Dear Friends,
In the midst of our hot—now cool?—and smoky summer, when our climate crisis and El Niño have marred our ability to be outside in the glories of God’s creation, we have been swimming in parables of nature—the Sower, wheat and weeds, and, now, this Sunday a tranche of parables: treasure buried in a field, mustard seed, a net thrown into the sea to catch fish. All of these are somehow about the Kingdom of Heaven.
Parables are wonderfully tricky literature. They are fun and frustrating, teasing the mind, resisting easy interpretation. Do folks—including later editors of Mathew—try to nail down the parables into allegories, where each element in the parable correlates to a certain kind of person or to God? Of course they do! I do it, too. Our brains latch onto mysterious things and seek to solve puzzles and can only rest when the answer is found.
But it seems that’s not exactly how our God works. Rather, God seems to delight in mystery and allusion, longs for us to allow ambiguity and openness, to dwell and deepen in mercy and humility. We tend to like answers, clarity, rules, righteousness. Now, sometimes we need clarity and rules, but perhaps less than we think. What if what God wants us to know (or perhaps better yet, experience) is that the Kingdom of Heaven is here, mysterious, growing, a thing for wonder and awe? What if what God wants us to know is that being in relationship with God is joyful and playful? What if what God wants is for us to delight in God and God’s creation and creatures?
How then might we dwell in the here and now differently? How might we then look at the lilies of the field, take time to appreciate weeds, “see a world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wild flower” (William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”)?
See you in church!
Faithfully, Suzanne
P. S. If delight appeals to you, may I suggest Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights? He is a delightful poet and essayist who faces hard things and still lives in joy.