The One Lost Sheep

Good sermon this morning on Jesus going after the one lost sheep and leaving the other 99 behind.  I always liked the story.  Still, I will always think of this man who showed up for a few Sundays, then disappeared over the summer.  He called me one day, irate that I had not gone after him, and left the other 99 behind.  I still wonder where he went.

I remember the One Lost Sheep

From two parishes back.

This man strayed

From every congregation

In the western suburbs.

He landed in mine.

He was disturbed that no one

Had found him

Over one summer.

He called,

Irate,

Said he was

The One Lost Sheep.

I had not left

The other 99 in the wilderness

To find him.

We were no good

Either.

I had not been Jesus

To him.

I still think about

That One Lost Sheep.

I wonder whether

He was ever found,

Having strayed from every parish

In the western suburbs.

Even mine.

The Sort

Preaching this Sunday.  It*s like adding yeast to flour.  Years ago I used to make bread.  I remember punching down the dough after the first rising, putting it in a warm place to rise again.  This morning I woke with my head spinning around all the parables.  I figure this is part of that first punching down.  We*ll see what it looks like after the second rising, and the baking.  I think I remembered to put salt in the dough.  Nothing worse than a tasteless loaf of bread.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like

Wheat and weeds growing

To be harvested together,

Only sorted

At the end.

The Kingdom:

It*s all the fish of the world

Swimming together,

Only gathered into nets

And sorted

In the end.

I remember the fairy tale:

The girl who was given the task

Of sorting all the grains of wheat

Out of a huge pile.

She enlisted the ants

To help her.

She could not do it alone.

I sort and sift and net

The parables of the Kingdom

Jesus told

plus a few more.

Instead of neat orderly piles,

They grow

(Mother used to say)

Like Topsy

(I never knew who Topsy was

But I knew she was always growing

Bigger than anything I ever knew)

Like mustard seeds

They become mustard trees,

Birds nest there.

Like yeast

They make more than enough bread

For the veritable Feast

At the end

More than enough bread

For the Heavenly Banquet.

Thistle

Jesus taught in parables, seemingly simple stories, with odd juxtapositions of images:  a good Samaritan, a woman sweeping her house to find a lost coin and spending more than the coin*s worth on a party, a mustard seed growing into a tree which will provide space for all the birds of the air... a mustard bush big as a house...some bush!  Jesus says to his disciples:    Do you understand?  They answer Yes.   Really?  Really?  Do they really understand?

Last summer a thistle grew

Next to the rhubarb.

In the near-demolished box

Of the vegetable bed,

A thistle took root.

I watered it.

Pretty soon I wondered

How big it would grow.

I remembered eventually

It would have purple flowers,

Then thistle seed for goldfinches.

It crowned at six feet

The thorns

The flowers

The seeds.

The goldfinches came

As I watched,

Swooped delighted in and out.

This Sunday Jesus asks us to consider

The mustard seed

The eventual mustard bush,

The birds that may visit

Even nest there

If we water it.

Each of us takes life at her own speed

As I sit with people, the truism that people do things when they*re ready to do them comes home again and again.  I have the privilege of talking about parables this Sunday.  One of the beauties of  a parable is that there is no one interpretation of them.  They have layers of interpretation.  Jesus* parables turn the world upside down and inside out.  They beg a nuanced understanding.  No matter where one is in life, whether one is going breakneck speed or slogging, there is room in a parable to enter and sift and reach an understanding, then do the same tomorrow, and find new understanding.  Each of us takes life at her own speed, his own speed.  The tortoise and the hare.  Sometimes we are blessed to see it.

Each of us takes life

At her own speed.

Such a simple thing to learn.

I had to slow

To see it.

Even now I sit sidelined

For numbers of slow days

Watch the sun*s slow illumination

Of the trees

The yard

The ducks

Even the mountain ash filled with cedar waxwings

This morning.

Sidelined

I watch things move

At their own speed:

The tortoise plods

The hare races

Until they are finally nothing

But dust

Yet more;

Each to his own speed

Her own speed

Both finally dust

And more.

The tortoise takes a slower time

To get there.

The hare thinks it is a race.

Both get there

Anyway.

Such a simple thing to learn.

In the end we are dust

Yet so much more than dust.

Loved and lovely dust

And really so much more,

No matter how long it takes

To get there.