The title of my sermon is “Similes to Live By.” I want you to know that I had a discussion with my literature-professor husband about this to make sure I was on solid ground here. I’m never quite sure of the distinction between a simile and a metaphor, though I know I learned it in some English class eons ago, and I realize that many of you out there this morning don’t care very much one way or another. Or are wondering how either simile or a metaphor might benefit your life of faith.
So let me try and entice you in just a bit, by saying, in no uncertain terms, that Jesus spoke in similes and metaphors to teach the most important things he knew. And if we want to know what he knew, if we want to walk his walk and talk his talk, if we want to be followers of his way, it will help if we have a bit of a clue as to what all this is about. This really not English 101, in case that wasn’t your favorite subject. It’s Christianity 101. Or more precisely: it’s Kingdom of Heaven 101.
In fact, Mark’s gospel says, in Chapter 4, verse 34 that Jesus did not say anything to his disciples without using a parable. You know, there are stories that always begin with the words: “Long ago and far away”….or “Once upon a time…” Detective stories begin with “It was a dark and stormy night…” The parables of Jesus begin with the words: “The kingdom of heaven is like….”
And there we have our similes to live by. A simile is a figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared. “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed”. …”the kingdom of heaven is like yeast”…”the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field…”
Jesus spoke in parables. As the great teacher that he was, he knew that not everyone was going to immediately grasp what he was trying to say. He knew it would be hard and challenging and disturbing. He knew that it wasn’t exactly what people wanted to hear. And so he spoke in parables. He evoked images. He suggested parallels. He tried to show that this thing he had come to proclaim, the Kingdom of God, is both as ordinary and graspable as a mustard seed and as confounding and uncontainable as yeast.
As Pastor Amy Rosenbaum reminded us last Sunday, parables, simple and innocent as they seem, can get us into trouble. It’s not really the parables that get us into trouble. It’s actually the whole thing about the Kingdom of God that gets us into trouble when we take it to heart and live it out. These similes to live by are not really easy. They’re costly. They’re disruptive. They point to things in God’s realm that don’t always sit well with our human way of doing things.
Let me give you a couple examples. I always laugh to myself when the lectionary comes round to the parable we hear today about the woman making bread. Matthew says…it’s right there in plain Greek or English…Matthew says that Jesus said: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” No big deal for all you bread-bakers out there. But I was assigned this passage for my sermon when I was a candidate for ordination more than thirty years ago. And in those days, there weren’t many ordained women in The United Methodist Church and women on seminary faculties were starting to dig into the Bible to find feminine imagery for God.
There’s not a lot but there is some…a few similes here and there that became rallying cries to those of us women in school at the time. Similes to live by! “God is like a mother hen who gathers her brood under her wings.” “God is like the mother who could not forget her baby” …..And I said in my sermon on this parable, “God is like a woman who took yeast and mixed in three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
Oh my heavens. It’s a miracle that I got approved for ordination that year. My sermon came back to me all marked up by an esteemed, now retired, clergy member of our annual conference, whom I still see each year at Redlands. There were red lines and slashes all through it and agitated exclamation points that shouted at me off the page: “God is not like a woman!” he insisted. “And this parable has nothing to do with that. This parable means that God’s Word is yeast that is mixed with our lives to produce great things” or something like to that effect.
To my thinking, that’s a fine interpretation, too, and I have deep respect for my colleague. But I think he was a little overly-sensitive about the point I was trying to draw out of Jesus’ story. I really believe that the teaching of Jesus about the kingdom of Heaven is wondrously inclusive. And that Jesus was quite deliberate when he told a parable about a man sowing seed, and then about a woman mixing yeast into flour, and then a man who finds treasure in a field and so forth.
Well at any rate, it’s a good reminder that Jesus’ preferred teaching style, using parables and similes with that key word “like” at the center actually opens the door to many interpretations. Like all art, parables never mean just one thing. “Like” is an evocative word, hard to pin down, like yeast, like mustard seed, like treasure buried in a field, it is a generative word full of potential and as yet-unimagined possibility.
The kingdom of heaven is like….
One pastor I heard about tried to demonstrate how this works right in the church service itself as part of his sermon. You’ll be glad that I didn’t think of this myself and that I heard this cautionary tale in advance. And it’s a really good thing that Brad Beeman isn’t here or he would have tried it for sure. Because this true story is like one of those commercials that say in fine print at the bottom: “Professional drivers on a closed course. Don’t try this at home.”
As reported on National Public Radio, it seems that Pastor Jeff Harlow wanted to explain what unity is like in his Sunday sermon in Kokomo, Ind., so he wheeled a motorcycle into church. He wanted to show how the rider becomes one with the bike. Instead, he lost control and the motorcycle shot off the platform and into the front pews. Pastor Harlow injured his wrist, but fortunately, as in most churches, unless there’s a baptism, the front pews were empty.
You see, that little word “like” can really get you into trouble. But it can also open up the windows of heaven to us mere mortals so that we can get a glimpse of what God intends. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, like yeast, like a treasure buried in a field. God’s realm has within it an astonishing mysterious quality that confounds our expectations. It transforms life out of the death of the seed. Like yeast, it permeates the whole of our everyday life. And when we pay attention we discover treaures in the fields and places and people all around us.
It’s what the writer Willa Cather meant when she said: “The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”
I think that our Prayer Quilts that have become such an integral part of the ministry of this congregation work just like parables. They are tangible similes for the love and grace of God. What I mean is, when you try and talk with someone who is grieving or suffering or sorrowing or afraid…when you try and comfort someone who is facing surgery or a life-changing diagnosis...or when you’re just standing by, waiting, to see how things will come out…words seem so very insufficient and unsatisfying.
But how profoundly powerful it is to wrap someone in a quilt that is glowing with beauty, that has been infused with prayer, a quilt that is tangible and warm, a quilt that instantly takes us back to our deepest childhood sensations of comfort and assurance. You don’t have to say anything. The quilt is its own parable. The kingdom of God is like a Prayer Quilt that has been chosen and prayed and tied for you. The quilt is a simile to live by.
Today we baptize baby Sarah Elizabeth, whose name means “princess” and “blessed by God.” Along with her parents, godparents, and the wide circle of family and friends who so rejoice at her birth and life, we the church gather ‘round in her baptism to say that we will share with her Jesus’ great similes to live by, so that as she matures and grows in faith, as she at some future time claims the faith as her own, she will be rooted and grounded in the teachings of the Kingdom of God.
She will know the great power of God, present in the tiniest of seed, which bursts forth in our lives as growth, as change, as energy, as life itself. She will know the vitality of God’s yeasty presence that brings forth life and strength and wholeness. She will know the insistent, imperceptible, unquenchable vitality of the Holy Spirit, that treasure that is all around us and ready to be discovered and shared.
“What is the kingdom of heaven like?” the first disciples must have asked Jesus, so long ago, sensing it in him, in his every word and deed. And in reply, he told them parables, he used simile and metaphor, comparing the divine to the ordinary, the holy to the human, bringing light to the mystery hidden in creation, beyond all concrete definition, revealing what was there all along hidden in plain view, something God alone can see.
This is faith to live by, the substance of things hoped for, the assurance of things not seen, as the Book of Hebrews says. It is as mighty as the tiniest mustard seed, as powerful as a measure of yeast, as full of possibility as treasure buried in a field.
May our eyes see and our ears hear these miracles that are there around us always.
Thanks be to God!
© Patricia Farris, 2008. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
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"Similes to Live By"