Dear friends,
People often say nice things after my sermons, but I was particularly surprised last week after I spoke about St Luke (whose day it was) at the number of comments I received.
In my sermon I gave an overview of Luke’s Gospel (and his Acts of the Apostles), pulling out some distinctive threads under the motto ‘What did Luke ever do for us?’.
One of the specifically Lukan threads I mentioned was Luke’s peculiar habit of creating male-female pairings. The writer seems to have gone out of his way to follow stories about males with parallel stories about women. Mary’s Magnificat, for example, is the companion piece to Zechariah’s Benedictus. And the pairing extends to Luke’s parables. I also mentioned how rarely we tell the female versions perhaps, in part, because they are very short.
Several people told me afterwards how new and interesting this was to them. On the back of that, I decided on Wednesday’s mid-week communion to retell one of these female parables using the Godly Play story-telling technique:
“The kingdom of God is like leaven that a woman took and mixed with three measures of flour, until the whole batch was leavened” (Luke 13:20-21).
This is Luke’s companion-piece to the Parable of the Mustard Seed (Luke 13:18-19) and we’re perhaps encouraged to notice the similarities and contrast. Obviously, both stories are about how something small leads to something large. Both involve items that Jews were a bit suspicious of: mustard plants were considered weeds, and leaven (dough containing yeast) was one of the things that made a kitchen ritually unclean (hence it was removed from the house each year at Passover when unleavened bread was consumed instead).
If these two parables are about God and God’s kingdom we might notice that the Parable of the Leaven adds a new perspective: the male sower doesn’t have to do much other than planting the seed, whereas the woman would have to labour with heavy sticky dough for some time – does this indicate God’s effort? The mustard seed tree gives rest to the birds, whereas the enormous risen loaf is (presumably) baked and used to feed a large group of people – is this a hint at God’s kingdom being like a banquet? And the mustard seed story is set outdoors and is public; whereas the leaven story is indoors and private – does this hint at God’s secret actions?
If you have been intrigued by Luke’s peculiar habit, you too might like to check out some of his gender-pairs and notice what the female version brings to the message…
Rev Dr Mark Laynesmith