Everything Everywhere
Sermon at St John The Baptist Felixstowe – 8th Sunday after Trinity – 30 July 2023
Text: 52 And he said to them, ‘Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.’ (from Matthew 13v24-30,36-43)
God give you peace my sisters and brothers.
With a Kung Fu Fighting Laundromat mum, an enquiry by the Inland Revenue and the danger of falling into the Black Hole of the Eternal Bagel, the Plot of the movie ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ is just a tad convoluted.
It is the story of Evelyn and her family which is falling apart and trips into alternative universes where despair stalks all the characters. It is a movie that probably needs watching more than once! BTW If you have Amazon Prime it is free to watch so you can do just that 😊
However, after all the plot twists and turns and use of CGI, at its heart it is the story of the quest of a mother to love and care for her estranged daughter.
The Parables of the Kingdom in Matthew are of the ‘Everything Everywhere, All at Once.’variety. As Matthew continues his collection of Jesus’ parables he reminds us that God is indeed ‘Everything Everywhere’.
There is no place too small or insignificant to be home to God’s reign.
Neither is there anywhere where the influence of the Gospel of love and inclusion cannot spread.
The Kingdom of Heaven is shown to be a place where people who seek truth and love will find great treasure.
The Parable of the Mustard Seed encourages each of us to be in the business of doing small things and not presume that because we do not have much to offer (and for many of us here we find that the only thing we have to offer is a literal ‘widow’s mite’) God blesses our offering and turns our smallness into a blessing for many. ‘Everything Everywhere’ means there is nothing to which we turn our hands, no matter how insignificant we may think they are, that God will not bless.
All we need do is to let go of our own little ‘mustard seeds’ (Isn’t it odd how the smaller they are the more precious they become?) and allow God to use them and us.
The Parable of the Leavened Lump is not just a reminder that it only takes small amounts to bring great change but that even the slightest action can affect and transform everything around it.
We never act for ourselves alone. John Donne reminds us that:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
We are connected by our common humanity and our actions affect everyone around us.
Norman Yorke, Headteacher when I was at the Royal Hospital School, was a Licensed Reader. Though he could do more he only preached one sermon a year; and it was the same sermon every year! This always happened on the first Sunday evening of a new academic year when he would preach about the influence our actions would have on those around us and how a pebble thrown into a pond sends ripples to its farthest shore. (His sermon obviously worked as every Old Boy from the School of his era is word perfect in telling that story!).
The Parable of the Leavened Lump is a righteous version of the Butterfly Effect in Chaos Theory; in which the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings might promote an earthquake elsewhere. What we do for good and for God has a lasting impact on ‘Everything Everywhere’ so we should be careful and deliberate in our deeds, just as the housewife baking bread is careful to have the correct ingredients in her pantry.
There is a small caveat here. Jesus’ listeners and Matthew’s audience where predominately of Jewish heritage and in their faith yeast was sometimes seen as introducing decay and corruption. It may well be that yeast would be the last thing they might use as a symbol of God’s activity in the world.
In the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of ‘Everything Everywhere’, we must not be surprised if God uses unexpected and previously proscribed people, places, and practices to spread the gospel of love. In God’s economy of ‘Everything Everywhere’ we must expect to be served and challenged by the unexpected.
The Parable of the Hidden Treasure reminds us of this need to expect the unexpected. Many of Jesus’ parables come from agriculture and this one suggests a farmer ploughing their field and stumbling across someone else’s treasure trove – something that the people of Suffolk have been blessed with many times. Christians are not called, however, to be some sort of ecclesiastical Detectorists, but to recognise that, if we but look around us, we will discover that all ground is holy ground and wherever we turn there is treasure waiting to be unearthed. This parable is Gerald Manley-Hopkins in action:
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
However we do well to remember the words of Elizabeth Barret-Browning, (firmly wearing her Christian Socialist Bonnet), as she cautions against some sort of nature piety that leads to us lingering in the countryside at the expense of being active in the service of God’s Reign:
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
When we discover this treasure of the Kingdom it is not our calling, Smaug the fire breathing Middle-Earth dragon-like, to hoard it. Instead we are called to give all that we have to claim this treasure trove so that we may be pass it on to others.
If worshipping God is for our benefit alone, so that only ourselves and those like us are enriched by its treasure, we are doing worship wrong!
The Parable of the Pearl of Great Price continues in the same vein. Knowing that God’s Reign involves ‘Everything, Everywhere’ sets us on a lifelong quest to seek it out and not be frightened to go searching amongst the market stalls and Car Boot sales of life. We are not simply passive recipients of the blessings of God (like the disciples before the resurrection). We must be actively seeking out and proclaiming God’s presence in all works of life not just in holy tabernacles or bucolic nature but find it in all its nitty gritty ugliness. This is, as the apostles found, a costly venture but it is the only object in life worth pursuing. These words from latter-day martyr Jim Elliot have encouraged me down the years:
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep,
to gain that which he cannot lose!
Turning to The Parable of the Dragnet is a reminder that, although God’s Reign is indeed ‘Everything, Everywhere’ we are not, if you will pardon the turn of phrase, the only fish in the sea. In the midst of all our work for God and this generous gospel of forgiveness and love, of welcome and inclusion, there are others at work with different aims which prioritise self above service, greed above generosity, and security above sacrifice. Not for that reason do we stop our work!
My own oft-repeated parable of kissing frogs speaks of this truth.
Life is about kissing enchanted frogs
hoping they will turn back into a Princess.
Every so often you meet a toad pretending
to be a frog who is just collecting suckers
Not for that reason should we give up on kissing frogs
And finally the Parable that brings all the Parables together; The Parable of the Scribe. At the end of the movie ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ the hero Evelyn tells her daughter Joy that even when nothing makes sense and even though she could be anywhere else in the multiverse, she would always want to be with her. It does not spoil the plot too much to say that by the end of the story they all live happily ever after but getting there takes many twists and turns. Many of these are because of the expectations of the old traditions; how will Evelyn cope with the disapproval of her stern father. But also Evelyn is challenged to face new realities as she discovers that her daughter Joy is in a relationship with Becky who is not of Cantonese heritage.
In the end the assorted multi-verses coalesce into one story of care for each other. Evelyn’s husband pleading for everybody to stop fighting and to instead be kind, even when life does not make sense is a turning point and the family realises that they do have ‘Treasures Old and New’ which are to be shared and valued rather than squabbled over.
Our aim in ‘seeking first the Kingdom’ is not to achieve victory over those around us but a surrendering to a generous love from outside and bigger than of all us.
A love demonstrated in the life of Jesus, acted out on the cross of Calvary, and offered as a free gift to each of us by the Resurrection.
A love of a different sort, a love from a different realm, a love that wins by yielding, a love whose victory is found by giving away instead of holding on.
A love expressed in the words of the second verse of a well-known hymn with which I will end.
This is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like….
And there’s another country, I’ve heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.
(Cecil Spring Rice 1859-1918)
This blog ‘Everything Everywhere’ is copyright © Andrew Dotchin 2023. It may be reproduced free of charge on condition that the source is acknowledged.
Matthew 13v24-30,36-43 – Parables of the Kingdom
Jesus put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32 it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’ 33 He told them another parable: ‘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.’ 44 ‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 45 ‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; 46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. 47 ‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; 48 when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. 49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
51 ‘Have you understood all this?’ They answered, ‘Yes.’ 52 And he said to them, ‘Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.’
Suffolk Vicar 