July 26, 2020 - Eighth Sunday after Pentecost - Hide-and-Seek

Pastor Dorthy, our guest pastor today, preached about the parables of the kingdom of heaven reminded her of playing hide-and-seek with God, only playing the game sardines-style. This style of play is hide-and-seek flipped on its head. With their eyes closed, seekers congregate and count to a predetermined number while one player hides.

When the group finishes counting, the hunt is on. The seekers spread out to find the hiding player. As the seekers find the player hiding, they join him in the hiding place until all the seekers have found the hiding place (packed like sardines).The last player to join the group becomes the next person to hide.

Pastor Dorthy spoke to the many Matthew parables included in today's Gospel. She pointed out the mustard plant was considered a weed by his audience. The amount of yeast mixed by the woman would have made an enormous amount of dough. The parables are about small things as well. The small things that come from unexpected sources and become big and more obvious over time than they are now. Things that we may overlook for that reason in the present but they are still there.

There are common themes in these parables. For me the sardines-style hide and seek fits because everyone is caught up in the "net that was thrown into the sea and that catches fish of every kind".

Unfortuately for our understanding, we end up being so focused on judgement that, like the parable of the weeds, we want to think we know how the angels will judge. Rather than let the angels come out to separate the evil from the righteous we want to do the sorting. This reminds me of what Peter Rollins wrote about the most famous judgement in the Bible:

The Rapture - Peter Rollins

Just as it was written by those prophets of old, the last days of the Earth overflowed with suffering and pain. In those dark days a huge pale horse rode through the Earth with Death upon its back and Hell in its wake. During this great tribulation the Earth was scorched with the fires of war, rivers ran red with blood, the soil withheld its fruit and disease descended like a mist. One by one all the nations of the Earth were brought to their knees.

Far from all the suffering, high up in the heavenly realm, God watched the events unfold with a heavy heart. An ominous silence had descended upon heaven as the angels witnessed the Earth being plunged into darkness and despair. But this could only continue for so long for, at the designated time, God stood upright, breathed deeply and addressed the angels,

“The time has now come for me to separate the sheep from the goats, the healthy wheat from the inedible chaff”

Having spoken these words God slowly turned to face the world and called forth to the church with a booming voice,

“Rise up and ascend to heaven all of you who have who have sought to escape the horrors of this world by sheltering beneath my wing. Come to me all who have turned from this suffering world by calling out ‘Lord, Lord'”.

In an instant millions where caught up in the clouds and ascended into the heavenly realm. Leaving the suffering world behind them.

Once this great rapture had taken place God paused for a moment and then addressed the angels, saying,

“It is done, I have separated the people born of my spirit from those who have turned from me. It is time now for us leave this place and take up residence in the Earth, for it is there that we shall find our people. The ones who would forsake heaven in order to embrace the earth. The few who would turn away from eternity itself to serve at the feet of a fragile, broken life that passes from existence in but an instant.”

And so it was that God and the heavenly host left that place to dwell among those who had rooted themselves upon the earth. Quietly supporting the ones who had forsaken God for the world and thus who bore the mark God. The few who had discovered heaven in the very act of forsaking it.

After the parables, Jesus asks "Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes." And 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."

I don't think we can accept the kingdom of God, as taught by Jesus, as readily and completely as we would like. The merchant with a pearl of great price becomes poor because he sells everything. He has no money even as he has the pearl. Others may see the kingdom of heaven as a weed, like the mustard plant. Still others will see the kingdom as an impractical extravagance like the amount of yeast the woman mixes. Something I also love about the yeast is that it is mixed and cannot be separated from the dough from then on. The world was made good in the beginning and the good cannot be separated from creation and more than mixed yeast can be separated from the dough.

God as inviting us to play, as I believe Pastor Dorthy has correctly suggested the relationship can be.
What I think Peter Rollins and Pastor Dorthy both capture is how much God can eventually judge and still totally love us all despite how impossible we may think that to be.