“All I Really Want” – sermon on July 27, 2014
Genesis 29: 13-32 As soon as Laban heard of Jacob’s arrival, he rushed out to meet him and greeted him warmly and brought him home. Then Jacob told him his story. “Just think, my very own flesh and blood,” Laban exclaimed.
After Jacob had been there about a month, Laban said to him one day, “Just because we are relatives is no reason for you to work for me without pay. How much do you want?” Now Laban had two daughters, Leah, the older, and her younger sister, Rachel. Leah had lovely eyes, but Rachel was shapely, and in every way a beauty. Well, Jacob was in love with Rachel. So he told her father, “I’ll work for you seven years if you’ll give me Rachel as my wife.”
“Agreed!” Laban replied. “I’d rather give her to you than to someone outside the family.” So Jacob spent the next seven years working to pay for Rachel. But they seemed to him but a few days, he was so much in love. Finally the time came for him to marry her.
“I have fulfilled my contract,” Jacob said to Laban. “Now give me my wife, so that I can sleep with her.” So Laban invited all the men of the settlement to celebrate with Jacob at a big party. Afterwards, that night, when it was dark, Laban took Leah to Jacob, and he slept with his bride. But in the morning he discovered it was Leah! “What sort of trick is this?” Jacob raged at Laban. “I worked for seven years for Rachel. What do you mean by this trickery?”
“It’s not our custom to marry off a younger daughter ahead of her sister,” Laban replied smoothly. “Wait until the bridal week is over and you can have Rachel too—if you promise to work for me another seven years!” So Jacob agreed to work seven more years. Then Laban gave him Rachel, too. So Jacob slept with Rachel, too, and he loved her more than Leah, and stayed and worked the additional seven years.
But because Jacob was slighting Leah, God let her have a child, while Rachel was barren. So Leah became pregnant and had a son, Reuben (meaning “God has noticed my trouble”), for she said, “God has noticed my trouble, now my husband will love me.”
Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-52 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”
He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.
“Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
“All I Really Want” – sermon on July 27, 2014 by Rev. Doreen Oughton
When my son was little he constantly hounded me to allow him to bring a can of coke to drink with his lunch. Or both children might beg me for cinnamon rolls for breakfast. I mostly held firm on the rolls, and never gave in to letting him have coke, and I even stopped buying it all together. I knew that the momentary pleasure he got from the taste would cost him mightily in energy, attention and health. He couldn’t understand that at the time, and so he begged and pleaded and argued. As the parent, I was tasked with standing firm against what he wanted so dearly.
Today’s scripture passages have a theme of desire running through them. First we have Jacob who wants Rachel. He met her at the local well when he was seeking his uncle, and it was she who brought him to her father. He’d been so excited to find his relatives that he kissed her at the well, right in public! Who knows how his feelings for Rachel became entwined with is feelings of excitement and relief over finding his uncle. Or perhaps that kiss stirred something in him. Or maybe his mother had even talked about this – her youngest son paired with her brother’s youngest daughter. But however it happened, within a month Jacob was head over heels in love with Rachel. He wanted her, and was willing to work seven years to pay the bride price.
And then in the Gospel reading we have Jesus talking about what the kingdom of heaven is like. He talks about the man who stumbles across a treasure in a field, and wants it so badly that he sells everything he has – everything – to buy that field with its treasure. The kingdom is like that treasure – worth everything you’ve got. Likewise the jewel merchant who finds one amazing pearl and sells everything to buy it. The kingdom of heaven is precious, Jesus seems to be saying. So precious it is worth any price you might pay for it. Jesus tells us that it is precious, but doesn’t tell us why it is precious – how it is special. I mean, a pretty pearl wouldn’t do it for me. And just exactly what was that treasure the man stumbled upon? Was it a chest full of gold or something that he knew would earn him back everything he just sold and more? Will this treasure bring its owners the return of what they sacrificed, plus, increasing their worldly wealth? Is it a parable about investing wisely? What about Jacob? Had he invested wisely in Rachel? Had he low-balled Laban when he offered seven years of service for Rachel, so that an additional seven wasn’t so bad?
But there are other analogies Jesus uses to describe the kingdom that are more confounding. It is, he says, like a mustard seed sown in a field. He speaks of the smallness of the seed, and the way it produces a great shrub. He speaks of the yeast, which is mixed with 3 measures of flour until all is leavened. These don’t seem so confounding to us taken at face value in this day and age and place. Small, seemingly insignificant beginnings to surprising growth. Again, investing wisely?
It is important, however, to understand these analogies in the way the people of Jesus’ time and place would hear them. Just the idea of planting a mustard seed would be strange to people, as would adding yeast to bread. The mustard bush was an aggressive weed. It was unwanted. Likewise yeast was seen as a corrupting agent. What was pure was the unleavened bread. A normal person would be upset if some woman went and sneaked yeast into the flour. And there are some nuances of the language that indicate there was secrecy in the mixing of the yeast and flour – perhaps like the enemy who planted the weeds in with the wheat in the parable we heard last week. So the listeners would be puzzled on hearing that the kingdom of heaven is like this – this aggressive weed taking over the field, or this yeast corrupting perfectly good flour. “Why would we want that?” they might wonder.
And in the story of Jacob, he learns that he received to his marriage bed not the woman he wanted and had worked for, Rachel, but her older sister Leah. He is not just puzzled, he is outraged. The trickster has been tricked. And yet it is Leah who bears for Jacob six sons and a daughter, where his beloved Rachel bears only 2 sons.
So what is going on here? Is there some tension between what we want and what God wants, beyond the obvious things like that God might want peace and love and we seem quite comfortable with war and hatred? Jesus’ listeners might want fields for planting a valuable crop, where God might want a mighty bush for housing birds. The observant Jew may want unleavened bread, but God wants plenty of bread, enough to feed a hundred people instead of one devout family. Jacob wants the shapely and beautiful Rachel, but God wants the divine promise to be fulfilled through sons of Leah.
God plays it differently than I did with my son. I never let him take a coke to school as long as I had the power to prevent it. Though there came a time when I did not have that power, when he was off to college and deciding for himself what he wanted to drink and when. And you know, he doesn’t drink coke. I think God wants that kind of relationship with us – loving parent to an adult child, a full person who is capable of accepting all the joys and responsibilities of freedom. God is indeed a God of freedom. God will let us have what we want, and will allow us to deal with the consequences of our choices. But God will still keep tossing us things that we haven’t asked for in addition, because God knows what will bring us the greatest joy, the richest and fullest life, and far too often, the things we want miss the mark completely. The life God wants for us is not what we imagine the good life to be in this world – material wealth, insulation, security, contentedness. It is like nothing we can really understand, like the benefits of spinach to a child who has tasted cocoa puffs. It is out of the realm of experience for most of us, myself included. There are those mystics and others who have seen a glimpse, who have stumbled over that treasure and given up everything for it, but most of us stick with what we know, avoid planting weeds, work primarily on the relationship with the one who has captured our fancy instead of expanding our vision and our hearts to the other people around us.
But don’t be surprised if God keeps sending into our lives those fools who sow mustard seeds, and infiltrate our cupboards with yeast and toss nets into water in which you might catch up any old thing – the wrong kind of fish, an old sneaker, even a shopping cart. My suggestion is not to resist these things. It could be that God is up to something, inviting you to come into the kindom, where everything will be sorted out, but sorted out by God, and not us, who are so often so very wrong about what is so very right for us.
In closing, I’d like to share part of one of my favorite “Love Poems from God.” This is by the Sufi mystic Rumi. “Is there some position you want, some office, some acclaim, some award, some con, some lover, maybe two, maybe three, maybe four – all at once; maybe a relationship with God? I know there is a gold mine in you. When you find it the wonderment of the earth’s gifts you will lay aside as naturally as does a child a doll. But dear, how sweet you look to me kissing the unreal; comfort, fulfill yourself in any way possible. Do that until you ache, until you ache, then come to me again.”
May our longing for God’s kindom be stirred.
