The First Sunday after Trinity

14th June 2009: Sung Eucharist 9.00 am

Preacher: The Revd John Chynchen

Readings: Ezekiel 17. 1, 22 – end; 2 Corinthians 5. 6 – 10; Mark 4. 26 – 34

Three weeks ago today, the Atlantis shuttle and its crew of seven astronauts touched down on a desert runway in Southern California. The crew emerged triumphant after a 13-day Hubble space telescope service call during which they performed the five-spacewalk marathon that left the iconic space observatory with a new lease of life and more powerful than ever before.

Parables are the Hubble telescopes of faith and wisdom. In fact, the word parable itself is etymologically related to the word parabola, both meaning in some sense comparison, reflection, or even relationship. Both reflect light and truth. Both make it possible for us to see what would otherwise escape our attention. As spiritual telescopes, parables bring the Gospel message into focus and challenge us to peer ever more deeply into the mysteries of life and faith, mysteries that we might never come to without the aid of the parable itself.

Of course, there are things parables cannot do. They do not tell us much about the weather or engineering. They do not deal with the nature of the material world the way science and the Hubble telescope do. They do not even attempt to explain some of the deepest mysteries of faith, such as the Trinity or the Incarnation. Nor are parables simple allegories in which we can mechanically correlate each character in the narrative to God or to us or to Christ himself, if we only know the right combination or key. Parables often raise more questions than they answer. But in helping us raise the right questions, they bring us closer to our true nature and to our relationship to the kingdom of God. They focus us on life’s essentials.

The kingdom is the key. Jesus does not say for instance that we ourselves are like the mustard seed, which though small “grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs.” On the contrary, left to our own devices most of us would probably remain solitary and small-minded creatures of our own comfort and pleasure. We would not have the grace to live and grow into the life of the kingdom. It is rather the kingdom working within us that is the source of all we can become. And to that there is no spiritual limit. Yet the kingdom in all its abundance cannot be contained or manipulated by mortals like ourselves, no matter how much we may wish it were otherwise. The kingdom is at hand, Jesus tells us in the Gospels, but we cannot grab hold of it and own it as our own. It is not for sale at any price.

In our post-modern, matter-of-fact world of number-crunching and digitalization, stories and parables may seem anachronistic and frustratingly obscure. “Don’t tell us what something is like,” we might be tempted to say. “Tell us what it is. And be precise about it.”

But the kingdom of which Jesus speaks does not work that way. It never just “is.” It does not fit comfortably into our preconceived notions of life and order. It cannot be measured in megabytes. It cannot be spied through the lens of a telescope. It is always “like.” It is always found in relationship to the things and people of this life to which Jesus compares it. As the seeds in today’s Gospel account sprout and grow, though we may never know precisely how, so does the kingdom grow up within our hearts. The words of the parable, planted within us, have the power to alter irrevocably our spiritual existence.

So how can something so seemingly ephemeral have such power? After all, the parables themselves are often of little substance, sometimes hardly more than extended similes. How can they make any difference to us today? Jesus turns to parable and metaphor because no other language or speech can begin to describe the kingdom. Its growth and potential could give new meaning to the word exponential. Ten to the ten-millionth would not begin to encompass the kingdom of which he is speaking…and yet the meaning of the kingdom is found in the smallest of seed and grain.

The meaning of the kingdom is found within each of us as well. Not many of us will run for office or be appointed to positions of prestige and power. Few of us will make it big in Exchange Square or in Hollywood. Yet none of this matters in the life of the kingdom. The kingdom of God is of a different order entirely. The effect of the kingdom at work in our lives will never be measured in dollars or popularity. We will never know the good we have done with simple acts of kindness and love. That is the parable of our lives. The kingdom is at work in the smallest cell of our body and every tiny breath of our spirit.

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God?” Jesus asks. Or what parable will we use for it? Voltaire, the eighteenth-century French philosopher, was no friend of religion. Yet in one of the aphorisms for which he has become justly famous, he captured the meaning of parable in the lives of Christians of any age. “How infinitesimal is the importance of anything I can do,” he wrote, “But how infinitely important it is that I should do it.”

That is the parable of the kingdom and the lesson of the mustard seed. Our lives are more than the sum of days lived and dollars earned. Life has meaning beyond the walls of home or workplace. It has meaning beyond the walls of self-interest and ego. We live in relation to one another and to the world around us. In that relationship we find the meaning of the kingdom and the worth and value of our lives. And that is infinitely important. Amen.