Sermon: Red Socks: Dare We Be Christians?

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Red Socks - Dare We Be Christians?

James Sledge                                                                                       July 26, 2020

Have you ever done a load of white laundry, and something dark got mixed in? A single, red item somehow went unnoticed, and you open the washer to discover that everything has turned pink. It’s amazing the way one, unseen thing can give you a new wardrobe.

Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven, the coming rule of God, is a little like that. Jesus speaks of yeast and mustard seeds rather than red socks, but the meaning is much the same. Mustard plants weren’t typically grown as crops in Palestine, but the tiny seeds did find their way into the grain farmers sowed. The minuscule, dust-like seeds were easy to miss amidst the grain. Only later would the farmer realize that a fast growing mustard plant was transforming his field into something quite other than he had intended.

And the yeast in Jesus’ parable is not the packaged product we buy in stores for baking. This leaven is dough that has soured, begun to go bad. Bread makers know it as starter. It is added to a new mix of dough to make it rise in baking.

In the Bible, leaven is almost always a symbol of corruption. Leavened bread could never be used as an offering to God. At Passover, not only was leavened bread forbidden, but no trace of leaven was allowed in people’s homes. And Jesus himself speaks of the teachings of the Pharisees as leaven, something that corrupts and distorts the good gift of God’s Law.

But in the parables we heard this morning, Jesus speaks of God’s hoped-for new day as like a mustard seed that unexpectedly sprang up in the field, like leaven that has transformed the bread into something that is no longer fit to be offered to God, like a red sock that has turned white dress shirts pink.

Perhaps it is a bit unsettling to think of the kingdom, the dream of God’s new day, as something that subverts and corrupts, especially for us Presbyterians who love things “decently and in order.” But Jesus says the kingdom that has come near is like something subversive and corrupting that insidiously, almost imperceptibly, works to change things.

Jesus continues his surprising imagery in describing the Kingdom’s great worth. Merchants, like the one who finds the pearl, were the used car salesmen of Jesus’ day, and the fellow who finds a treasure in someone else’s field either commits fraud or theft to acquire it. I suppose Jesus is saying that the Kingdom, God’s new day, is so desirable that we should risk anything to be part of it.

Jesus says that in him this Kingdom, God’s rule, has come near, a small, easy to miss presence that threatens to turn the world upside down, lifting up the poor, the lowly, the weak, the despised, and the outcast. For those on top, the rich, the powerful, the caretakers of religious institutions, this may well seem a corrupting influence that needs to be wiped out. Killing Jesus was supposed to stop it, but Easter morning declared that the threat, the corrupting influence of the Kingdom, was very much alive.

Unfortunately the Church has often marginalized the Kingdom. Over the centuries, the radical Jesus movement gradually evolved into a religion not so different from other religions. It became more and more focused on rules for belonging, on correct beliefs. In turn, these became requisites for getting into heaven when you died. In more modern times, as societies became more individualistic, faith often became a very personal thing that saved you. To varying degrees among different denominations, the corrupting, world altering presence of the Kingdom received little more than lip service, or was forgotten altogether. 

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Back in the 1980s, our denomination  began a formal peacemaking ministry. We declared peacemaking to be every believer’s calling, and the General Assembly urged congregations to integrate peacemaking into their ministry. They created the annual Peacemaking Offering. Resources were developed to study and discuss peacemaking, including a pledge that church sessions could approve and sign to declare they were a Peacemaking congregation.  Many presbyteries encouraged their congregations to sign this “commitment to peacemaking” and publically announced the percentage of congregations who had signed on.

Supporting peacemaking seems like a no-brainer. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Surely everyone would want to sign a “commitment to peacemaking.” But in fact, peacemaking proved to be a contentious subject. In 1980, the shadow of the Vietnam War loomed large, and some equated peacemaking with anti-war demonstrators. Many sessions refused to sign on. The first church I served was one. They worried that it was a political statement that aligned them against the military or US defense policy. And after all, wasn’t Christian faith about personal salvation, not politics.

Yet when Jesus begins his ministry, his first words are about the Kingdom coming near.  Jesus uses a political image, and he says that the arrival of God’s rule, God’s new government, requires us to change, to repent, to begin living different sorts of lives now.

We Americans have little experience with kingdoms or kings. And though we are sometimes fascinated by British royalty, we typically know them as figureheads. But when Jesus speaks of  the Kingdom, he does so in a world where kings make the rules. Proclaiming God’s kingdom is an explicit claim that God governs. God is the central character in the life of the world and is at work in surprising, even subversive ways to bend history and the world toward God’s purposes. But the world and many of us do not believe it.

It turns out that it is quite easy to believe in God without believing that God rules. We can believe in God but still act as though the real rulers of the world are money, military might, political clout, etc. Very often “the almighty dollar,” the desire for success, political ideologies, and more rule over our lives much more than God does.

Not Jesus. Jesus is so certain that God rules, his life so saturated by that rule, that he lives and acts in surprising, subversive ways, casting his lot with the poor, oppressed, and sinners, undermining the powers-that-be just as leaven changes the dough. Jesus is so certain that God rules, that the world will come under that rule, he is willing to give his life for it.

How absurd to believe that God is really in charge of history, that we cannot secure our future via military might or economic power. How foolish to believe that God is on the side of the weak and the vulnerable, and that God’s will – not ours nor Wall Street’s nor some political party’s nor anyone else’s – is going to be done here on earth. How ridiculous to believe that I become fully human only as I acknowledge God’s rule and my life is shaped by it just as Jesus’ was. And what an idealistic delusion to think that we as the Church could live together in ways that demonstrate and embody God’s rule for all the world to see.

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When I graduated from seminary, a favorite professor gave me a gift, a little book by Walter Rauschenbusch entitled, Dare We Be Christians? It was written in 1914, a time when the American Church was filled with confidence. But Rauschenbusch, who had worked in a poor, destitute part of New York City, thought that the Church’s focus on personal salvation had undermined Jesus’ teachings about the Kingdom and our call to embody it. And he asks if we dare believe the absurdity and foolishness Jesus declares to us and calls us to live out.

Dare we? Dare we trust that the power of resurrection has be set loose in the world? Dare we trust that God will provide and equip us to live in ways that transform others and the world?  Dare we become agents of God’s coming rule – leaven, mustard seeds, red socks – as citizens of the Kingdom that Jesus says has drawn near?