If at first you don't succeed.... (by Danielle Beabout)

The kingdom of heaven is like... a great many things, it seems.

Today's Gospel is a concentration of parables.  We've had a couple weeks of longer stories with Jesus then giving one explanation to the disciples about what they mean after.  But today, we get a bunch of really quick, almost sentence-long, parables, followed by the disciples finally understanding — or, at least, claiming to understand — what Jesus is saying.  Then Jesus ends his anthology with one more parable, this time about the scribes who are trained for the kingdom of heaven.

But what does any of this mean?

When we approach Scripture with authentic curiosity, there is something in the strangeness of the text that can teach us how to read it.  As Mother Kate has shown us, when we notice small gaps or openings in Scripture it should push us to dig deeper; ask questions; don't take confusion as an immediate failure, but as a prompting for further exploration. Then, we’ll moving through Scripture slowly.  Over time we’ll grow from only intending to take thoughtful notice of such things, to doing so habitually.  Practiced long enough, that sort of noticing cracks words open.

Let's return to the parables Jesus gives us here.  Perhaps our noticing starts as questions.

Each of these small parables is supposed to tell us something about the kingdom of heaven.  Knowing that, perhaps the easiest way we can draw meaning from these stories is by doing what their closeness in the text seems to pull us to do — comparing them to one another.

In what ways are they different?  In what ways are they the same?

The first two parables are focused on a seed that becomes a tree, and some yeast that leavens three whole measures of flour.  If we compare these two parables,w e can find a few commonalities.  Something seemingly small and perhaps unnoticeable becomes much larger.  A seed becomes a tree, which can then become a place stable enough for birds to trust with their babies as they form nests.  Yeast becomes leavened flour which expands and becomes, surely, many loaves; something that can feed many people.

We could note, comparing these parables, a common theme said something like this:  the kingdom of heaven is something that is small and easy to miss, in the beginning, but with time, it will grow to astounding lengths that will cause life to flourish by its reaching - by feeding people; by giving them a home.

We can see why Jesus prefers to teach in parable, by storytelling, rather than just jumping to the final conclusion.  The parables themselves are understood by the listeners at Jesus time on a deeper level than just intellectual.  These are people who have lived the time it takes for dough to rise and trees to grow - with these stories, Jesus uses common language to bring to mind the embodied experience of time passing and quietly miraculous growth just happening along with it.

Now that we've slowed down and considered these parables carefully - by comparing them to one another, and connecting to the humanity of how the people who listened to them initially would've experienced them - now that we've done that, we have a fuller, more embodied understanding of them, too.

Something else that can help us is to connect their embodied experiences to our own, if we have any, with these same explanatory ideas Jesus uses.

I am someone who has tried to bake bread before - one year I received one of those bread-making-machines as a Christmas gift.  You’ll note that I said tried.  I think I’ve made something edible once or twice, but it’s a rare occurrence, and more likely to fail than to leave me with something I can reliably plan some meals around for the week.  Similarly I am someone who, in the past, have tried to plant things in gardens with - until this year - very minimal success. 

It’s in reflecting on my own experiences with these two facets of life that I came to realize these parables have yet another similarity.  One that, I’d argue, they share, too, with the interpretation of Scripture.

If your first go doesn’t work the way you think it’s going to, or doesn’t bake right, or doesn’t grow the flower, doesn’t easily make sense — that’s alright.  That’s just part of the process of learning how to do this.  The answer is to try again another day.  To accept that even on the days where you do bake the bread, sometimes the loaf will be rectangular and sometimes it’ll be oblong.  Either way, it’s still bread.  Sometimes, the berries you grow will be rich and sweet; sometimes, they’ll be tart and a little sour, but give the perfect balance to the jam later on.  Some days, it feels like Scripture is lighting up, practically glowing off the page and making sense for you and where you are in your life, leading you by hand down the path.   Some days, it will feel like slogging through mud without rain boots, your feet getting sucked down with every step you try to take.  Most times, I’d wager, it’ll feel somewhere in between.

The interpretation of Scripture — much like the baking of bread, and the cultivating of good food — demands something of us; time, care, attention.  This is true.

But it is also true that there’s no professional baker anywhere in the world who has managed to escape burnt edges every time.  Every garden in the world has a few stems, a few plants, that just don’t take the way you’d hope.  So too it is with interpreting Scripture, and bringing it into our hearts; it’s not going to be done all the way on the first try — nor should it be.  As with the bread and berries, we will hunger again in days and years to come.  We will need more yeast; more seeds.  We will need to try again, again, and again, for as long as we live, because we will need to read the Scriptures anew as part of our living.

What a joy to know our repeated trying isn’t any sort of failure — but patterns itself after the same processes in God’s creation that Jesus uses to describe the kingdom of heaven.

Try, try, try again.

The kingdom of heaven is something that starts small and, with time, grows.  The kingdom of heaven is something that will require trying again, and again, and again. 

By teaching through parables — and by us willingly submitting ourselves to repeated wondering about what the parable could mean — Jesus is, by the nature of how we experience stories, helping us simulate these moments of living that bring about wisdom.

Now we have not just heard, we have listened, and — like the disciples — are hopefully beginning to understand.  Perhaps it's starting to click why telling and retelling these stories over, and over, and over again, is worth it. 

The easiest way to get into the habit of noticing, in Scripture, as in life, is to  to practice and apply it.  This is one place where repetition comes in — the daily habits you have down to muscle memory, just because it’s something you’ve had to do!  Starting your car; getting just the right amount of creamer in your coffee; petting the dog, or the cat; shuffling out of bed in the morning, before you’ve even got the light on.  It is over the course of these infinitesimal moments, strung together, that life happens; it’s in noticing the small changes here, with wonder and gratitude, that we slowly begin to see the kingdom of heaven.

So, my friends, that’s the call I want to leave you with here today.  Take the time to notice in your own lives; let Scripture be part of those lives; and the next time you feel confused or stuck, let it turn into wonder.  When our teacher meets us with these parables and stories, let us feel free to honestly try to understand, even when we get it wrong, so long as we keep trying — after all, he never sent the disciples away for their fledgling thoughts — because they stayed with him.  They still listened.  They still tried.

You may have noticed: there are many more parables in this reading today which we haven’t covered together.  And you’d be correct, and I’d applaud you well for already practicing your and I hope you will continue to do so. 

I wonder… what thoughts or ideas you have about those parables on your own, after today.  I wonder… how you might compare what you heard in those parables to what your neighbor heard in those parables.  I wonder… what the kingdom of heaven is like, through your eyes, as we are beginning to understand together.