Where We Meet God

Pentecost 7A, 7/27/14

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

O God, give us an understanding mind, the ability to discern good from evil and the wisdom of Solomon. Amen.

Two Sundays ago, we brainstormed what we imagine God to be like. I had you talk to your neighbors, and you came up with lists of descriptors for God.

All those cards are on this poster. There’s a little space on the bottom of the poster if you’d like to add any words or drawings that help you understand who God is. 

There’s one common theme on all of the cards. Everyone wrote down more than one word. In order to describe God, we had to come up with several adjectives or nouns – several things that describe God’s character, or that give good examples of how God interacts with humans.

Two Sundays ago the Gospel lesson was the parable of the sower, when a farmer went out to sow seed in the field.

We know that God isn’t really a farmer, not the way the people who grow the corn and beans around here are. God isn’t dependent upon the yield of the harvest for a livelihood.

But God is like a farmer. God plants and reaps, both literally and figuratively. God sows seeds, gets rid of weeds, and cares for creation.

All these other words we wrote down help us understand a little bit about God.

God is like a father, a shepherd, a teacher, a friend.

God can be described as powerful, caring, gracious, loving, accepting, joyful.  

But none of these words totally describe    who    God    is.

They just give us a glimpse, and help us get closer to an understanding.

That’s the same technique that Jesus is using today in the Gospel lesson. Using five different analogies – five different parables – Jesus tries to help us understand the answer to the question at hand.

Two weeks ago, the question was, how do you describe God?

Today, the question is, where do you encounter God?

Jesus tells us five parables about the kingdom of heaven. This doesn’t necessarily mean “heaven” like we think about when someone dies. The kingdom of heaven is the eternal realm of God; it’s the place that God inhabits. The kingdom of heaven includes the place where we’re going to spend eternity with God, but it is so much more than that as well.

Any place or time we meet God, we’ve seen a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven – whether we’re talking about prayer, a favorite song, time with our families, a specific part of worship, or the place we will go when we die… the kingdom of heaven exists when we somehow feel the closeness of God.

The kingdom of heaven is like…

The realm of God is like…

Being close to God is like…

You know, all the parables today are imperfect analogies.

None of them can say definitively, the kingdom of God IS. Just like none of our descriptions of God is complete, none of these parables of the kingdom is exhaustive.

As I was reading commentaries on this section of the Gospel of Matthew, people kept talking about how each thing that Jesus compares the kingdom of God to could be an irritant – and yet, God is revealed through the discomfort.

This is mostly true.

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.

Mustard is a weed – or at least, the kind that grew in the place and time Jesus lived was a weed, not something people usually wanted around.

The kingdom of heaven is like yeast.

Bread that’s kosher for Jews, at least on Passover, is unleavened. Remember the warning against the yeast of the scribes and the Pharisees? Yeast was sometimes considered a contaminant.

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure.

OK, this one is harder. One commentary noted that it’s a tiny treasure in a huge field. The treasure isn’t really valuable yet; you have to deal with the large field in order to receive the small treasure.

This might be a bit of a stretch – so this analogy might disprove the point that all of the parables are talking about God being revealed through our own discomfort. But hold that thought… and on to the next parable…

The kingdom of heaven is like a fine pearl.

A pearl starts out as a grain of sand irritating the inside of an oyster.

The kingdom of heaven is like a net full of undesirable fish.

It can be problematic if you catch the wrong type of fish when you’re trying to make a living. Here’s hoping that no dolphins were caught with that tuna. Right?

OK. We get the point that modern commentary writers are making – when we meet God, it can often be inconvenient for us.

Having God interfere with our lives can sometimes be irritating!

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the kingdom of God is always this way. Coming into close contact with God might be like finding priceless treasure in unexpected places. It doesn’t have to be uncomfortable or inconvenient all the time.

You know, this is why we have both Word and Sacrament in Lutheran worship.

Sometimes the Bible readings really hit home.

Sometimes the sermon is fantastic.

And sometimes… the Word just doesn’t speak to you today. Sometimes the limitations of human language just don’t mean very much, given what’s going on in your life,      or the preacher’s life,     or the world.

And so we always have the Sacrament.

We have Communion every week at Cooksville Lutheran Church. That doesn’t mean you have to receive Communion every week. But it is always offered. And the promise of God is that Jesus is always present in Communion. God’s forgiveness of our sins is guaranteed, and we can physically remember that forgiveness when we share in Communion.

You might choose not to receive Communion sometimes – or sometimes, when you do receive, it just might not feel that special to you. Maybe you don’t always meet God in the bread and the wine.

But again, offering both Word and Sacrament every time we worship is a way to help ensure that each one of us – every worshipper gathered – can encounter God closely in one way or another.

This is why we have music also.

And coffee hour.

Everyone encounters God in a different way.

For some of us, the kingdom of God is like when you hear a song on the radio that brings up memories of your beloved family and friends, who danced to that song at your wedding or sang it in a karaoke bar or rewrote the lyrics or made up their own music video to it.

For others, the kingdom of God is like a compost bin, which can smell kind of funky but is really practical, helps you with things you’re already trying to do, and sometimes surprises you with an unexpected tomato plant or something.

The kingdom of God is like yeast. Or seeds. Or treasure or fine jewelry. Or a net full of fish – both carp and walleye.

God meets us in all kinds of places, expected and unexpected. Really the only thing we can plan on when we’re meeting God is that our understanding of everything we think we know will pale in comparison to the amazing ways that God finds to meet us.

The kingdom of heaven is like… fill in the blank! Each one of us probably has our own ways that we feel closest to God. But the most important thing is that God meets us. God is with us on this crazy journey called life. And God finds ways to sneak into our lives even when we aren’t looking.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.