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SERMON P41 FOR MAY 3, 2015
He was featured on one of the first “Living the Questions” videos that I used for adult learning purposes when I was the minister at Munn’s United Church in Oakville. He, too, was a minister, and was participating in a workshop that was filmed for theLTQ series. It was the last day of the workshop, and each participant was asked to come to the morning session with a scripture passage or story that featured a gift that the individual shared. It was intended to be a celebration of the rich diversity we find in community.
The process was that each member of the learning group would share his/her story, and talk about how the story was connected to real life. Then the group would respond with a liturgy that affirmed the gift, and celebrated the individual. It was meant to be an uplifting, empowering time.
When it was his turn, he was silent. The facilitator asked him for his story. More silence. When encouraged by the group to speak up, he broke down. He sobbed out his truth. All his life, his name for himself was “Not Good Enough.” No matter how hard he tried, he never measured up to the expectations of those around him: his parents, his minister, his teachers, his peers. When he looked at himself, he saw worthlessness. His self-confidence was lower than a worm’s stomach.
Without speaking together, the group in that learning circle stood up and gathered around the broken and heart-broken “Not Good Enough.” Each person touched him in blessing and a deep and warm silence wrapped around him. After a few minutes, they spoke the affirmation to him that was given to every other member of the group. This time, though, they did not mention a specific gift or skill that “Not Good Enough” possessed. In the place in the liturgy where gifts were named, the group simply inserted his real name.
And the message was “You, just as you are, are good enough.”
It was an emotional experience to see this scene unfold. It actually brought me to tears because I myself have felt “not good enough,” and over my pastoral ministry, I have too often heard that “not good enough” phrase echo through times of personal despair and deep pain. I imagine that if we are honest with ourselves, we have all felt that our name is not good enough.
We are a tender-hearted lot, and all it takes is one critical teacher or one insensitive coach or one demanding parent to remind us that we are not as perfect as they expect us to be. And we are human and we make mistakes. I don’t care who we are or what our reputation, each of us knows that we have done and said regrettable things, or not done what was lovingly necessary. The harmful thing is not that we make mistakes. The harmful part comes from not being able to let go of our regret and shame. We live too much out of our faults, and not enough out of our possibility.
Bernard Brandon Scott tackles this human struggle when he interprets the parable of the yeast and the flour. I think it is one of the most profoundly hopeful parables in the gospels.
He reminds us that when Jesus told the kin-dom parable of the leaven in the dough, he was speaking to Jews, by and large. Jesus’s listeners were residents of first century Palestine, members of local synagogues, followers of the laws of Moses, people with the religious culture of early Pharisaic Judaism.
In the Palestinian Jewish culture, women were not seen as people of power. This does not mean that they were unappreciated or unloved. It means that without a man in their lives, a father, a husband, an adult son, they had no source of income. Women were dependent on men. On their own, as women, they had no political power, no financial stability, no status. They were not offered education or the opportunity to learn and be leaders. And yet, in the parable of the yeast in the dough, a parable about how the world should be, the key character is a woman.
Jesus gives her status and possibility. He sees her as good enough to be the teacher about how the world works and where the God-energy is. The baker woman brings sheer hope to all who hear that she is the one who makes the dough rise.
Having the key character in a story be a woman is not shocking to us. But to Jesus’ peers, it would have been mind-boggling, as though a 12 year old headed up a federal political party and became prime minister. Jesus shifts the power to the least and reminds us that when the last become first, the realm of God is here.
Then we have the even more shocking reality that what makes life holy and safe and hopeful is actually unclean. I’m talking about the yeast that makes the dough rise. I’m talking about the leaven in the lump. We have positive associations with yeast. There’s breakfast toast and coffee, hamburger buns at a family BBQ, bread broken and shared at communion.
We have positive associations with yeast, but not so for the listeners to Jesus’ parable. The sacred bread of the Jews was unleavened bread, the bread they whipped up as quickly as possible as they fled Egypt and headed out on the journey to the promised land. Unleavened bread is Passover bread, and at Passover time, it is the only bread eaten by observant Jews.
At Passover time, kitchens are torn apart and every cupboard and drawer is cleaned to remove any crumbs of leavened bread. The dishes that have touched yeast bread are put away, and the Passover dishes that have only held unleavened bread are brought out. Matzo, the unleavened bread, is the mainstay, and matzo meal is the Passover substitute for flour in any desserts or baking.
The sacred bread of Jesus’ hearers was unleavened bread. Leavened bread is Pharaoh’s bread, the bread of the enemy.
What a shock for the locals when Jesus compares abundant life to a woman-baker making leavened bread. What a shock when the main actor is socially the least, and the bread of life is made with what is considered unclean.
What is Jesus saying? Not only to his people, but to us? I think Jesus offers us an invitation to look beyond our categories of meaning. I think Jesus pushes us away from the boxes we use to tame reality: us and them, friend and enemy, same and different, my way and your way, in the group or out of the group, those who count for me and those who don’t.
Because we can consider thinking in an evolutionary way, we know that things change. Creation becomes. We are not stuck in any box. Reality is not for all time and as change comes into our lives, we are invited to adjust our thinking, to reassess our bias, to seek loving truth for our lives. Truth is not boxed up in Jesus’ day and held there for all time.
The woman and the yeast are shocking symbols of the vast and inclusive love that we call God. What would the world be like if we saw ourselves as growing and changing into our best potential? What would life be like if we could see bigger than the boxes of our present understanding? What would we be like if we saw ourselves and one another as becoming, rather than stuck with our limits and regrets?
The power of not good enough would pass away and we and our church and our world would be liberated by the power of love.