d sell everything for; what small pieces of our life are we underestimating, what we’re throwing away and what we’re keeping about this existence.

And they put us to the point of action. Can we truly hope that the kingdom of God is at work like yeast in flour, like a mustard weed in a garden especially when we look around and see violence on our streets, trouble in our marriage, and cancer in our bodies, dare we still look around and cling to the hope that the kingdom of God is still present through it all?  As we watch Gaza burn, dare we believe that God’s kingdom is somehow hidden like buried treasure in that sacred soil, working still?

Can we look at our lives, as students of our lives, and not judge whether we’re good fish or bad fish, but whether what we’re learning is worth keeping or tossing back? Whether we’re seeking just to master this parable we call life, or whether we’re willing to sit at the feet of the Way, the Truth, and the Life to learn from it?

God welcomes us back as returning students. It is good that we’ve come back to the foot of life again. Jesus has a story for us. Don’t tell me what it means, for it doesn’t mean just one thing. Let the story of Jesus sit inside you like a pearl of great wisdom which you’re willing to sell all your attempts at mastery to just hold.

Let the story of Jesus be buried in the field of your life, where you secretly know it’s there even when disaster and tragedy strike. That field is worth keeping with the treasure buried there.

Let the story of Jesus be the seed planted in the garden of your existence, weaving its way through everything so that you feel God’s presence like a shade tree inviting you to come and rest in it.

Let the story of Jesus be the sorter of your life, throwing out the bad and keeping the good.

And at the end of it all, perhaps we’ll know that our lives, too, are living parables. Parables of such great worth that God was willing to sell all divinity to walk with us even unto the cross. And once buried in the ground, hidden like yeast, like a mustard weed, like a treasure of great price, wound up a vine of resurrection that we all take comfort in.