Once upon a time—until quite recently, in fact—there was an annual gathering of a consortium of Episcopal parishes with large endowments. To be invited to this gathering, your church’s endowment had to be of a certain size, and that size was not small. (Translation: Good Shepherd, Rosemont would not have been invited.) This annual meeting of parishes ended up being an elite convocation of large, wealthy churches, while smaller, less wealthy churches who weren’t invited sometimes cast verbal stones from afar on Facebook.
But I want to create another consortium. In this more expansive annual gathering, struggling parishes wouldn’t celebrate their smallness in contrast to larger and wealthier parishes, but instead, they would recount how in their experience of ministry God had created something incredible out of something tiny and insignificant. In this consortium, we might find small and large parishes, because large parishes must begin small, right?
To group parishes into large ones and small ones, successful ones and struggling ones, would intimate that we can evaluate the success of Gospel work based on numbers and statistics or on sizes of endowments. If you’re only impatiently looking for size or wealth to measure fruitfulness, you might be blind to mustard seeds that can grow patiently into fruitful shrubs. In the economy of God’s kingdom, large and small parishes, well-endowed and barely endowed parishes can speak the same language. A consortium of large, endowed parishes assesses Gospel ministry from a place of arrival, but our hypothetical consortium of parishes would reflect how the kingdom of heaven can flourish from out of nothing.
When Jesus himself talks about the kingdom of heaven, he gives us many images. No image fits the bill completely. The mustard seed, for instance, is a valuable image of the kingdom of heaven, but Jesus also gives us the wonderful image of leaven hidden in flour. And this image beautifully describes how our imaginary consortium of parishes could begin to talk about the kingdom of heaven.
The leaven of which Jesus speaks isn’t like the yeast we buy in the store and mix with water, salt, honey, and flour to make bread. This leaven is more organic and much messier. It’s like a sourdough bread starter. Have you ever made sourdough bread?
Several years ago, I led a young adult ministry that was based in an abandoned church in south Philadelphia. This church had been closed years before by the diocese. The historic building where Marian Anderson had once sung in the choir and where W.E.B. DuBois had worshiped was empty and silent. When our little group of young adult leaders began to organize the ministry there, we were told that the building was unsafe and that it would take hundreds of thousands of dollars to make the building structurally sound. There was mold in the ceiling tiles. Part of the nave floor was structurally unstable. The sacristy was littered with debris from a collapsed ceiling. Drawers in the vesting cabinet were left open as if someone had ransacked the place, or more likely, scurried away with the church’s possessions after being told the church was closed.
But that didn’t deter us. Our group was there to try something new, to try to reach young adults in the neighborhood who might be suspicious of the Church and to form community around the baking of bread. While the dough was rising, we engaged in conversations on various topics.
And I’ll never forget that sourdough starter. It belonged to a member of our group who was especially enthusiastic about making bread. One day, that person combined a little flour and water in a mason jar and left it in the church’s parish house where we gathered. When we came back to the building a few days later, the jar was overflowing with activity. It was frothing like crazy, and we all laughed. We laughed not because it was frothing like crazy but because we knew why it was full of bubbles, foam, and literally overflowing out of the jar. This little sourdough starter, formed by mixing a bit of water and flour had very quickly begun feeding on bacteria and yeast in the room. It was alive.
Had we left this starter in a restaurant kitchen that had passed safety inspection, it would not have looked the same. Had we left it in the industrial kitchen of a large, endowed parish, it might only have been lightly foaming. But this starter was growing out of control because it had been left in an abandoned, dirty, smelly, moldy church. All that nasty stuff we’d rather not think about and that might not even be very good for us was causing that sourdough starter to sizzle with life. And soon enough, that boisterous starter would serve as leaven for some dough to be baked into a gorgeous, delicious loaf of bread. And that tasty bread would feed all kinds of people: misfits, the lonely, the distressed, and those longing for meaning in their lives.
Now, for the end of the story. The ministry we started never took off. COVID didn’t help it. But what did happen is that the parish was reopened by the diocese and is now a living congregation. I like to think that our presence in that building for a brief period played some small part in that parish’s reopening, even if the end result looked nothing like what we had initially envisioned. And through that experience, I learned that a sourdough starter is a fantastic image of how things work in the kingdom of heaven.
When you heard today’s Gospel lesson, did you wonder why the woman hid the leaven in the flour? Could it be that the catalyst for growth and change is often something that we fail to notice? Could it be that God will use what is seemingly insignificant, unnoticeable, small, and even nasty to create a buzzing hive of Gospel activity?
Jesus’s parables invite us to focus not on the end result of our labor or ministry but on the beginning. This is the difference between a consortium of parishes celebrating their wealth and visible significance as opposed to our imagined consortium of parishes. Our consortium would reflect on how we must temper our human impatience with God’s divine patience to truly see what growth in the kingdom of heaven looks like.
This is good news to every church that was on the brink of closure but then was given a second chance. The movement of the Holy Spirit is often most palpable in those places where the roofs leak and windows are broken. In those places and people, God will surprise us by using all kinds of natural yeast and bacteria to leaven a lump of dough that can be baked into delicious bread that will feed the world.
Jesus’s parables of the mustard seed and the leaven don’t encourage complacency with being small. Far from it. And the status quo of size can be its own idol, whether large or small. All the parables of the kingdom of heaven assume growth. They assume that in the heavenly kingdom, sin will be transformed through repentance, and what is old will be made new. In the kingdom of heaven, nothing stands still. Jesus’s parables assure us that God wants ministry to flourish, not to decline. They assure us that the Church won’t die out but will once again send out her members in peace and love to the ends of the earth, even if some pruning and purging must happen first. Jesus’s parables are no excuse to celebrate our smallness. They are invitations to hope that even when it seems like we are nothing or don’t have enough, God will surprise us.
And God will surprise us with those things that sometimes remain hidden at first. All around us is fodder for the sourdough starter that will leaven ordinary dough into a beautiful loaf of bread. Hidden among us are unused gifts and the gifts of others whom God will send here to build up his kingdom on earth. Unknown to us are the ways in which leaking roofs, frustrated plans, and budget challenges will lead us to pursue the ministry to which God is calling us. Yet unseen are the mustard seeds of this world that God will plant in the soil of this place that will one day flourish into shrubs to provide shelter for the wandering birds of the air.
Put a mason jar with a bit of water and flour down in this place, come back in a few days, and you might be surprised. Go ahead, laugh, because like the elderly Sarah in the Book of Genesis, we should laugh at how God surprises us by leavening our lives with hope.
We are flour and water. We are ordinary stuff meant to be transformed into something extraordinary. We may think we aren’t enough to do anything. We may think we don’t have enough to do anything worthwhile. But think again. One life lived and sacrificed on a cross was the source of the entire world’s salvation. What is hidden among us can be revealed by God as leaven to transform a plain lump of dough. God will make it rise. We are to bake it. And with just a little, the entire world can be fed.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
July 30, 2023