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10:30 am Worship

Monday, June 16, 2025

Mark 4: 10-12 (ESV)

¹⁰ And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. ¹¹ And he said to them,

 "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God,

but for those outside everything is in parables,

¹² so that "they may indeed see but not perceive,

and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven."

I learned the secret yesterday of making a baguette of French bread very close to those made in France. It is said, of course, no one can make a perfect French baguette anywhere but Paris. Something in the air or the water or the grain grown there. Some mysterious and unseen ingredient. Inexplicable, really.

Doing it right takes the better part of a day. Lots of work. A very simple dough. Flour. Yeast. Water. Salt. When made correctly, it is a wet, sticky dough. Tricky to work with, and one will be working with it for hours. Make the dough. Let it rise 45 minutes. Return and gently work the dough, driving out the gases which caused it to rise. Let it rise 45 minutes. Repeat the process three more times. Then divide the dough, carefully working it and shaping it in a specific manner, again driving out the gases. Allow the loaves to rise a final time, then bake them in a very specific way with boiling water in the oven. Before placing them in the oven, slash the tops of the loaves to allow them to rise one final time into a specific shape. Every step, the baker warned, must be followed precisely.

Creation, then destruction. Repeated again and again. As the process moved ahead, one could see the nature of the dough changing. It grew in size, becoming steadily smoother and more elastic. This, the baker advised, was the only way to create the unique texture and taste, the look, and the crust of the French baguette.

Shortly after I watched the bread-making video, I watched another. An interview with an elderly and powerful Oriental master in the mysterious art of monkey kung fu. I was amazed to see a virtual reproduction of the bread-making process, only this time in the shaping of a kung fu master. Careful and lengthy repetitive periods of self-destruction. One hardens his hands by beating on bags of iron filings, bricks, and metal plates. We must first prepare our fists from the inside out, the master said.

 His explanation was complex and took a long time. At one point, he began to speak of the chi, a mysterious and powerful force which entered the body through breathing. Air is not just air, he said. One can touch it. One can feel its energy moving down into the body, circling back up into the brain, then being released as one exhaled.

His lecture reminded me of an impossible demonstration I once saw of chi. A monk engaged in a lengthy process of taking in chi, then took a six-foot long spear with a needle-sharp steel point, pressed it at the most vulnerable part of his own throat, then slowly leaned forward until the heavy wooden shaft of the spear bent into a “u” shape. When he straightened up, his throat remained uncut, with only a tiny red spot where the spear point had rested. A group of scientists watched and measured and reported. It was a real demonstration. Mysterious. Inexplicable.

The martial artists engage for years in a process of repetitively and carefully destroying and healing their own bodies. Each time they are renewed, they grow stronger and more capable. Long and painful discipline. Destruction. Growth. Destruction. Growth. All through the process the nature of the kung fu master grows and changes.

A French baguette in human form.

Why does Jesus quote the mysterious idea offered repetitively in Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. This mysterious idea concerning destruction. He has told the first of his parables, a lengthy story about seeds and planting and destruction and growth. Most of the seeds fail to bear fruit. Most of them die, either withered by the hot sun or eaten by birds or fallen on rocky ground. His disciples, confused by the story, ask him to explain.

Before he explains, he tells them why he speaks in parables. Can we hear his explanation? Can we understand it?

“… so that "they may indeed see but not perceive,

and may indeed hear but not understand,

lest they should turn and be forgiven."

What did he say? What did he mean? What is the kingdom of God like? Can it possibly be unmerciful? Then merciful. Unmerciful. Then merciful. And all along the process, the nature of the creation changes and grows. The moral arc of the universe bends, as Dr. Martin Luther King once repeated and told us, slowly and certainly toward justice.

Inexplicable. Mysterious. Repetitive destruction and subsequent healing. Death. Resurrection. New growth. New morality. New capability. The inexplicable hardship of the wilderness, of the destruction of the temple, of the long years in exile, of the destruction and re-creation of the temple. of the death and resurrection of Jesus himself.

A harvest of a hundredfold, even though most of the seeds were destroyed. Even those which land in good ground must offer themselves to death in order for something new to be born.

Can we make ourselves into good ground? Not a hardened path. Not a thistle patch. Not rocky soil? This, then, is the nature of the kingdom. Can we become seeds which will offer themselves up again and again? Suffering. Dying. Being reborn.

The kingdom of God is like this, Jesus said.  

Hymn of the day: Lord, Prepare Me. Online at Rossford UMC - Media.

Rev. Lawrence Keeler