A little over a year ago when we first entered into lockdown and as COVID raged across the world, I decided to experiment with baking cakes. Although I am quite fond of cooking, I have tended to shy away from baking.
There is a reason for this: I don’t like the unpredictability of it.. And though I enjoyed chemistry in high school, I don’t care for chemistry in the culinary realm. Baking is chemistry, they say, but I’ve always preferred cooking because it’s more like creative improvisation.
When I assemble ingredients, I like to know that I can fudge a bit here and there and that the final product will still turn out well. My previous forays into baking cakes, over ten years ago, were mixed, pun intended. I started with the scrumptious Decadent Chocolate Cake from the Silver Palate Cookbook. On more than one occasion, the cake stuck to the pan. It tasted delicious, but it looked terrible. Ultimately, in frustration, I eschewed baking cakes for over ten years.
Whether you’re a baker or not, I imagine you have a general concept of how it goes. Maybe it’s not quite as maddening to you as it is to me, in that baking is both a science and an art. You must precisely measure out the ingredients, combine them in a specific order, and bake at a particular temperature for a determined amount of time. There’s not much wiggle room there. With baking, you can essentially control the preparation and when the cake comes out of the oven, but everything in between is out of your hands. And for some, like me, this can be very, very frustrating.
Besides all this, there are a number of other factors that determine whether the cake is light, moist, and intact, or dense, dry, and crumbling. There is the humidity in the room, the accuracy of the oven, the quality of the ingredients, and often it seems, what direction the wind is blowing. There’s so much uncertainty in this in-between time, when the cake bakes in the oven, out of your hands.
Now, if Jesus had lived within a culture that baked cakes as we do, he might have used the image of baking, instead of scattering seed, to describe the kingdom of God. There is, of course, no adequate metaphor for this kingdom. And this elusive kingdom is always like something but not equivalent to anything. We are always talking around the kingdom and trying to get a glimpse into its ultimate opacity.
Appropriately, Jesus uses an agricultural image: the kingdom of God is like seed being scattered, perhaps recklessly and wantonly, creatively and generously. The casting of the seed is something that we can actually do. God has called us to be sowers of his word. And this resonates with us, because we can, in some sense, be in control.
But unless we are avid gardeners or horticulturalists, some of us might resonate more with the metaphor of baking to wrap our minds around this mysterious kingdom of God. We can spend hours and hours mixing the very best baking ingredients in a precise order and in very finite quantities. But at some point, we will have to turn it over to that in-between time, the time that we cannot control.
Once the ingredients are mixed and the cake is in the oven, we must wait and wait and wait. We can sleep and rise and go about our business. We can twiddle our thumbs or fidget with anxiety. But this period of baking is uncontrollable, even though we may want to manipulate its outcome.
If it happens that the cake is a success, we bask with not a little pride in the reward of our labor. But if the cake sticks to the pan or weighs as much as a brick, annoyance might tempt us to give up on our efforts.
When we are alert and attentive, we eye the cake through the glass of the oven door so that we are ready at just the right moment to swoop in and gather the culinary fruits of our labor before the cake is overcooked or burns. The beginning and the end we think we can manage, but as for the in-between, it escapes our grasp.
Understandably, we might be left confused about our role in relation to God’s kingdom, especially if it is anything like baking a cake—or scattering seed, for that matter. If we can only perfect the beginning and be ready to act at the end, what do we do in between? Can we ultimately do anything at all? We are torn between a desire to rely only on our own efforts and the temptation to do nothing.
During the in-between time, we try to mix all the right ingredients when raising our children in the faith, but we know ultimately that how they turn out is in God’s hands. We aspire to embody the Gospel in our lives, but we know, at the end of the day, that we cannot guarantee anyone will notice it. We say our prayers with diligence, but how those prayers will be answered is out of our control. We busy ourselves with evangelistic efforts, parish activities, and programming, hoping that our little sliver of the kingdom will grow. But we can never be certain of the results.
And this may seem to bring little good news. It is the reason why so many people simply give up on it all. Rather than becoming more abundant with the way they live, they become more miserly with anxiety and fear. They stop sowing the seed with abandon and turn inwards. They give up baking for over ten years as I did, because if the outcome can’t be guaranteed, it’s better not to try at all.
But there is always good news from the mouth of Jesus, even if we don’t understand it at first. We will not be able to predict the exact outcome when God takes over. We will have to live with the uncertainty of the in-between time. And yet God has something good in store for us; this we know. Baking may be a useful metaphor for the kingdom of God, but only to a point. Some of the cakes are going to taste like cardboard or stick to the pan. But Jesus has assured us that the kingdom of God will flourish by the hand of God, no matter how incompetent we feel in our own endeavors or how confused we are about our role.
The decline of the Church or the winnowing down of God’s kingdom is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more we tell ourselves it is happening, the more it will be realized in our psyche and the more we will convince others it is true. But the cake has not yet come out of the oven. God is always moving in and among us, so that we can remain alert for the first signs of the fruits of our labor.
Throughout history, God has brought growth into the least likely circumstances. What have seemed like unfortunate occasions have mysteriously ushered in a revivified spread of the Gospel. Where there has been malaise in the Church, accidents of history have brought gifts to the spread of the Gospel. Where the seed has appeared to be dormant, life has suddenly sprung into being. Even a parish like ours, which has at times questioned its future, can be brought to life again, all by the grace of God. At times, we may give up on God, but God has not given up on us. Jesus has told us that the seed will sprout and grow, even though we know not how. We may fret about how the cake will turn out, but God has something delicious in store for us.
For some, our lack of control during the in-between time is an invitation to laziness, for others permission to micromanage. But Jesus calls us to something else. He calls us to patience and to the long view of history. He calls us away from easy triumphalist accounts of modern progress. And he summons us towards an unflinching conviction that God will make his kingdom flourish, although we know not how.
And because we know that God works for good and that his kingdom will ultimately reign, then Jesus calls us away from anxiety and to a celebration of this in-between time. Here Jesus is asking us to work, to mix our ingredients, and then, to turn our labors over to God. Jesus urges us to be alert and ready, because one day, we will suddenly see that the harvest is ripe. And it will be time to feast.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 13, 2021