Karl Barth was arguably the most influential Protestant theologian of the 20^th century. Among his other books, he wrote a fourteen-volume work entitled Church Dogmatics that consists of more than 6 million words and took over 35 years to write. The story is told of an encounter on his only visit to the United States in 1962 at the age of 76. There are several versions of what happened, but the gist is this: someone asked Barth to summarize all of his writings in a single sentence. Barth replied: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” 

Some folks may hear in that story a quick comeback to a foolishly naïve question. How can you possibly boil down a lifetime of work to a single sentence? Or it may be heard as a confession that maybe less could have been written to say the same thing. Yet without the whole of Barth’s work, the Church would not have been so challenged and enriched as it was.

But for me, the story leans more in the direction that perceiving the sacred in life may come in surprisingly simple ways. Sometimes, the search for God leads us to places where we see, if we see at all, in a mirror dimly, to use Paul’s phrase. Seeing the sacred in life can be daunting when our vision has to take into account all manner of experiences that suggest more of God’s absence than presence. Maybe that is why the ancients developed the notion of God’s residence in places far removed from the routine or ordinary: whether geographically speaking on mountaintops or in the heavens, or liturgically speaking in rituals whose secrets were revealed only to the privileged few. But like Barth’s remark, our parable from Matthew this morning suggests that encounters of the sacred may come in ways surprising if not outright scandalous. 

Part of the surprise and scandal has to do with Jesus’ choice of illustrations. Take the opening phrase of this parable, for example: The kingdom of heaven is like yeast. . . If we want to catch a glimpse of God’s sovereign realm, Jesus suggests, then have a look at yeast, or leaven. Most everyone in Jesus’ day knew what leaven was literally, because bread was a standard part of the daily diet then. But the offense here of visualizing the realm of God in yeast was because most everyone also knew what leaven meant figuratively. Leaven was a routine symbol in that era for decay – which is understandable, because the fermenting that yeast makes possible is in one sense a controlled decay. When people spoke about yeast in religious terms then, it was almost always in a bad sense. In 1 Corinthians, Paul speaks of yeast in that way when he links it to “malice and evil.” Even Jesus, in other settings, uses yeast as a figure for misleading teaching or hypocrisy. So imagine the crowd taking a deep breath when Jesus begins by saying, “The kingdom of God is like yeast…” What? God’s realm is like decay or evil? 

That becomes one of the consistent traits of Jesus’ teaching in parables: to surprise people into seeing something new, into seeing the presence or working of God in something – or someone – totally unexpected. In this parable Jesus does not only challenge assumptions about what leaven represents. The shock is multiplied by the God-figure here: a woman. Long before our contemporary ragings over use of inclusive language and gender-inclusive imagery for God, Jesus spoke of the working of God in the world as a woman mixing yeast in flour.  

Jesus makes a habit of this: using familiar and common figures in unfamiliar and uncommon ways in order to impress upon us the surprise of grace. So another parable tells the story of a shepherd who leaves the ninety-and-nine to search out the lost one. Folks then were familiar with shepherds, but not this sort of risk-taker. What kind of shepherd would jeopardize 99% of the flock entrusted to his charge, to go searching out the one wanderer who should have known better? What kind of a character is that, Jesus’ listeners might have asked – which is just the point. For the parable challenges us to see what kind of a GOD Jesus comes to reveal.  

Or, in one of the most startling of all parables, when a would-be interrogator of Jesus presses him on the issue of how do you define “neighbor,” Jesus offers a story with, again, a very common figure to his listeners who also happened to be the one of the most offensive they could possibly have imagined: a Samaritan. Of course, we don’t know Samaritans from bagels today, so the scandal may be lost on us. So listen to how Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament at Vanderbilt Divinity School, would have us re-view that parable to catch its offense.  

The force of that retelling’s scandal is multiplied by the fact that Dr. Levine is an Orthodox Jew. 

Simply seeing the sacred in life in common things and persons does not necessarily mean seeing what is obvious. Sometimes, it is quite the opposite. As Jesus taught, seeing the sacred can challenge us to see things – and see others – in ways we had never dreamed before. Such teaching invites us to be open to the sacred in whatever and in whomever God may be seen.  

This parable of Jesus, like many others, does not unravel in some difficult to envision much less comprehensive statement of theology that would take years of training in rabbinical academies of old or theological schools of now to grasp. Jesus locates the sighting of God’s realm, the working of God’s presence in our midst, in a kitchen. A woman mixes yeast in flour in order to make bread – and there, Jesus suggests, we may catch a glimpse of the Holy among us. It is a simple illustration: simple in its ordinariness, simple in its action. And in that simplicity, the sacred comes into view. 

That view in this particular parable emphasizes the hidden yet decisive influence of God’s realm in history and creation. The volume of flour far exceeds that of the yeast – but the yeast influences the whole amount. The smaller transforms the greater. Matthew and Mark, who also tells this parable, surely recall this teaching as an assurance to their small, seemingly insignificant communities dwarfed by the power and domination of the Roman Empire. The parable communicates to those communities that the effect they can have on the world around them is enormous. They too, like leaven, can be transformative of the whole.  

That is an important word in our day as well. The power and influence of the church does not rely on its being inflated, literally or figuratively, compared to the world around it. The power and influence of the church, even in its smallest expressions, comes from faithfulness to Jesus Christ who places it – who places us – in the communities where we live and work for the sake of their transformation. We are not here for ourselves, or for our survival, or even for internal growth that has no purpose beyond itself. We are here for the sake of influencing our surroundings for the good. Like the woman who mixes in the yeast, God mixes us into this place and community and time for the sake of transforming life here for the good. 

All of this flows from the simplicity of a woman mixing yeast into flour. The amazing thing is, Jesus continually brings the sacred into sight by directing our eyes and imaginations to such common elements. Here it is leaven. There it is a woman who searches for a lost coin. In another it is mustard seed. In all these and more, common things – and common persons – provide the lens by which we see something of God at work among us. No one parable provides the whole view, but each lends a perspective on the sacred in our midst.  

But beyond those particular views, Jesus’ teachings of encountering the sacred through the simplicities of work and nature and human relationships convey a broader truth. Namely, the sacred is to be found inside of life. Encounter with God, experience of the sacred, does not require escaping to a realm or even a building designated as supernatural or “holy.” Jesus firmly grounds encounter with God within ordinary human and natural experience. That is why and how the realm of God may be revealed in the likes of leaven and farmers sowing seed and parents with children who go their own ways. And that is also why and how what we do in this life to one another and with this creation matters so critically. For all the places and persons and relationships of this life bear the potential of sacred encounter. All of us, even the most difficult to get along with, even the ones who act contrary to our expectations, even the most common and ordinary of us: we all bear the stamp of “made in God’s image.”  

Seeing the sacred in life conveyed in that – and in those – reckoned as ordinary also guards against the misuse of such common things and ones. Once we disregard something or someone as having no sacred potential, it is easy to become callous. When creation gets reduced from the handiwork of God to what’s here for me to use as I please, then the way is paved for abuse of the environment. Or, when we can conveniently deny “image of God” to those with whom we disagree, and paint them purely as the enemy or those who are “other than us,” then the way is paved for all manner of inhumanity. World Trade Center attack, Abu Ghraib, suicide bombers in pet markets, secret renditions, Guantanamo: the names may vary, but the well from which they are drawn is the same sinful denial of human worth and divine spark that results in the ethical equivalent of blasphemy. 

When we do not see the sacredness in life, we fall prey to denying the sacredness of life. That is, in one sense, the dramatic tension that moves the gospel narrative in Lent we begin today to the climactic events of Passion week. For come Good Friday, simple gifts of wood and iron that could have fashioned implements to use in life, instead become employed as cross and nail to extinguish life. Those simple gifts become twisted by hate and fear to crucify one who used simple gifts in the parables to reveal God. The irony is that the cross itself ends up revealing God, and the profound simplicity of love unquenched by death.  

Simple, isn’t it – or is it? Jesus’ parables frame encounter with the sacred in life by using simple objects or relationships as the “meeting ground” between our experience and the realm of God. The church continues that tradition. What do we use when infants or adults come for the sacramental ritual of inclusion in community? Water. There is absolutely nothing chemically different about the water that flows from your tap at home and that which fills a baptismal font. But in our common life: simple water bears the promise of birth and rebirth, in Christ. 

And when the church gathers to celebrate what is perhaps its greatest mystery involving holy encounter, what do we use? A loaf and a cup. Granted, we may have differing theological understandings of how these elements offer the presence of the Risen Christ among us – but the truth is, the holy sacrament of the body and blood of Christ Jesus consists, simply, of bread and the juice of a grape. To be sure, they are small portions that pale in comparison to the size of meals we may eat at home. But like leaven, the smaller influences the greater for the sake of transforming the whole. The bits of bread and juice at Communion give us a taste of the very banquet at God’s kingdom table, that we may offer that table’s gift as we live out its hope.  

In such simple gifts, we come to see and experience the very grace of God. Jesus really is right. The realm of God may be seen in the likes of such a common thing as leaven, in such an ordinary one as a woman who mixes leaven into flour. And the truth of the parables is: the realm of God may continue to be seen in such common things, and in such ordinary ones, as we encounter everyday. May God enable us to simply see the sacred awaiting our recognition: before us, around us, in one another – and yes, even within us.