Romans 8:18-25 + Luke 13:18-21
Last Friday afternoon, as I was preparing my sermon for Sunday, I had something of a small-scale panic attack. I was a long way away from home—retreating in Sonoma County—when I discovered that I’d left my reading glasses behind. So there I was, ensconced in the deep shade of the shade of the redwoods, struggling to study the story of blind Bartimaeus without corrective lenses. Sometimes God opens our eyes through irony.
Between last Sunday’s gospel—which retold the story of Jesus healing of a blind man—and today’s lessons about hope in the invisible and the kingdom manifest in small seeds and spores, we seem to be in a textual season of things seen and unseen. And maybe that’s appropriate in a time of year when nights are growing longer and our souls are growing close to Advent, when the hidden seed of Christ will again gestate in our hearts.
Nevertheless, I am still a bit startled by lessons that have Jesus, on the one hand, giving us mental images—metaphors—so that we can envision the kingdom. And on the other hand, Paul telling us to wait for this same kingdom with patience without seeing it. I’m not sure how intentional this pairing of texts was on the part of those who design our daily Eucharistic lectionary. But maybe God is once again opening our eyes through irony.
And what I think both of our texts call is to do—perhaps ironically but without contradiction—is to see with another set of eyes. To let our imagination guide us to an inner kind of seeing: to have insight, if you will. There is so much that we hope for that we cannot yet see: an end to suffering and bondage, adequate care for the most vulnerable, hospitality for refugees, reconciliation between warring parties. In some cases the current suffering is so extreme that have nothing but imagination to envision another reality. But that’s exactly why God gave us imagination. And it’s also what Jesus is modeling for us. Parables—along with metaphor, poetry, music and art—all serve to expand our capacity to imagine. So that we can get on board with what God—with whom all things are possible—is doing.
Cultivating the discipline of holy imagination, which Paul himself calls “seeing with the eyes of your heart”, enables us to recognize hints of the glory about to be revealed in in the small and everyday. And even in the dubious. The two kingdom metaphors that Jesus offers us in today’s gospel—seed and yeast—are distinguished not only by their small size, but also by their questionable value. Mustard seed devotional jewelry notwithstanding, the plant was and still is a weed. And in Jesus’ time, yeast was an even more problematic metaphor. It was as likely to contaminate bread as it was to leaven it.
But when we can see the kingdom even in the weed and the contaminant, we might just be on to something. I am reminded by the twin feasts of All Saints and All Souls, coming up this weekend, of how suspect our now venerable saints were. They were people of holy imagination, which served mostly to get them into trouble in their own time. And their countercultural witness—along with all that is small and suspect—can open our hearts to what God longs to make possible. Which is no less than the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
And so, borrowing words from another of Paul’s letters—this one to the church in Ephesus—I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.
Amen
