God’s Place

24 July 2011

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

The kingdom of heaven as if someone should blow on a dandelion flower. A single seed floats on the breeze and takes root in the corner of the garden, and before you know it the whole lawn is covered in a Roundup resistant variety.

The kingdom of heaven is like Eurasian milfoil. By the time you notice it, the plant has taken over the lake. And the more you cut it, the more it grows.

The kingdom of heaven is like a zebra mussel….

When Jesus told these parables, the listeners knew that Jesus was comparing God’s kingdom to things which were noxious weeds, invasive species, and ritually unclean. We don’t really have a “ritually unclean” equivalent in modern society, but I think the hated zebra mussel comes the closest. Poor zebra mussel. It never meant to take over our lakes. It’s not as if some terrorist zebra mussel organization—the ZMLO-- planned an invasion…. A mussel’s got to do what a mussel’s got to do… whatever that is.

Same with milfoil and dandelions. It is in their nature to grow, to resist attack, to persist in growing and spreading abroad. Floating on the air, drifting through the water, as innocent as it is unstoppable.

Jesus was speaking to a people who were as weeds to the empire. Families, whole villages, were plucked up from their land forced to move elsewhere, or be crushed. Their ancestral lands were given to those who were deemed more appropriate: Roman settlers, soldiers and officers, the Vichy government or whatever its equivalent was—those who collaborated in their own country’s colonization.

So when they heard Jesus evoking the kingdom of God, not in the Holy temple or the ritually consecrated furnishings associated with it, but in the common, the base, the untouchable, the ritually unclean…. They knew he was talking about them.

The kingdom of God is not like the priests; the kingdom of God is not like the legions, the kingdom of God is like you. The presence of God is among you, the despised, the forgotten, the plucked up and the crushed. But like the yeast you rise. Like the weeds, you grow tall and strong. God is at work in you.

It was a scandalous joy! The way Jesus talked, it was a scandalous joy! Here is a rabbi talking about God among us. Scandalous! Joy!

Do you understand? Jesus asked. “Ye-es” the disciples said, but did they really? And do we? The church began as an underground movement. Small, poor, despised, afflicted, but growing, in spite of persecutions, it continued to grow. Because Christians saw the presence of God in the despised of the earth, and they reached out and cared for those who had no one else to care for them.

But as the church grew, and received the patronage of the empire that crucified Jesus, it began to emulate the empire, rather than God’s kingdom.

So we must tell each other these stories again and again, to remind ourselves of God’s place in the world. God is found in the last place we would look.

 As a church, we do a lot of good things. We go to the soup kitchen and feed people, we go out to the ends of the earth to bring health care and build shelter and serve. But never forget, that wherever we go, we do not “bring God;” God is already there. God has always been there. Among the weeds. Among the displaced. Among the uprooted, downtrodden and crushed, there is God. If we pay attention, we might see the kingdom of God in our midst.

Oh Yes, God Is In This Place

17 July 2011

Genesis 28:10-19a

Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24

When I was a child, I was under the impression that the characters mentioned in Bible stories were all good. Except for the ones who were obviously all bad, of course. Goliath was bad, David was good. Delilah was bad, Samson was good. There were heroes who were all good, and villains who were all bad. And the lesson was, be good. Obey your parents, stand up to bullies, be good as all God’s heroes are good.

So when I started to read the actual bible, not the children’s story bible, I was surprised to see what scoundrels my former heroes could be. Take the story of Isaac’s family. This family is worthy of its own reality show on MTV. Isaac seems to be in his own world, completely unaware or unconcerned with the relationship of people around him. Isaac and his oldest son Esau are tightly bound, share a love of blood sport and red meat. Manly  men. Isaac’s wife Rebecca and their younger son Jacob have a bond that seems to be built on their mutual jealousy of the relationship that Isaac and Esau have with each other. Rebecca devises a plan and Jacob carries it out, to rob Esau of his father’s blessing.

When our story begins, it is the end of the day that Jacob ran for his life. His mother invented an excuse for his departure, to give him time to get as far away from his justifiably angry brother as possible. After deceiving his father and disinheriting his brother and running away from his home, Jacob lies down for a fitful night of sleep.

And that is when he meets his God.

Which goes against everything I learned in Sunday school, which was that if you are very, very good, you will get to see God one day in heaven. And this is how to be good: Honor your father and mother, don’t lie cheat or steal.

Jacob made a fool out of his father, impersonated his brother, stole his father’s blessing and swindled his brother out of his inheritance. And then he saw God. It just doesn’t make sense. And more than that, it’s not fair.

The lesson is not “Be a jerk and see God.”

But perhaps the lesson is, “If you think you know God, watch out.”

Perhaps the lesson is, “No matter how far you run, God will find you.”

“You hem me in, behind and before…. If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea…” there you are, God.

“Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away,” begins a story by Margaret Wise Brown. I read it many times to my children.

“So he said to his mother, ‘I am running away.’

 "'If you run away,’ said his mother, ‘I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.’”

And the story goes on. The little bunny shares his plans to become a boat and sail far far away, and the mother bunny responds, If you become a boat, I will become the wind and blow you where I want you to go. The little bunny says, Then I will become a crocus in a hidden garden; and the mother says she will become the gardener, and so on. Finally the little bunny says, in that case, I’ll just stay here and be your little bunny.

“Have a carrot,” says the mother.

I can’t help but think of Psalm 139 as “The Runaway Bunny Psalm.”

No matter how ornery, contrary, and mean we become, God is our mother and our father. God will seek us out.

No matter how far we run from our home, God will be there.

Maybe we don’t notice God’s presence so much when we are at home with God, when we are “being good.” When we are living in Christ, loving our neighbor, God’s presence so permeates our lives that God is as the air we breathe. Essentially present, mostly, unnoticed.

It is when we become lost to ourselves that we find God’s presence so surprising. When we find ourselves as strangers in a strange land, a land of grief, a land of need and uncertainty, that we find God’s presence so surprising.

Remember when Joey and Sue came back from Haiti, after the earthquake, and we were so surprised to see all the smiling faces, all the happiness and joy in the midst of such devastation? Surely God is in this place, and I did not know it.

Remember the last time you lost someone you loved, and you wandered in the land of grief and misery, and then, one day, you woke up and realized you were going to live? Surely God is in this place, and I did not know it.

Remember the last time you were truly lost on unmapped roads, roads your GPS didn’t recognize and Rand McNally never heard of, and then you found a landmark, and suddenly knew where you were? Surely God is in this place, and I did not know it.

No matter how far we run, no matter how lost we become, no matter how low or high we go… Surely God is in this place, whether we know it or not. Thanks be to God. Amen.