Buried in Plain Sight: A Sermon for 24 July 2011

Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, LA

This is my first time ever to worship with you here at Christ Church, St. Joseph. So I thought I might begin by sharing who I am by way of taking you on a “buried treasure” tour of my home.

Imagine a nice brick, 1-story home. We’ll enter through this doorway from the carport. Just a few steps inside and we’re standing in the kitchen. Right here, on the window sill over the sink is the first treasure I want to show you.

It’s a little brown rock, about the size of a meatball—you know, the kind you see in chafing dishes at parties and receptions. It’s a pretty ordinary looking rock, except… Look! It has a heart!

From My Window Sill

I don’t know how it came to be, but this plain brown rock has one kind of flat side and there on the flat side, tilted at just the perfect angle, is a perfectly heart-shaped opening. A friend who knows that I collect treasures gave me “Rock with a Heart.” She found it lying on the ground in plain sight.

On the window sill, right next to Rock with a Heart, is another smaller rock. This one I picked up on the bank of a stream. It is whitish gray in color, but what makes it treasure is that it has been polished to a lovely sheen by its rough and tumble existence at the hands of moving water.

If you’ll step into the living room, here on a shelf above the TV is a couple of inches of armadillo tail. Happily, it has been picked clean of tissue by the industrious insects that do the important clean-up work in our environment. So what we have left is the bony architecture of the armadillo tail in all its intricate, complex beauty. 

Armadillo Tail Architecture

What in the world about an armadillo’s life requires such an extraordinary tail structure? Or, might the armadillo tail be merely an exuberant, over-the-top expression of its Creator—here just for the glory of it?

We could continue. My house is strewn with treasures buried in plain sight. Among the rocks, bones and shells, you will also find human-made treasures, like a little pink satin-glass swan that I just picked up at an auction about a week ago.

But let’s turn, for a moment, to today’s Gospel lesson (Matthew 13:31-33,44-52; NRSV). Jesus has taken aside his closest disciples to teach them about finding the Kingdom of God. He does so with a series of parables. To be more precise, he does so with a pair of twin parables. Then he wraps up the lesson with one more parable that goes beyond finding and recognizing the Kingdom, to suggesting that the Kingdom is also actually looking for us.

The first set of twin parables compares the Kingdom of God to a tiny mustard seed that grows into a tree, and to a measure of yeast that leavens three measures of flour to make multiple loaves of bread. These parables tell us that the Kingdom is a living, growing thing.

They say that although the Kingdom can be found in the tiny and seemingly insignificant—a seed, a measure of yeast—it cannot be contained by such things. The Kingdom is dynamic; it has already burst its bounds, sent out its limbs, spread its life-giving influence. It is as ubiquitous as trees and birds that nest in them.

The second set of twin parables compares the Kingdom to a treasure found lying out in an apparently ordinary field, and a pearl, which we know is formed around a fragment of grit inside that ugliest of all shells, the oyster. In this part of Louisiana, we don’t have to go far to see lots of ordinary fields and ordinary broken oyster shells being used as landscaping material!

When was the last time you looked at all that ordinariness and saw the Kingdom of God lurking there, just waiting to be discovered?

I’m currently reading a book by Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest who teaches at Columbia Theological Seminary. It’s called An Altar in the World.

Taylor’s point is that if we take incarnation seriously, if we open our eyes and hearts to the world we live in, if we live fully in the present, slow down, pay attention, leave the beaten paths of our everyday routine, strike out across that open field…. we will find evidence.. of God’s presence.. everywhere.

And not just in the physical environment. Taylor takes her seminary students in search of altars in Jewish synagogues and Islamic mosques, as well as Christian churches of all denominations. She writes also about getting lost in strange neighborhoods, other countries and other cultures as another way to stumble upon altars in the world.

In today’s parables from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus teaches us that the kingdom of heaven is indeed "at hand." He speaks in vivid word pictures to illustrate that the Kingdom is indeed among us. Referring to the ordinary and familiar, he shows us that the Kingdom is here and now, waiting for us to seek and to find.

Better yet, God does not sit passively waiting for us. Surely the fisherman casting the net is the Lord of the Kingdom looking for us.

Moreover, we don’t need a “buried treasure” map to find the Kingdom of God. Not only is the Kingdom of God out in plain sight, but incarnation also means that we have already been given what we need to see it!

Another of my favorite spiritual teachers is a Franciscan monk by the name of Richard Rohr, who publishes a daily online meditation. He says that each of us has a homing device within, a homing device that seeks its Author and Creator. Think of it as the God-shaped opening in the side of your heart.

Or, think of it as the eyes of God within us, through which we see God in the world.., in the natural environment, in other people, both stranger and friend. The eyes of God within us enable us to see the Kingdom of God everywhere, at every turn.

So watch your step! Treasure is all around you, if you will but see it. Don’t trip over that little altar, right there next to your foot! The Kingdom of God is within you and among you.

Amen.

To All Humankind, Ability: A Meditation for 14 July 2011

 Note: The occasion of this meditation was the graduation ceremony for participants in NOVA, the employer-driven workforce intermediary that finds and trains people for living wage jobs.

I begin this evening by reading from the book of Exodus, chapter 31 (NRSV):

See, I have called by name Bezalel of the tribe of Judah: and I have filled him with Divine Spirit, with ability, intelligence, and knowledge in every kind of craft, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, in every kind of craft. Moreover, I have appointed with him Oholiab of the tribe of Dan; and I have given skill to all the skilful, so that they may make all that I have commanded you…

In that passage from the Hebrew Scripture, God tells the people, through the profit Moses, that they not only have work to do, but that God will provide the ability, intelligence, knowledge and skills to do it.

Stone-Cutter's Hands Hold a Rock Chisel Used for Cutting Marble

That particular context a few thousand years ago was the building of the temple, and the skills and abilities God provided included such things as tent-making, stone cutting, wood carving, metal-working, sewing, and pressing oil.

We probably don’t have too many “Bezalels” and “Oholiabs” seated in front of us this evening, and we aren’t—at least not at the moment—charged with building a temple! But we are still called by God to work and even though our technology and our end products have certainly changed, those skills, and all kinds of new skills, are still very much in demand.

Work is from God! Indeed, the very first story in the Hebrew Scripture, the story of the creation of the universe, is the story of God working. And we know that God worked so-o-o hard, that he followed up the creation of the universe by immediately inventing “the weekend”!

When we say, “Thank God, it’s Friday,” we recognize both the gift of work, and the gift of rest, which has meaning precisely because of the gift of work.

The Exodus story doesn’t tell us exactly how the Israelites became, with God’s help, able to build the temple. I’m pretty sure it involved a handful of those with skills and experience teaching and mentoring those who needed it, until a skilled workforce able to get the job done had been created.

Today, our local educational institutions provide much of the training. The institutions of Northern and Central Louisiana Interfaith help find people called to work and to contribute to the welfare of the city, and Interfaith helps mentor those folks through the training process.

NOVA is that all-important intermediary that links employer needs to skilled workers, ready, able, eager to become productive members of their community. And, although she might not look much like a tribal elder, Ms. Juanita Woods functions a lot like one in relationship to these graduates.

Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith helped create the political will and find the funding to start and continue NOVA because we understand that work is from God, and that all people need the opportunity to provide for themselves and their families, and to contribute to their communities.

At the end of just two years, NOVA graduates have not only transformed their own lives and families, but they are also contributing more than $2 million dollars annually to the economy of Ouachita Parish.

We are contemporary Israelites gathered here this evening to celebrate the achievement of these new NOVA graduates, and to welcome them to the skilled workforce that is so central to the welfare of our communities and region.

AMEN.

Photo above by Raymond Gehman.