- October 4, 2026 Sermon
Anita Wallinger
Yesterday we celebrated St Francis of Assisi. Today is the calendar day of his feast but since it’s Sunday-the Lord’s Day-it was transferred to yesterday. St Francis is a favorite saint of many. Maybe you have a favorite saint, or your early formation did not really mention saints at all except for the eleven disciples or not putting saint in front of anyone.
In a month we will celebrate All Saints Day on November 1st. Our church’s namesake. We will sing about the saints saying we want to be one too. Do we really? Singing about the saints with the capital “S” and the saints with the little “s.” Both are important. Let’s talk first about the capital S St Francis.
Born in Assisi in 1181 or82. He was baptized Giovanni Bernadone, but nick named Francesco by his wealthy fabric merchant father who had just returned from France, which he adored.
Most accounts have Francis as the only son who became a leader amongst his wealthy young friends, spending time partying. It is also to be noted that he was teased by these same friends for his generosity to those in need, with his father’s money.
Like many rich young men of his time, he dreamed of being a knight and win glory in war. In 1202 he got his chance and joined the army of Assisi to fight the neighboring community of Perugia. Dressed in fine armor and on a war horse off he went. Perugia overwhelmed Assisi, slaughtering the poorer soldiers. Recognizing the cost of his armor Francis was spared and held for about 9 months for ransom in a damp dungeon where he contracted malaria. He returned to Assisi seriously ill. Still, he wanted to be a knight and when another army was forming, off he went in 1205.
After a few days traveling, he had a vision from God asking what he was doing for God, so he turned back. He then met a leper. Now lepers disgusted Francis, but he dismounted, kissed, and embraced the leper. He returned home where he waited in prayer and solitude to learn God’s will for him. After hearing Matt 10:7-19 ( go two by two taking no purse or second coat), he renounced his wealth. He then had a vision where Christ told him to rebuild His church. St Damiano church nearby was in ruins, so he started selling things to give to rebuild it. He took valuable and expensive cloth from his father’s business selling it and tried to give the proceeds to a local priest who refused. His father found out and hauled him in front of the bishop. Francis stripped off his clothes and threw the money in front of his father. He declared that he did not recognize Pietro Bernadone as his father but only recognized GOD. The astonished Bishop, admiring the devotion of Francis covered him with his own cloak. Francis went to Mount Subasio and began preaching to towns’ people and all he met. He was a lay preacher without a license to do so. He attracted many followers. Francis drew up a simple rule in 1209, to follow the teachings of our Lord and walk in His footsteps.
He and twelve followers went to Rome to petition Pope Innocent III to form a religious community. The Pope was reluctant, but he had a dream of Francis holding up the Church of St John Latern, this was the Pope’s church before the Vatican was built. April 16, 1210, marks the official founding of the Friars Minors as they became known. They were street preachers and not priests and had no possessions.
1212, Clare of Assisi and other young rich women renounced their wealth and with Francis’ guidance formed the second order of Franciscans, the Poor Clares. They lived in small communities serving the poor and ill. Being women, it wasn’t proper or safe to travel preaching like the Friars Minors.
Sept 1219, during a crusade, Francis and some followers crossed enemy lines to meet with Sultan al-Malik al-Kamilin in Egypt. He hoped to convert him and open the Holy places in Palestine. The Sultan was not converted but was impressed by Francis’ manner that he respected him and opened the Holy Places. He called Francis the little man.
1221 a third order of Franciscans was opened to priests and lay people who wanted to live by the principals without joining the full order. Now it was available not only to the rich but for the poor, married, and ordinary people. Notables who joined the third order were Louis 9th of France, Sir Thomas More, Dante, Michaelangelo, Franz Liszt, and Christopher Columbus.
1223 Francis participated in the First Living Nativity. He wanted to dematerialize Christmas. So, it’s not a modern problem.
The Order grew rapidly and Francis wasn’t known for being an administrator. He was removed as head of the order for his “health” by Pope Honerius III in 1224 who approved a revised rule which was more relaxed than Francis.’
Sept 17, 1224, at Mount La Verna, Francis had a vision of a seraph and after the vision faded, he was the first person with the stigmata, the five marks of Christ’s wounds on his hands, feet, and side. He tried to hide it from others. He died Oct 3 or 4,1226, blind from trachoma he contracted in the middle east. He was quickly canonized by his patron Pope Gregory III July 16,1228. This was because his poverty and simplicity rule made the powers in the church nervous. They didn’t want to give up wealth and prestige but saw how the people admired Francis so much. Pope Gregory admired him and knew if he didn’t move fast the powers would prevail and Francis would be forgotten.
Francis wrote his simple rule, letters, poems, and hymns. The most famous is “Canticle of the Sun,” where we hear Br Sun, Sr Moon. His first recorded prayer “My God and my All.”
Quotes
Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
Do few things but do them well, simple joys are holy.
A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.
It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.
The Peace prayer is attributed to him, but it was written in the 20th century. It does align with his philosophy.
Many gardens have a statue of St Francis including our memorial garden.
Nov 29, 1979, Pope John Paul II declare him Patron Saint of Ecology.
Jan 10, 2026-Jan 10, 2027, Pope Leo 14th declared the Jubilee of St Francis as it is the 800th year since his death. But don’t just regulate him to a touchy-feely saint of animals and earth. How would he had addressed the Prosperity Gospel beliefs? The church at his time was wealthy while most people lived day to day. His simple rule to give up all possessions and follow Jesus from his reading of Matthew 10 made many uncomfortable, especially priests and others in church hierarchy. Even his own father who loved him. Many of his own followers thought he was too strict with simplicity and poverty.
What would he think of our “love of Money.” Like Paul he would have seen it as a trap. We honor celebrities, watch the Rich and Famous, Francis gave it all up. His mantra, My God and my All.
What would he think of the climate crisis? He was not a vegetarian, but he saw God in all creation. He saw creation as being interconnected. He talked to wolves and birds. What do we think of that?
He was a man of prayer and vision. He did not start out to change the world, just his life and to build up the church.
Now let’s talk about little s saints. Tomorrow is the celebration of my mom’s 100th birthday. We had a typical Mom-daughter relationship. She was very outspoken in her views, and I was nothing like her. My brother had even convinced me that I was adopted. I thought I looked nothing like her, she was taller until the end, darker hair, and complexion, but then I got my hair cut from midback to pixie. There was my mom! I swore I didn’t act like her, well ask Dave I do have her stubborn streak just a slower fuse, but it does get lit. She taught me to love God and the earth. She was a great gardener and had a fantastic green thumb (mine not so much). Though I brought her and my father to the Episcopal Church, she loved it, became regularly active, in attendance and service on the vestry. Even as Alzheimer’s claimed her mind, she liked church especially the quiet 8 am service. There are many more little saints in my life as I’m sure there are in yours. Why do we study saints? Well, they are like the scriptures we read today. Saints are also like icons. They point to Jesus, God. The Ten Commandments show us how to live in relationship to God and to others. In Philippians, Paul talks about how he has tried to live a righteous life but that he was able to learn and change becoming more open to the marginalized and outsiders following Jesus. Then we have Matthew, the third vineyard parable on as many Sundays. Jesus talks of temporary tenants who through greed ignore all others trying to keep it all for themselves. Not sharing the abundance like the leaders who ignore those in need. St Francis embraces all these precepts. He wanted people to focus on the teachings of Jesus and not get wrapped up in power ignoring the marginalized. So, what saints you feel close to, St Francis, St Peter or your grandmother who taught you to love Jesus and your neighbor. Keep your eye on Jesus and His way. But realize even saints were not perfect. St Peter denies Jesus, my mother loved all kinds of people, but she was a woman who was raised to see race as an issue, love them but not too closely. So, take the parts of your saints that point to Jesus. Like St Francis’ simple rule, follow Jesus’ path. Let us say together the Peace Prayer based on St Francis’ beliefs.
- August 30, 2026 Sermon
Pentecost 14 (A) – Proper 17
Penny Sites/Kelsey Bullinger
Say Yes
Peter says it can’t happen: Jesus can’t be allowed to die.
Mind you, this challenge to Jesus follows right after the passage we heard together last week, in which Peter totally gets the question right when Jesus asks him, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter proclaims that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus says, that’s right. That’s who I am. I am the Son of God—and I will die.
And Peter says it can’t happen.
In the Neil Gaiman novel Good Omens, the end of the world is ushered in by the birth of the anti-Christ, as foretold by Agnes Nutter, a 16th century witch. It’s a great book, like most of Neil Gaiman’s work, well researched, poignant, hilarious, and now available as a series on Amazon Prime.
In the story, four people come from the four corners of the world to find each other. They are the four horsemen of the apocalypse: There’s War, a fiery haired woman who flies in from a war zone somewhere in the world. Then there’s Famine, a man who, at the time of the apocalypse, is making his money selling food that isn’t really food. Then there’s Pollution, a dark-haired woman who has stepped in for the apocalypse after the retirement of Pestilence.
We have to forgive Neil Gaiman for thinking that pestilence, or disease, wasn’t a threat anymore. He wrote Good Omens in 1990, thirty years before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse ride into the town in which the witch predicted Armageddon would take place. Pollution, Famine, and War all ride motorcycles and arrive looking for the fourth horseman: Death.
Arriving in all black, Death opens his helmet to reveal that his face is just bones.
One of the others sneers, “Where have you been?”
Death answers, “I never left.”
Of all the Bible’s greatest enemies, Death is the most real to us, the most relevant to our lives. It indeed has never left. It has been with all of us from the very beginning and long, long before any of us was born.
In the Bible, Death is the last enemy to be destroyed. Death is the opposite of life. And death is everywhere, striking all the time.
Death strikes this week, as wars rage and terror strikes around the world.
Death strikes this week, in every tragedy that made the news.
Death struck this week, in every state in the nation, and all around the world, when families received the unexpected news that a loved one had died, in untold tragedies that didn’t make the news.
Death never left.
We don’t like to think about Death. We push it away. Which why some part of us understands exactly why Peter says what he says in this Gospel lesson. His beloved friend and teacher, Jesus—the one he left everything to follow—tells them that he will suffer and die.
As Matthew tells it, Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”
We may find ourselves thinking, and rightly so: “Who would dare to rebuke the Son of God? Bad move.”
But it turns out that the more you live, and the more death you see, the more you get exactly why Peter says what he says here. I think most of us, maybe all of us, if we were in Peter’s shoes, would’ve said the exact same thing.
“I left everything for you! I love you! You’ve brought meaning to my life that I never knew before. What on God’s green earth would I DO if you died?”
It’s easy to forget, when we read these stories, that Peter didn’t know the ending. All he knew was what he knew. And he knew that death was—is—a permanent condition. If Jesus died, as Peter saw it, then that was it. Sure, Jesus talked about resurrection, but hearing about something miraculous is very different than seeing it for yourself.
So Peter takes him aside and says this just can’t happen.
Jesus answers with his famous call for the disciples to take up their cross and follow him. Again, we risk missing the meaning here. The cross has come to have a special meaning in our lives, in Christian culture, and in the culture at large. The cross doesn’t mean to us now what it did then, before Jesus ever hung on one.
Back then, the cross was an instrument of torture, fear, and death. To take up a cross was to meet Death, face to face.
But we do know the end of this story. We know what Peter doesn’t know: That death will come for Jesus, that that won’t be the end.
Death never left, but Death doesn’t get the final word.
The worst thing that can happen is never the last thing. Faith may die on Friday, but it rises again every Sunday—and that is why we are here in church.
Peter says it can’t happen. Jesus says, Get Behind Me, Satan, because Jesus knows what comes after death comes.
“I am here,” Jesus says, “and Death no longer has the final word.”
None of us can say “No” to death.
Jesus reminds us that though we cannot say “No” to Death, we can say “Yes” to resurrection, “Yes” to Life—because with all of the world’s horror comes all its beauty, too.
William Stafford wrote a poem called Yes. It goes like this.
It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.
It could, you know. That’s why we wake
and look out––no guarantees
in this life.
But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.Death will come.
But so will sunshine, love, salvation.
And Jesus will come here with us—in bread and wine and water and words and us.
Jesus, over whom Death did not win, here with us forever: in morning, in right now, in noon, in evening. And in the darkest night of your life.
Jesus reminds us that it will happen. But Death does not have the last word.
You can say yes, unafraid. Amen.
Anna Tew is a Lutheran (ELCA) pastor serving Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she has served for a full decade. Originally from Alabama, she went to seminary at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. Anna enjoys being outdoors: hiking, running, snowboarding, and many other pursuits. She is also a Level 2 CrossFit coach and enjoys training herself and helping people with all types of bodies to be strong, resilient, and ready for a challenge.
- August 9, 2026 Sermon
Proper 14, 11th Sun after Pentecost
Mother Christina Cernansky
I speak to you in the name of Source, God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, mother of us all.
One of my favorite, most memorable movie scenes as a child is of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Do I have any fans? Bear with me as I nerd out with you this am.
In this movie, the third in the series, the main character, played by Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, or Indy, has to find the fastest way to the “Holy Grail” to save his father, who some bad guys shot. There are a handful of obstacles and challenges that test his knowledge of the Christian faith. His Father, also a scholar, kept a journal of clues to help him find the “Holy Grail”.
There is a great 5-minute clip if you want to get a recap, as I did to prepare for this sermon.
These obstacles are tied to clues from Indy’s father’s journal. There are three obstacles: 1- the breath of God, 2- the Word of God, and 3- the Path of God.
The first segment, Breath of God, is where we need to kneel in front of God to show humility, trusting God is present; the clue here is: “Only the penitent man shall pass.” This obstacle has giant saws come from different angles so that if you don’t kneel…;
The second, Word of God, is knowing how to spell Jevohah, and the clue is: “Follow the path of God.” Ok, side note here: (spoiler alert: it starts with an I; the ancient Latin alphabet did not have the letter “J”. In classical and medieval Latin, the sound we now associate with the letter “J” was written using the letter “I”). So this second obstacle is to teach us to know the word and understand the word. I like to think of this as having critical thinking skills when reading scripture. Indy is to step on stones with letters; a foundation lies beneath the correct letters. H first stepped on “J” but quickly corrected course after nearly falling through a gaping hole, then got up and started with the letter “I”.
Lastly, the path of God to walk with faith, the clue in his father’s journal is: “A leap from the lion’s head.” Indy looks over a gorge, a canyon, and sees the path across the gorge. But how shall he walk over? He blindly stepped out into nothing, but then…he steps onto a pathway that is so camouflaged you can barely see it.
Here, Indy is fighting against his mind’s beliefs about his current environment and his heart and soul, but his connection with God must override his mind.
You get where I am going here….
Throughout my life, I have returned to that image of walking blindly, relying on my faith to move forward without certainty. Without any confirmation that this is the right path. To trust that something is bigger at play here. To trust that I might feel alone, that I might be making the wrong decision, or that the decision might be hard, but knowing that I am not alone and all will be well…and that is having faith.
Peter also knows this; he gets it, he has seen and experienced miracles, time and time again. His faith has been put to the test, yet, through it all, he knows he can trust the teachings of Jesus.
But here we are again, dear Peter, who is doubting, needing proof, needing an explanation, needing more. Sound familiar?
We are in a new Chapter at All Saints; we get to walk together in faith into this next phase of our discernment. I joined your team for at least a couple of years, if not longer. Fr. Joseph is on sabbatical for the next three months; we have the vestry discerning paths to take after our last annual meeting, where we created our parish’s mission and vision.
We can take a page from Peter’s (and Indy’s) blind faith and humility. To sit with the word, to be humble in our actions, and to come together in community on this path. We can heed the call from Paul’s letter to the Romans: “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.”
The vestry has been talking with many of you about your ministries and how to deepen our community connections and our connections with one another.
We will be holding adult education forums this fall on Wednesdays & Sundays to help us deepen our understanding of our faith and the church’s mission. I made some flyers for those of you who might be considering joining us, even if you haven’t before. Maybe we can break bread together on Wednesdays beforehand?
Peter’s decision to join his teacher, to trust him, to take that first step is a testament to his faith.
So I invite you to do the same. I invite you to pray, to discern, reach within, and reach inside the parish walls and outside the walls: what is the Holy Spirit calling us to do? What is the Holy Spirit calling us to be part of here on the bench? Here in the Treasure Valley, in the world?
And I will quote Jesus here, if we might be ambivalent, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
BCP: 817 Almighty and everliving God, ruler of all things in heaven and earth, hear our prayers for this parish family. Strengthen the faithful, arouse the careless, and restore the penitent. Grant us all things necessary for our common life, and bring us all to be of one heart and mind within your holy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
- August 2, 2026 Sermon
The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Proper 13A
“Jesus withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself.” I mean, could I possibly pick a better Gospel lesson for the last Sunday before my sabbatical than this? Talk about rest and refreshment … and immediately get derailed because Jesus does not get a retreat or sabbatical out of this. As soon as he steps on land, the crowds show up, and he’s pulled into caring for them. So… in fact, it’s probably more a cautionary tale in my case then, no? Get out into that boat and go farther away or else people might expect you to teach and feed them! Run away!
But, I also am cautious about any sermon that puts the preacher in the hero role, or puts the preacher in the position of Jesus in the reading. I’ve heard plenty of sermons where the preacher reads their own experience a little too hard into the Gospel reading and preach on their own virtues. And we all know that my extraordinary humility would not allow me to be so self-absorbed that I make the sermon all about me, anyway. See? Extraordinary humility. So humble.
So if I’m not like Jesus in the Gospel story… who might I be? A disciple? One of those disciples? “Jesus, it’s late, we’re tired, send these crowds away who only came to see you. Surely they’re hungry, right? Can we please send them away?”
“Wait, Jesus, you’re not serious, right? We don’t have that much food. Five loaves, two fish. Some of us have been thinking about a tuna sandwich all day.”
“Oh… ok, fine. Whatever you say, Jesus. Wait, how do you still have fish and bread to give out? You’ve given me enough pieces that I think we could construct a whole house out of bread at this point!”
The humanness of the disciples along with the humanness of the crowds is where we find ourselves drawn today. The disciples are trying to be practical, and here then is a miracle. The crowds’ desire healing, and they are healed and fed. The crowds are our bodies – hungry and sick, tired and lonely. The disciples are our minds – trying to figure out how to get it all done, trying to sort out what we can take care of and what resources we need… while also managing our own bodies. We, too, get hungry and sick and tired.
I wonder if the disciples are willing to acknowledge that they are hungry and tired, too. Five loaves and two fishes aren’t much for these twelve apostles, let alone the crowd. And it’s been a long day of trying to listen. It takes a lot of energy to listen and focus. You’ve sat through some sermons that probably made a point somewhere along the way and then kept going. Many of you can recall what sitting in a classroom was like with a subject that you struggled to understand. Maybe the disciples are feeling anxious – this story of the miraculous feeding comes soon after the beheading of John the Baptist – perhaps the disciples are fearful of what might happen and want to close ranks and get away to be safe.
We Christians do a good job at times of acting as if our brains, our wills were just so superhuman that we can power through anything. Our bodies will drag us back down to earth, however.
In counseling, I use the acronym HALT a lot with the substance use group. HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired. If you’re any of those, then your body might be impacting your brain and possibly even your judgment. If you’re hungry, eat something before you bite someone’s head off. If you’re angry, maybe take time to re-center yourself before your anger leads you down a path you don’t want to go. If you’re lonely, go be social instead of sitting with that endless stream of thoughts of all the ways you’ve disappointed everyone who’s ever lived. If you’re tired, go rest instead of spiraling into whatever worry is consuming your brain. Your body is not to be neglected, and your brain needs your body on-board and well-nourished and cared-for in order to do what the brain needs to do – we do well to remember that our brains and minds are part of our body system.
The greatest danger to us spiritually is when we think we’re doing something for the right reasons – such as saying we’re worried about the crowds and saying they need to be sent home to eat and sleep – but it’s actually coming from something inside ourselves. We see that when it’s our own unhealed wounds that make us react with outsized emotion, or when people in power have unhealed wounds that lead them to do harmful things to others instead of doing the soul work inside.
We need to make ourselves aware of our own needs so that way we can work on them. The crowds knew what they needed: healing and food. The disciples didn’t seem to know what they themselves needed – but they sure were ready to tell Jesus what to do.
When we take time to know what we need, what we really need, deep inside our hearts and minds and bodies, then we can actually take care of ourselves. It’s scary at times – we want to pretend that our minds aren’t part of our bodies with all the woundedness of life. But we’re human – nothing more, and nothing less. To use a phrase from trauma work, “the body keeps the score” – our physical body and our squishy brains have a whole life continually being written in their fleshiness, and the story of our body is also being written into our brains.
We need to embrace all of that.
But, we’re also Christians. As Christians, we do not do this work by ourselves. We learn more about ourselves by being in this community, gathered in the name of Christ, the Body of Christ. We learn our own woundedness and we let the healing power of Christ work its work inside us and through us. We do not have to be whole to be a disciple of Jesus. We together make up the body of Christ, all our woundedness mingled with Christ’s own wounds on the cross.
The disciples, throughout the Gospels, are so incredibly human. Imperfect. Flawed. Wounded. The crowds know they’re sick and hungry – but the disciples seem to be unaware of their own needs; they just know the sensible words to say to get Jesus to send the needy crowd away.
So what is it that you need – deep down inside? How do you want to be like the crowd, bringing it to Jesus? How might you let Jesus work healing inside you – and make miracles happen through your work?
What is it that we need as a parish – deep down inside? How are we going to be the crowd bringing our sickness and hunger to Jesus to be transformed? How are we going to be disciples, taking our woundedness alongside our loaves and fishes, to let Jesus make a miracle happen through us? As we prepare for this wonderful sabbatical ahead, we do so knowing that Jesus is doing for us better things than we can ask or imagine. He will be here to feed us and care for us, to teach us and guide us. He will make the miracles happen: He will heal us, he will make loaves abundant for all, and we shall be filled. Amen.
- July 26, 2026 Sermon
The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Proper 12A
Parables, parables, parables! I do love that Jesus teaches us in parables. Parables are short stories that are meant to draw us in, to wrestle with the text, to think differently.
Yet we struggle with them because we want neat, tidy, clear-cut answers. Even though we Episcopalians are more comfortable with ambiguity and story-telling in our theology than many other denominations (and hence why our tradition has so many poets and authors represented in our theology), we still want the Bible and Jesus to be clear and straightforward. We want to know the point we’re supposed to take away from the Gospel passage. We want a nice one-to-one correlation on any symbols; we get anxious when it’s not perfectly clear. We want to wring all the juice out of these delicious Gospel oranges before we toss away the rind and drink the juice.
But story-teller Jesus wants to push us further than that. We don’t just load up the Gospel parable into the fancy juice-press, hit the button, and POOF get our simplified and digestible meaning.
Perhaps instead of Gospel oranges, we might think of the parables as Gospel broccoli. Sure, I guess you could toss it in a blender, but broccoli can be eaten raw, roasted, stir-fried, or tempura-battered and deep-fried. Broccoli is versatile and adaptable, loaded with nutrients and fiber – a great vegetable, indeed. And maybe I could give it my own parable twist: “The kingdom of heaven is like broccoli. A man upon going to the Mongolian stir-fry restaurant filled his bowl to the brim with broccoli, put noodles and sauce on top, and handed it to the cook to fry, and he ate a nutritious meal that nourished his body.”
Ok, I’m not a parable-master like Jesus, obviously. But the power of a parable is in the fact that it can be listened to from different angles. We let ourselves be surprised if we don’t try to shoe-horn in a familiar, clear-cut interpretation into the parable. What if we looked at the parable from all sorts of different angles? Like dream interpretation where we look at the meaning through the perspective of different people and things in our dream – what might we uncover in our understanding of the parables if we let our imaginations be part of the process?
And if we end up confused, we can take solace in the fact that the apostles and disciples were also often confused by the parables of Jesus. That’s ok! Our salvation is not found in being smart and clever – our salvation, life, and healing are all found in Jesus himself. As St Paul says, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. Our life is not found in squeezing the “correct” interpretation from a parable to make sure that we’re perfectly right. That’s not much of a journey with Jesus, and being Christian is that we journey together with Jesus, striving to be transformed as part of the Kingdom of Heaven, to be mustard seeds and yeast, to be merchants in search of pearls and to be a bundle of fish nets.
There is so much more to the parables than getting them right. The parables, if we chew on them, become part of our connection to Jesus. We’re sitting at his feet, wondering, contemplating what the words mean.
And we’re meant to do that contemplation together. So I want us to take time as a community to sit with one of the parables. I have some questions under the parable to help guide some group reflection. (Oh, yes, now you see that I’m up to no good, and I’m going to make you chew on the parables, too!) Then we’ll share back what we learned.
Parable 1: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
- Read this parable twice in your group.
- How is a mustard seed like the kingdom of heaven?
- What about the fully grown shrub is heaven-like?
- What do the birds mean in the kingdom of God?
- How are we called to be a mustard seed? A shrub? A bird?
Parable 2: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
- Read this parable twice in your group.
- How is yeast like the kingdom of heaven?
- Who is the woman? Does she represent someone? Us? God?
- What about the flour?
- How are we called to be yeast? A woman making bread? Leavened dough?
Parable 3: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”
- Read this parable twice in your group.
- How is treasure like the kingdom of heaven?
- Who is the person who found this treasure?
- Why did he hide it, sell all he has, then buy the field? Does this make him dishonest for not revealing the presence of the treasure to the person who originally owned the field?
- How are we called to be treasure? A man purchasing a field? The field?
Parable 4: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
- Read this parable twice in your group.
- How is a merchant searching for pearls like the kingdom of heaven?
- What is the point of selling all your property to buy a pearl to possess? Does that make good business sense?
- What makes this pearl one of great value, something to be prized above all other pearls?
- How are we called to be a merchant? A pearl of great value?
Parable 5: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
- Read this parable twice in your group.
- How is a net like the kingdom of heaven?
- How do we feel about the sorting at the end of the parable? How do we tell good fish from bad? Is it even our ability or responsibility to sort the good fish or bad fish?
- What is the net doing? What are the fish doing?
- How are we called to be a net? A fish? A basket?