The Kingdom and Dairy Queen

Sermon for Sunday, September 27

Luke 13:10-21

Seeds are everywhere. In every vegetable, in the fruit we eat, in the apple core and the soil in my yard, there are hundreds and thousands of seeds. Every year in the Spring, Katie and I rake the soil in our flower bed. Sometimes we add compost and we usually put mulch across the top. Katie plants her zinnias, and a few succulents, and we go out every couple of days and pull up little weeds, unwanted plants that grow all around the zinnias and between the mulch. We usually do a pretty good job keeping up with the weeding... for a week or two. But then inevitably life pulls us away for a few days and we get out of the habit. Plants start to grow up between the flowers. Often it will be interesting to see broad-leafed weeds beginning to shade out our little flower garden... where did they come from? The soil we added to the  flower bed came from the farm compost. Like I said, there are seeds everywhere.

Jesus says the Kingdom of God is like that. In my Bible, it says that it’s like a man “sowing” a mustard seed in his garden. Other translations get nearer the Greek: the man “throws” the mustard seed into his garden. Perhaps we are to understand that it is an accident. Mustard is a small seed, and maybe the man is throwing some compost out, not knowing that there’s mustard seed in it. And the mustard seed does what the mustard seed does: it grows into a plant, and left unattended it becomes a bush, almost a tree, and shades out everything else, but the birds find shelter among its leaves. The Kingdom is like that. We work and we toil, expecting certain results, but God works around our expectations to produce surprising ends.

Put yourself in the shoes of the synagogue leader in today’s Gospel story. It’s his job to put together a good Sabbath service. He painstakingly chose the hymns. He lined up a pretty good guest speaker (can’t do much better than the Son of God!). He got the bulletins looking good and laid out perfectly. The order of service is bound to inspire. And in walks a woman, hunched and bent over. He knows the teacher has a soft spot for the infirm, and so he tries to set the woman at the back, maybe out of sight. There’s no healing in the order of service, after all. 

But Jesus sees her, and he stops the service. He interrupts his teaching to bring healing to this woman. And it’s too much for the leader of the synagogue. As readers of Luke’s gospel, we know there’s going to be a confrontation but his complaint surprises us. He doesn’t criticize Jesus for healing, but the woman for tempting him to heal. He basically hangs a sign out front of the church that says “Worship Service at 11 for those who have it together. Needy come by during the week.” But friends, we are given no indication that the woman came hoping to be healed. She just came for the service like everyone else. The service the leader had planned provides an opportunity he never anticipated. And he just can’t accept it. He can’t let go of his expectations enough to see the glory of God’s ends.

In order to see what God is doing, sometimes we have to set our expectations aside. We can’t let our rules get in the way of God’s reign. The synagogue leader has lots of ideas about what’s acceptable on Sabbath. In the Jewish Sabbath regulations of the time, you couldn’t so much as tie or untie a knot that required more than one hand. Healing was right out. There’s a proverb that I love to quote that I learned from someone who had done a 12 step program: expectations are premeditated resentments. Rules are known in the exceptions we make. Almost every rabbi made an exception for the rule about untying knots so that farmers could get their animals some water. If you had your ox hitched up in the barn, you could release it to get it some water. You couldn’t expect an animal to suffer dehydration for one day in the summer heat, of course. But this woman, Jesus says, this “Daughter of Abraham” hadn’t been released for eighteen years! Don’t you think she is thirsty?

Jesus said from the very beginning that he was here to release the captives. And he tells this woman “You are set free!” Is it unlawful work to relieve someone else’s burden on the Sabbath day? Is it profaning the sacredness of worship to allow the needs of others to interrupt our celebration? We serve a Lord whose reign begins with our liberation. Saint Augustine said that this woman’s physical condition represents all of our spiritual condition apart from our liberation. The devil and the times enslave us, and bend us over so all we can see is the ground. And when Jesus heals this woman, it reveals that the synagogue leader is still spiritually bent over because he can’t see past his rules to see that the Kingdom is breaking out at just this moment. He’s so enslaved to the past, to tradition, that he can’t see what God is doing right in front of him. He can’t see how God has used his worship to set this woman free.

It’s always amazing to me in the gospel how Jesus does most of his ministry to people who are interrupting his teaching. He doesn’t let his planned lesson or the parables on his mind distract him from what’s in front of him that he can do. He doesn’t let people’s expectations for his ministry stop him from doing things we might deem inconsequential. This woman isn’t anybody. She doesn’t have a name in the story. Jesus heals her. He heals her because she’s there and she needs it. He heals her because she’s in front of him.

Most of y’all have probably heard the story by now, but last Friday at the Dairy Queen in Gretna, 256 people paid for the meal of the person who came after them. It all started around 7:00 AM, with one person deciding to buy the meal of the person behind them. When I told Katie about the story the other day, I said my first thought: “How would you like to be the person who broke that chain?” I was running a couple days later, and a small voice came to me and said, “How dare you, Wyatt? You don’t know my circumstances. I went to that Dairy Queen because I was hungry and I had a couple dollars, but I really couldn’t afford the meal. There were better uses for my money. I was at the end of my rope, and somebody paid for my meal.” You see, 256 people didn’t need their meals paid for. But the 257th did. And they got what they needed because 256 people did a small thing. That’s the Kingdom at work. I saw the 257th person as selfish, but they were the real recipient of the first one’s gift. My expectations led to judgment, and judgment didn’t let me see God at work.

The changes Kingdom work brings about are because of how God’s rule actually works. You see, we religious people have been making God’s rule about rules, but it’s really about laws. I don’t mean laws as in speed limits and regulations, but the scientific definition of laws: how the world works. One of the first scientific laws we learn is children is the law of gravity: what goes up must come down. And we are taught the laws of how the world works from our culture and our economy. Look out for number one. Buy low, sell high. Get what’s coming to you. But Jesus gives us different laws.

“Many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.” “Whoever tries to save his life will lose it, but the one who gives up his life for my sake and the sake of the gospel will keep it.” The Kingdom is full of surprises such as these. And Jesus says that the kingdom is like a woman who pulls out her little jar of sourdough starter and adds it to 40 pounds of flower. And the yeast does its surprising work. One woman’s small contribution leads to a rising. And it can feed a multitude. You don’t expect something so small as a sourdough starter, a little clump of dough added to 40 pounds of flour, to do much. But in the baker’s economy, a little yeast turns flour into bread. In God’s economy, a small contribution changes everything. Whether it’s a man planning a Sabbath worship, a woman’s liberation from her ailment, or 256 people paying it forward. The difference is in whether we have eyes to see it, or if our expectations keep us looking at the ground.