Sermon given Sunday, July 30, 2023, the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 12A), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church by Mark Lloyd Taylor, Ph.D. for the 8am, 10:30am, and 5pm Masses.
Genesis 29:15-28; Psalm 105:1-11, 45b; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Hidden Treasure, by Lithuanian painters Eglė Dūdonė and Mindaugas Kučinskas
A 1970s rock song finally helped me bring the series of little parables in this morning’s gospel reading together with my life in the world the past month. I’d been wondering about work and the body (human bodies, yes, but also seeds and yeast and pearls and fish), wondering about lack of bodily autonomy and labor, but I didn’t know what to do with those ideas. The song is called “Bargain,” by The Who, and begins this way:
I’d gladly lose me to find you
I’d gladly give up all I had
To find you I’d suffer anything and be glad.
I’d pay any price just to get you
I’d work all my life and I will
To win you I’d stand naked, stoned and stabbed
I’d call that a bargain
The best I ever had
The best I ever had
Now it’s a rock song, so the bargain involves love of one human being for another; sexual desire, even. But that’s also what our reading from Genesis is about, isn’t it? Jacob works seven years for his kinsman Laban in order to marry Laban’s younger daughter Rachel, whom Jacob loves. The night of the wedding, however, Laban puts Leah in Jacob’s bed, and by having sex with her, Leah becomes Jacob’s wife instead of Rachel. What is this you have done to me, Jacob demands of Laban the morning after? Did I not serve you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me? Sorry, Laban replies. I was just doing my country’s social and sexual business as usual: the younger daughter cannot be married off before the firstborn. But if you’ll serve me another seven years, then, in return, I’ll hand Rachel over to you as well. We’re told those first seven years Jacob worked seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for Rachel. Even though Laban robbed Jacob of his labor, and then doubled down on the theft, I think Jacob can still sing along with The Who:
I’d gladly lose me to find you…
I’d work all my life and I will…
I’d call that a bargain
The best I ever had
And there’s the connection with the third and fourth of the little parables Jesus puts before us this morning.
“The kingdom of God is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in their joy they go and sell all that they have and buy the field” (Matthew 13:44).
“Again, the kingdom of God is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, they went and sold all that they had and bought it” (13:45-46).
The song echoes the parables:
I’d pay any price just to get you…
I’d gladly give up all I had…
I’d call that a bargain
Parables and song ask questions of us: What do you most desire? For what would you sacrifice everything?
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Because “Bargain” is a rock song, we should expect words about love and desire. But other lines might surprise us. Like:
To find you I’d suffer anything and be glad
Or:
To win you I’d stand naked, stoned and stabbed
I’m not saying this is what The Who intended, but for us church folk how could such words not resonate with the Jesus story? But it’s this verse that most intrigues and entices me:
I’d pay any price just to win you
Surrender my good life for bad…
I’d call that a bargain
The best I ever had
The best I ever had
Surrender my good life for bad? Hmmmm… Let’s work with that a bit.
The Godly Play curriculum offers this tip to the adult storyteller who invites children to wonder and wander a bit with Jesus’ parables.
“Parables question our everyday view of life. They wake us up to see in life what we have not seen before. Parables question the status quo, the order imposed by tradition, power or class. That is why Jesus’ parables often got him in trouble, and why Christians ever since have sometimes redefined parables in ways that comfort us only rather than challenge us by disrupting our comfortable worldviews.”
I think that’s exactly what’s going on with the parables of the mustard seed and the yeast.
At first glance, both seem to be about little things that cause big changes, unobtrusive beginnings that have dramatic and unexpected effects. The smallest of all seeds grows into the greatest of shrubs. Even tinier cells of yeast leaven three measures of flour; the equivalent of sixty or seventy pounds, making enough bread to feed an entire village. But below the surface, there’s something else going on. Something disruptive. Something to make us uncomfortable.
The mustard plant in Jesus’ parable is not the one that provides the yellow condiment we squeeze on a sandwich. It was instead a huge, invasive weed – detested by first-century farmers because it took over their grain fields. Why on earth would someone sow the seed of such a plant? Counterproductive to human agricultural business as usual, but priceless in offering nesting sites for the birds of the air in an otherwise inhospitable environment, perhaps? God’s kingdom so small as to be almost invisible among the empires of this world and yet up to the huge task of nurturing life itself.
And the woman with the yeast. First of all, she’s a woman in a patriarchal culture. The phrase, she “mixed yeast in with flour” might better be translated she “hid yeast in flour,” until all was leavened. The same verb used in the parable of the treasure “hidden” in a field. First-century yeast was not neatly processed and available in foil packets. It would have been a little pinch of dough held over from the last batch of bread as a starter for the next. Probably smelly and a bit moldy. Leavened bread, like the huge number of loaves the woman’s dough would make, was considered impure and inappropriate for communal religious uses. Every taint of yeast had to be physically removed from every observant Jewish household before Passover. The yeast of God’s kingdom – its tiny, tiny bodies – are profligate, miraculous even in their work, their ability to feed a multitude of people. But they’re subversive of human religious business as usual.
This reversal of good and bad, insider and outsider, emerges as a distinctive theme throughout Matthew’s gospel. The powerful, the elite, the righteous (or self-righteous) find themselves on the outside of God’s kingdom, while a diverse lot of unlikely people are equitably included: lepers; a Roman centurion’s slave; Peter’s feverish mother-in-law; a demon-possessed man living among the tombs; Matthew himself, the tax-collector; a woman gushing with menstrual blood; and the desperate Canaanite woman advocating for her troubled daughter. However uncomfortable it might feel, Matthew invites his reader in the company of such folk, such outsiders, to surrender a “good” life – according to the metrics of social-political-economic business as usual – for “bad,” and call that the best bargain ever had.
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But still, you may be wondering, labor and lack of bodily autonomy? Where does that come from, Mark? Where does it leave us? Lead us?
Well, it’s already embedded in our story from Genesis. As women in the ancient world, Rachel and Leah lacked bodily autonomy. Jacob labors for Laban, not Rachel. It’s Laban who delivers Leah to Jacob’s marriage bed. Does Laban seek Leah’s consent? Hardly. What of Leah’s long labor over the years and Rachel’s? Leah bears Jacob six sons; she’s mother of six of the twelve tribes of Israel. Rachel dies giving birth to the second of her sons by Jacob. While in labor, she names him Ben-oni (son of my sorrow) – that was her choice to make. But Jacob ignores Rachel’s dying wish and names him Ben-jamin instead (my right-hand son).
Labor and lack of bodily autonomy, not just in the ancient world. Also in our newspapers and on radio and television every day. The overturning of Roe v. Wade. Threats to recently won rights of LGBTQ folk to be the persons they are in and through the bodies they are. Nets suspended beneath buoys in the Rio Grande to keep brown- and black-bodied immigrants out. And ludicrous attempts to rewrite the history of what slavery meant for Africans brought against their will to this hemisphere or the Holocaust for European Jews.
Above all, labor and bodily autonomy as I continue to digest two recent experiences. I put them before you in their juxtaposition as a parable of sorts.
I had to drive up Aurora Avenue one morning and I was punched in the gut by the people I saw from the comfort of my car with no resources to survive, let alone thrive, other than their bodies – which they are forced to sell to whoever will pay. The mostly Hispanic men lining the entrances to Home Depot looking for day labor in and around the construction business. And the mostly female sex workers walking up and down Aurora itself, displaying their bodies and their availability.
Then, a few weeks later, I was privileged to savor a collaborative effort of creation by two artists: David Chang and Lanecia Rouse. David does a modern take on traditional Chinese calligraphy and said that for him, writing a person’s name becomes an act of intercessory prayer using his hands. Lanecia makes collages and described lovingly tearing pictures of black bodies like hers from old issues of “Jet” and “Ebony” magazines and arranging them and gluing them on paper as acts of remembrance and retrieval and celebration done with her fingers (my paraphrase). The profoundly beautiful work of the body, when autonomy has been granted or won.
Whatever the kingdom of God is like, it’s not like the kingdom we live in or any kingdom we’ve ever visited or any kingdom we’ve ever even heard of. The good news is that it’s God’s kingdom, not ours. God sows the mustard seed. God hides the yeast. God finds the treasure hidden in field and the pearl of great price. It’s that love of God from which nothing can separate us in life or death (Romans 8:38-39). Instead of The Who’s Roger Daltrey, can we hear God in Christ Jesus singing to each and every one of us:
I’d gladly lose me to find you
I’d gladly give up all I got
To catch you I’m gonna run and never stop
Now I’d call that a bargain, the best we’ll ever have, the best we’ll ever have.
Note:
I intentionally did not take up the fifth of our little parables in today’s gospel reading, the parable of the net with its hard words about separating good fish from bad, about a furnace of fire and weeping and gnashing of teeth. That conversation would require an hour-long adult formation class, not a line or two in a sermon. However, I think some of what I say above about the reversal of insider and outsider, good and bad, in Matthew would apply here as well: the “excluded” are the powerful, elite, and (self) righteous, while lepers and tax collectors and bleeding women and all the rest are gathered into baskets of inclusion.
Resources:
“Bargain” is from the brilliant album “Who’s Next?” (MCA Records), 1971; reissued in 1985.
See Jerome W. Berryman, “The Complete Guide to Godly Play, volume 3: 20 Presentations for Winter” (Morehouse Educational Resources). 2011, pages 77-120, for the lessons on Jesus’ parables. The quote in my sermon is from page 116.
Check out David Chang and Lanecia Rouse’s websites for more information about their work: davidchang.format.com / laneciarousetinsley.com. I saw them create together, and heard their reflections, at the 2023 Glen Workshop – sponsored by Image (image@imagejournal.org).