josephholubsermons
Lent Midweek
March 3, 2010
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-45
Is
God Left-Handed?
Jesus' favorite teaching tool was parables. Most of his parables were
about the kingdom of God; that is how God works in the world; how God's
power is manifest and expressed in the world. The parables I read are
what we could call
"one-liners"; short sentence parables
as opposed to the longer "story parables."
Most often these
"one-liners" begin with the phrase "The kingdom of God
(heaven) is like...."
"The
kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed..." "The kingdom heaven is like
yeast..." -“The kingdom of
heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field”
- "The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant..."
After rattling a few of these off,
Jesus
then concluded by asking the disciples,
"Have you understood this?" and they answered
"Yes."
Have you ever laughed at someone's joke but you secretly didn't get it?
It's just that you didn't want
to admit it. Have you ever said you understood something, but secretly
you didn't have a clue? It
may have been something
like that with the disciples; their “yes” might have been a cover
for their confusion.
I
believe these "one-liners" of Jesus is far more profound
than at first glance. Each one touches on some aspect of the kingdom of
God. We could take hours, days,
weeks discussing their meaning and implications.
I will briefly touch on one:
"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."
(Matthew 13:33)
Robert Capon, Episcopal Priest and writer, in several of his many books
describes two kinds of power.
One he calls right-handed
power which he describes as forceful, coercive, intervening power.
The other he calls
left-handed power which is
subtle, hidden and paradoxical power.
When we as humans
think of power we mostly think of
right-handed power: throwing our weight around; using our
strength; accumulation of resources; intervening in a situation to reach
a prescribed goal; forcing an issue; military might; political clout;
economic strength; medical intervention; coercion, manipulation, on and
on goes the list of human uses of what Capon calls coercive, intervening
right-handed power.
It’s been my experience that many people struggle and agonize the most
with God when they perceive that God did not employ this
intervening right handed power.
It can even precipitate a faith crises and cause questions to be
asked like: "Pastor, why did God let my loved one die?"
Why did God not answer my prayer for... healing...
reconciliation... or
whatever."
“Why does God allow poverty,
starvation, natural disasters… whatever.”
The assumption
behind questions like these is that unless God’s power is intervening
and coercive it is not power – then God has no power. These despairing
laments come from a conception
of God that says the only legitimate and appropriate kind of power
in this world is coercive,
intervening, “right-handed” power.
Into this whole right-handed power scenario steps Jesus with his
one-liner and says, "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." (Matthew 13:33)
My mother would invite me to help her bake bread when I was a child.
Sometimes she would let me mix the ingredients together, making dough,
and then knead the dough until my hands ached. She would put the kneaded
bread dough into a big yellow bowl, set it on the counter top, and cover
it with a cloth and wait. "But why do we have to wait?"
I would impatiently ask. I loved
freshly baked bread, and I didn't want to wait. I wanted to coercively
force the issue. I wanted it right now. "We have to wait for the
bread to rise," she would reply.
"What makes it rise," I would asked. She then would tell
me all about the power of the
yeast.
So we waited. Sometimes I would sneak into the kitchen and lift the
towel to see if the yeast was working. After awhile Mom would pronounce
the dough “ready” and would pop it in the oven. Finally, after this
whole process was over, which seemed to take an eternity, there was hot,
fresh bread with strawberry jam.
"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."
(Matthew 13:33)
Think about yeast. Once the yeast is mixed in with the flour and water
to make dough it is
indistinguishable; for all practical purposes an
invisible, hidden, and
irretrievable part of the dough. But
even though it’s hidden and all
mixed-in it's not ineffective. It’s
highly effective. Even
though you cannot separate it out, it goes ahead and it does its crucial
thing. The
yeast contains power; a power that works subtly and almost
imperceptibly.
In my mind that is a contrasting
picture of power to the intervening, coercive, right-handed power to
which we are accustomed. The scandalous thing about it is that Jesus
insists that God's power is
more like the yeast than
anything else. We see the same
theme come though in his other one-liners; the tiny mustard seed
buried in the ground; the finding of the one pearl; the treasure
"hidden" in the field.
I
have the conviction that God has power,
but it's power expressed in a way that we do not expect; a way we do not
trust; a way we most often do not perceive because it is so unlike the
way we express power; it is what Capon
calls left-handed power.
Like the yeast mixed-in with the dough, God is liable to turn up
anywhere subtly and paradoxically . I've
seen God turn up turn up in the most unlikely of places: nursing homes;
hospital rooms; hospice rooms; funeral homes; prisons and grave-sides.
I've seen God manifested in the lives of those whose hardships are
crushing; whose stress is suffocating; whose grief freezes the blood,
whose persecution horrifies; whose poverty shames us; whose nakedness
embarrasses us; whose peril makes us want to turn away; whose illness
frightens us.
The New Testament declares that
God was present in the life of Jesus and that his life
embodied the kingdom of God.
But his life was characterized by the power of self-giving love,
compassion, and a call for social justice.
He even turned up on a cross
where the coercive, right-handed power of empire attempted to wipe his
life and memory off the face of the planet.
But yet, through his life and death the left-handed power of
self-giving, forgiving, inclusive love and compassion were unleashed
into the world, and like yeast, has made its way into the dough of our
lives and this community – and is
at work, not only in our
individual lives but our
corporate life together.
The hope found in this parable lies not in a God who stands outside
the world and selectively intervenes with right-handed power, but a
God who is deeply and profoundly
embedded in life, in your life, in this community, in the world, and
like yeast mixed in the dough works to bring expression to the kingdom
we see present in the life of Jesus, so that our lives might come to
resemble his.
Amen.