July 30, 2023

 If you haven’t figured it out by now, I like to keep things moving.  I don’t like to wait around.  I tend to multitask to get two things done at once and I will never take 2 trips if I can take one, even if that means I spill everything everywhere.  I could be more patient.  Who here would consider themselves a patient person?  Raise your hand.  Who here would consider yourself a somewhat impatient person?  Raise your hands.  Ok, now we have a better idea what we’re dealing with.

God has been trying to teach me patience my whole life and especially through my position as a pastor where there is a lot of waiting and especially through motherhood where you learn you can’t rush anything and have to let go of control, so you might as well be patient.

There is good news for both patient and impatient people in today’s Gospel, a whole pile of parables about what God is up to and how close the Kingdom of God is and how valuable it is and how to hold on when you’re waiting patiently or not so patiently for the world to change and for God’s Kingdom to be realized.

Our world does not match God’s world.  For the most part, this is not what God intends for creation.  Hungry people go without while rich people have way more than what we need.  Much of the northern hemisphere is sweltering in the heat and the coral is dying off in Florida.  People are spending more than half their income on housing.  You can think of so many ways this world does not match God’s intention.  So here we are living in this world and we know that something better is coming.  Jesus gives us these parables to help us to be both patient and impatient.

Jesus is showing us how to be patient.  He’s letting us know that God is working on it, that God’s promises are assured.  Just as a pearl takes time to develop, just as leaven takes time to make the bread rise, just as a seed takes time to grow into a shrub, these things take time and in time all will be made right because of the love and grace of God.

Jesus is also showing us it’s ok to be impatient.  We are impatient for God’s will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.  We are impatient for God’s reign because we are passionate about it.  God’s reign is our special interest, our important focus.  Our focus and passion is like that of an investor who knows of some land with a treasure on it and spends all their money to purchase it.  Our focus and passion is like how someone might be enamored with a pearl of great value.  This pearl has a glow and sheen like nothing else—a beauty worth possessing.

The reason we are so smitten, so focused is because we realize the value of the Kingdom of God.  The Kingdom of God is not here to do our will, make us rich or ruin our enemies.  The Kingdom of God does not make the same mistakes we make, but has the bigger picture in mind for the wellbeing of all.  The Kingdom of God has it worked out that love will reign, that creatures can live in abundance like the birds sheltered in the mustard bushes and the leaven permeating the bread and then the smell of bread permeating the house, and the taste of bread coming close to us to nourish us. 

God’s Kingdom is valuable because it is one of goodness, abundance and new life.

And the good news for impatient people like me is that we don’t have to wait for it.  It is coming into the world.  God’s Kingdom is breaking in.  It is coming near as Jesus and John the Baptist remind us.  Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us.  The Kingdom of God is, as we say in seminary, already and not yet.  We wait because this world does not match the one God promises.  And we don’t have to wait because it is breaking in and there is evidence, signs, glimpses everywhere we look.

God’s Kingdom is like so many things, not just one thing.  It isn’t easily described in one image.  We see its reflection everywhere we look.  We see a glimpse of God’s Kingdom in the field, in the kitchen, on the sea, on the shore.  With these parables Jesus gives us, we have our eyes opened, that anywhere we look we might find the Kingdom of God.  We see the Kingdom of God in prison where inmates might be encouraging each other.  We see the Kingdom of God in a polywog that has survived in Johnson Creek.  We see the Kingdom of God in our toys, in TV shows, at family barbecues.  We see glimpses but not the fullness of the Kingdom of God, yet.

I got the chance to visit Cultivate Initiatives this week, where we will be doing our service project for God’s Work Our Hands Service project with Gethsemane, Pilgrim, St. Timothy, Resurrection, and Covenant Presbyterian on September 9—I hope you will come.  I saw the Kingdom of God working.  Cultivate Inititiatives has just moved into a new building that allows them to serve the people of Multnomah County.  It started maybe 3-4 years ago when one of the founders attended a neighborhood meeting where a safe rest village was going in to house homeless people and 200 neighbors showed up to oppose it.  And he said to himself, what would it look like to do this a better way?  What would it mean to say yes to new life and hope for real people? 

This person knew it meant building relationships.  He asked himself what you would do when a regular neighbor moved in?  Invite them to a barbecue, of course!  So he organized  a barbecue where neighbors could meet and talk.  The world was not matching the Kingdom of God he knew, he had faith in, he was passionate about.  Neighbors can’t just be thrust together.  They needed to build trust.  So that’s where he started.

Now Cultivate Initiatives has contracts with Multnomah County giving houseless and housing insecure people jobs beautifying places where people have dumped trash.   They work on employment, health, and housing/shelter and they start by slowly building trust.  That is where some of the tax money set aside to address housing and homelessness has gone and they are seeing results, that people who are connected with resources are finding their way to going back to work, finding stability, getting into housing and starting new lives. This founder who was impatient for God’s Kingdom to come, uses patience to build it, becasue that piece of grit to become a pearl is not going to happen overnight.  He uses impatience because he was not willing to stand around and wait for the Kingdom—he is building it with partners like us.

We are invited to look around.  Look around for what is not fitting with the vision of love and justice for this world. What is hurting you or your neighbors?  Get impatient about that!  And look around for the signs that is changing.  Then put your efforts into those changes.  If you don’t see those signs, then lucky you, you get to be that sign, to do something to remake this world so that others can see the Kingdom of God breaking in.

You are invited to be part of that in-breaking of the Kingdom of God for God’s Work Our Hands day on Saturday September 9 from 9 to noon.  You can do some beautification alongside some of these amazing folks who work for Cultivate Initiaitves, or you can make hygiene kits and clay pot heaters to relieve the suffering of some of God’s children. You can be part of the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God for people of Cuba by sharing fabric and sewing supplies.  You can be part of the in-breaking of the Kingdom by volunteering at Bible School or working on the Springwater trail or volunteering at your nearby school or senior center.  There are so many ways to participate in the Kingdom of God when you are both patient and impatient.