So if we can’t find the kingdom of heaven on a map, if we can’t use GPS to get there, if we can’t say “here it is!” or “there it is!,” how do we know where to look for it?

 

In her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard writes, “When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find.  It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I’ve never been seized by it since.  For some reason I always “hid” the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street.  I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk.  Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions.  After I learned to write I labeled the arrows:  SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY.  I was greatly excited, during all this arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift form the universe.   But I never lurked about.  I would go straight home and not give the matter another thoughts, until, some months later, I would be gripped again by the impulse to hide another penny.”

 

Raise your hand if you noticed a penny on the floor of the sanctuary when you came in today.  Raise your hand if you picked it up.  

 

The world is blanketed with pennies, small treasures that are often too little for us to notice or to bother to pick up.  Yet in the parables we heard Jesus choose just these small insignificant things to be sign-posts of the kingdom of heaven.    A mustard seed, yeast, a pearl –these are all so small they can easily escape our notice, and yet in Jesus’ upside-down kingdom it is the “least of these” that he always draws our attention to.  

 

Not only are they small, but they are hidden—the mustard seed sown in the field, the yeast mixed in with three measures–a huge amount–of flour, treasure hidden in a field, one pearl in a merchant’s storehouse full of goods.  And those who see and find these small treasures hidden among the ordinary landscape of the world, these people, Jesus says, may count themselves rich.    

 

What makes them rich, however, is not the market value of a mustard seed, or yeast, or a pearl, but its power to transform.  The mustard seed transforms into a tree with many inviting branches.  The yeast transforms flour and water into nourishing bread.  And the pearl?  The pearl transforms the merchant who found it.  

 

The parable of the pearl has always baffled me.  I thought, once the merchant has finished selling everything he has to get the pearl—his chairs and table and bed and pots and pans and lamp and rugs and blankets—what good is the pearl going to be to him if he has no place to sit?  Isn’t he going to have to then sell the pearl to realize its value?  And then finally it hit me:  he sells everything he has to acquire the pearl because he is captivated by it.  He loves it for its beauty, not its utility.  This pearl is no longer a commodity to him, even him, this merchant who has been accustomed to looking at everything as a commodity.  Consider what Abraham Joshua Heschel said:  “Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a marketplace to you.”

 

Consider how much in our universe is hidden treasure to us.  It has no utility that we are aware of– yet.  There is so much more that we don’t know and don’t see than we do.  Consider that the universe itself is 68% dark energy.  Dark energy is just a name for something we don’t understand; all we know about it is that it is causing the universe to expand at a fast clip.  Dark matter makes up about 27% of the universe. The rest – everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter – adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. 

And of that 5%, how much do we perceive?  We see only about 30% of the light that comes from the sun; the rest is infrared and a little ultraviolet, apparent to many animals, but invisible to us.  We hear about 20% of the sounds produced in nature, the rest of it being infrasound, the low frequencies that elephants use to communicate, and ultrasound, the higher frequencies heard by bats and dolphins.

 

So Jesus is on to something when he speaks in these parables about the realm of heaven being hidden to us.  In these parables, the most important realities are either hidden mysteries or surprises.  Mysteries like, how does a teaspoon of yeast leaven a whole batch of bread?  How does a tiny seed grow into a tree?  Surprises like, the buried treasure found in the field, the pearl of great price discovered hidden among its lesser counterparts.   The kingdom of heaven is hidden underneath the surface of the small and ordinary.  

 

So if so much is hidden, so much is unknown to us, how do we find the treasure we are seeking?  How do we find the “x” that marks the spot?  Jesus suggests the key is knowing where to look.  And where to look is right under our noses.  “For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”  

 

Consider the parable of the woman who mixes yeast into flour.   In this parable she is baking a huge batch, enough for the whole village.  It is ordinary work that produces an everyday miracle, a little yeast working through flour and water to produce bread that will nourish a great number of people.  The parable takes an mundane domestic activity and sees it as a prism through which we may view the kingdom of heaven.  Our lives are all about the mundane:  the many uninspiring tasks on our to-do lists, the ordinary and routine activities that make up most of our days.  This is the work we have to do before we can get to what we really want to do.   It is the life that happens while we are busy making other plans.  Yet Jesus invites us to see these everyday activities as the place where the kingdom of heaven may be revealed.  We can either embrace our mundane activities and see what we are doing as valuable to God, or keep seeking the holy outside of our actual lives, outside of the moments that occupy most of our days. 

 

Each summer I spend many moments listening to children say, “I’m bored. There’s nothing to do.” And for a moment I panic and think, “what we were thinking to bring them to this vacation spot in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to occupy them besides the great outdoors?” or “what was I thinking not to sign them up for full-day camp and occupy their every waking moment?”  And then, almost as soon as they’re done speaking, I notice that they’ve found an interesting patch of green or constructed a flying object out of a straw and discovered something that a moment ago they had not seen at all, something previously hidden to them.

 

The same is true of me, on days I find myself saying, “I’m bored.  There’s nothing interesting here.”  If I allow myself to be bored for a moment or two, pretty soon I will discover something I had not seen before.  If I have nothing better to do, maybe I will even stoop to pick up a penny.

 

Annie Dillard writes, “There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises.  The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand.  But—and this is the point—who gets excited by a mere penny?  . . . It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny.  But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.  It is that simple,” she says. “What you see is what you get.”

 

So, I wonder if the Kingdom of heaven is hiding in plain sight?