Texts: Matthew 13:44-46; Revelation 22:1-3a
Speaker: Joel Miller
See below for the Faith Journey Reflection from Sarah Martin prior to her baptism
There’s part of me that’s a bit envious of those two anonymous folks in those two short parables about the kin-dom of heaven. They both find something so valuable – a treasure, a pearl – they gladly trade in all they have so they can have it.
Envious probably isn’t the right word. Envy is number 2 on the traditional list of 7 deadly sins. Hopefully I’m not approaching the realm of the deadly sinful. A more positive spin might be that I’m admiringly intrigued with this idea: That there might be one thing that completely reorients one’s desires, goals, thoughts and actions into a singularly focused joyful existence. Like it says in Matthew 13:44: “Then, in his joy, he went and sold all he had and bought the field (that contained the treasure.)”
Wouldn’t that be something: to know – deep in your soul – that only one thing matters, and the purpose of your life is to tend to that one thing as long you live?
If you hear these parables and set out searching for an actual treasure in a field, or an actual pearl of great value, let’s agree that you’ve missed the point. It’s not a thing at all Jesus is pointing to. It’s this non-thing, which he refers to as the kingdom of heaven, or as Mark and Luke call it, the kin-dom of God. It’s a big enough idea Jesus needs not just these two parables, but many parables to illustrate what it might be. Matthew alone contains 11 parables that include the phrase “The kingdom of heaven is like…” Each of them point to a present reality – not some future existence – a present reality in which we are called to participate.
So what is this non-thing that’s so singularly important – right now – it’s worth immeasurably more than everything else combined?
Today we’ll celebrate baptism with Sarah Martin, and something I admire about Sarah is that, for as long as I’ve known her, she’s been asking big questions like this. She is not a surface dweller. Sarah is more like someone digging around in a field, pretty sure there’s something valuable down there, ready to talk about what she’s finding or not finding. Sarah is unafraid to get her hands dirty in the more complex questions of life.
But she’s not just lost with her head in the clouds, to switch metaphors. As a musician, she has learned to express the beauty of music that words struggle to capture. She’s also spent a lot of her young adult life in the presence of children, as a nanny. If there’s one thing to keep you grounded in reality, it’s hanging out with kids. And if there’s one thing that might give some insight into that one thing that matters most, it could be the joyful simplicity of how children experience the world. I think Jesus might have said something like that in another passage about the kin-dom of God.
Sarah chose these two passages today. There’s the parables from Matthew. And there’s the reading from Revelation about the Tree of Life having leaves that are for the healing of the nations. Here’s what Sarah had to say in an email about that:
“I guess the kind of Christianity I most appreciate is more focused on God redeeming the whole world as a collective…rather than just my individual soul. (Because the universe is all one thing anyway, just, happening at different times, when you get right down to it). In short I would maybe say that “the healing of the nations” is just where I hope this whole existence thing is headed, in the end. Or something like that.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
So there’s Revelation – the many nations, the whole universe, as big a picture as you can get, the redemption of all things. And there’s Matthew and this individual who finds the one treasure.
The many and the one, and somehow it all holds together.
I think what Jesus might have been getting at is that the one thing isn’t really about narrowing things down. When you find the treasure, the pearl of great value, the one thing, it actually expands one’s capacity to hold the many things. It frees us up to participate in life in a way that has more space, even to hold the unredeemed parts of the world.
So how about this:
The kingdom of heaven is like someone who heard a parable about the kingdom of heaven being like a treasure someone found in a field, or a pearl of great value. And even though she wasn’t exactly sure what that thing or non-thing might be, she was intrigued enough to make a public declaration that she wanted to be part of the search party. She wants to participate in a living faith that keeps that non-thing in the center. And she wants to orient her life toward the possibility that this whole existence thing is headed toward healing and redemption. And a whole community of elders and peers and children surround her and say: Yes, we’re with you. Let’s do it together.
The kingdom of heaven is like this.
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Faith Journey Reflection
Speaker: Sarah Martin
So I’ve been a little stressed, thinking about sharing today regarding my “faith journey”. I guess it’s a bit daunting to talk about your interior world in front of like, 50+ people, and I sort of don’t like for people to know things about me anyway. This is why my parents, who also go here, had to accidentally find out about my baptism from a bulletin announcement before I found the right moment to tell them. I mean, obviously I was planning to give them a heads up at some point, but then I kept putting it off because it felt overly dramatic to just randomly announce, which is a thought process I was banking on them implicitly understanding given our almost 30 years of co-existence on this planet. Anyways, this whole plan worked out really well for me until yesterday, when my mom sent an incredibly long message to me asking if she should do anything special to like, mark this moment in my life. And also to Tom Blosser, since we all happened to have a church-music-related text group going, and she accidentally messaged that instead of just me. What can I say? Sometimes life really is just a string of completely avoidable mortifications, especially if you’re me. Thanks parents for putting up with my incurable awkwardness.
Bethany said that story would be more funny than embarrassing for you all to hear, and I’m really hoping she was right.
Anyway, for those of you who don’t know me, I grew up in this church and have also attended here since moving back after college. What this means is that some of you knew me when I was six and my interior world largely consisted of daydreaming about children’s book characters and pretending the backyard was full of fairies. And some of you who have landed here more recently may not even know my name, since I forget to wear a name tag on Sundays approximately 90% of the time.
Joel suggested I could talk about why I decided to get baptized now, so I guess I’ll start there. Not that it’s some big exciting story. Partly I just felt like it was getting a little ridiculous, me continuing to show up and be part of church here for so long without partaking in one of the main rituals of Christianity. Like I wrote to Joel back in April, quote, “I’m interested in continuing to be part of [this] project [of religion], and I’ve been at CMC forever anyway, so I think I should just become an official member already. Sorry if that sounds ridiculous, or like I put zero thought into this.” And of course he agreed to dunk me in the river today, because what was he going to do, forbid me?? I did feel slightly less ridiculous after Bethany told me that one reason she got baptized at age nine was, she knew she would get gifts afterward, and she really, really, really wanted a mountain bike. Thanks Bethany for letting me share that story.
That’s a goofy explanation, though. So, let me go back and tell you all that I felt kind of uncomfy with the idea of baptism for years, because whenever I happened to think about it, I’d also immediately start thinking about all the harmful things caused by this religion over the centuries. Then I’d always think, if you get baptized and like, “officially sign up for Christianity,” or whatever, are you, like, affirming those harms in some way? Probably a lot of you would say, of course not, Sarah, because you aren’t needlessly perfectionistic like I am. Anyway, I’d always end up tabling the question pretty quickly, because I had more constructive things to be doing than trying to resolve an unresolvable problem.
For reasons beyond me, though, I’ve become not as bothered about all this over time. Not that I don’t care that there are harmful forms of religion anymore. But, I guess I’m more okay with the idea that perfection is impossible and the enemy of the good and all that. Or something. Being inescapably bound to the forward momentum of time has some downsides, sure, but it is one of the great consolations of our bondage that sometimes things do just gradually go away or feel less important. Which is a nice surprise, when it happens.
I’ll also tell you that I’ve asked myself lots of other questions about God, religion, etc. over the years, because I’m a person, and it’s kind of our lot in life to wonder about our place in the universe and the nature of all things and such. But I won’t go too much into that now, because it would be boring, as I’m sure all those questions have been questioned by other people many times over. Including some of you, which I know from various things you’ve all said over the years.
Like a couple weeks ago at Cookie Sunday, when Tim Jacquet came up and asked me if I wanted to co-teach a Sunday school class with him entitled “absurdist theology,” where we talk about all the most unhinged parts of the Bible (of which there are, woof, so many). Apparently he appreciated my silliness in previous Sunday school classes, or something. Which was honestly super touching to hear since I am, fundamentally in my soul, a silly person and humor has saved me from despairing about the world many-a-time. I guess it’s nice to feel recognized. Anyways, I of course said I was 100% interested, and then Tim said, “Cool, I have literally no other ideas besides the title so far.” And I felt like I should share this story because it’s such a perfect illustration of the slightly distracted curiosity about God and religion that you all embody so endearingly. So thank you Tim. And I hope your idea happens at some point. Maybe I can rope Bethany into helping so she can, you know, use her new Masters of Divinity degree.
I could probably stop here, but first I feel compelled to talk a bit about the “faith question” that’s been, like, the most annoying to me throughout the years, which is the question of suffering, and specifically, why there’s so much of it in the world. What brought that into the spotlight for me, I’m not exactly sure, but I imagine it’s some mix of personal temperament, life experiences, and my decision to study history in college, which is a great choice to make if you want to force yourself to confront the truly alarming scale of human tragedy across the ages. (Also, directly after I graduated from studying history, and other stuff, there was the COVID pandemic, which was a whole new opportunity to meditate on the inescapable horrors of bodily existence.) If you’ll allow me to make a completely gratuitous observation about suffering: there’s just been a lot of it around, since, like, forever, and some of it exists because we have all collectively or individually chosen for it to exist, and some of it just sort of goes on because we are destructible creatures living in a universe bound to the laws of entropy. Which feels like a problem sometimes for believing in, like, the absolute power and goodness of God, or whatever.
Like everyone else across the entire span of Christian history, I have no real solution to that problem. (Sorry.) But, it does reassure me at least that the central figure of Christian tradition (Jesus, obviously) was, like, really focused on telling us to help lift each other out of suffering as much as we can. I would like to share a quote about this from John Green, most famously author of the novel “The Fault in Our Stars,” and also, apparently, an Episcopalian, a denomination which has the distinction of being the funnest to say. Anyways, he said, “There’s lots of work to do in this world, and in my faith tradition God became a person to tell us about that work and ask us to do it together, and so, like, I think we should focus on trying to do it.” End quote.
So that’s one thing. Here’s another thing, and this is the last thought I’ll leave with you in this absurdly long reflection. I’m also reassured by the joy that persists within humanity, despite the alarming scale of tragedy through the ages. Like the pearl in the field from the parable we heard earlier–something tiny, but which nevertheless makes a big difference. I think about a lot of things when I think about God, but I guess one of the main things I think about is the joy of creation and how it goes on inside of us, how we each find it in our own perceptions of the world, at least sometimes. Like the voice of God in the garden of Eden, declaring that everything is very good. I guess I hope I always pay attention to that voice, and I think that’s probably one of the main reasons I decided to do this whole baptism thing today. So thanks for being a group of people who help me pay attention to that voice, and thanks for listening today.