This is a part of a sermon I preached last Sunday on Jesus’ parables of the kingdom at my friend Peter Matthew’s church – Eden Chapel in Saylor Park.
In the amazing podcast interview that Krista Tippet does with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner I heard this beautiful story (among many other profound pieces of wisdom). This is a Jewish story that is told about the creation of the world (by Rachel Naomi Remen, as told to her by her grandfather).
In the beginning there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life. And then, in the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand, thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light. And then, well, there was an accident, and the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke. And the wholeness of the world, the light of the world was scattered into a thousand, thousand fragments of light, and they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day.
Now, as the story is told, the whole human race is a response to this accident. We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people, to lift it up and make it visible once again and thereby to restore the innate wholeness of the world…This task is called tikkun olam in Hebrew. It’s the restoration of the world.[2]
This feels like such an important story for our time. When everything in the news feels like bad news – children dying in Gaza, wars being waged, refugee families at the border seeking shelter from hopelessness, what can we do? Where is God in all of this?
Maybe in times like this, there are no words to describe who God is and what God is up to. Mystics, artists, poets have worked to give voice to the divine truth in all times and places. And yet God’s essence remains hidden among us. Little pieces of light scattered in everyone and everything. And it is up to us…
It is our job to find them. To share them, to bring them together. It is our job to tell the story, to uncover the hidden beauty in the brokenness of our world. To believe that God’s essence is hidden in the flower growing up through the crack in the sidewalk. To see the dough rising as a sign that God is at work in the simplest of things. To believe that growing carrots in an urban garden and sharing them with our neighbors is a revolutionary act.[3]
There is a Leonard Cohen song, Anthem, and the refrain says
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There’s a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
I wonder if this is not what we all need to hear. In the face of all the discord and brokenness, maybe there is a light that is seeking to get in. Maybe my small and imperfect offering to the common good will encourage someone else to offer what they have. A little like a potluck supper.[4] Maybe giving what we have is the yeast in the dough of our community. Maybe this is the way the kingdom is revealed.
Jesus’ stories invite us to uncover the mystery of the kingdom in the ordinary things of our lives. So to what can we compare the kingdom of heaven?
The place where God is present and working among us – how would we describe that reality? Jesus describes it as a tiny mustard seed planted in a field that grows into an enormous shrub taking over everything. Or is it like a woman who mixes a measure of leaven into the bread she is baking? To what can we compare the kingdom of heaven? What parable can we use?
And in fact, “How can the language of earth capture the reality of heaven? How can words describe that which is beyond all words? How can human beings speak of God?” Perhaps we do best if we use the most ordinary things, as Jesus did, and “[trust] each other to make the connections…We cannot say what it is, exactly, but we can say what it is like, and most of us get the message…” [5]
I believe that we what draws us here, what brings us together as a community is the suspicion that God is all around us, connecting us together, inviting us to bring our light together with the light of every other creature on this earth. And when we are given a glimpse of this holy possibility, we are willing to keep seeking the kingdom far and wide.
And It is up to us to tell the story, it is our job to find the kingdom that is hidden in plain sight. So, I invite you to share with one another, to tell the story of where you are discovering the kingdom of heaven? What is it like?
May you be constantly surprised by the mysterious and wonderful workings of God hidden in our ordinary, everyday world. Amen.
[2] On Being, Krista Tippet interview with Lawrence Kushner
[3] “The day is coming when a single carrot freshly observed will set off a revolution” – Paul Cezanne or as heard from our friends in Franklinton – “Carrots are the revolution”
[4] Parker Palmer – On Being blog post
[5] Barbara Brown Taylor, Seeds of Heaven.