The Empty Jar

Psalm 1, Thomas 97

A Sermon Preached by Donald Mackenzie

September 12, 2004

University Congregational United Church of Christ

Seattle, Washington

“She put the jar down and discovered that it was empty.” Thomas 97b

The action of the Parable of the Empty Jar, seems on the surface, to be very straightforward. Jesus says, the realm or kingdom of God is like a woman who carries a jar of meal. The meal leaks out. She isn’t aware of that. When she gets home she finds that she has no meal—the jar is empty. The last part seems easy. But how is this like the realm of God?

Let me begin with a story. When I was six years old, I used to walk to school with my friend Dannen Daley. I left my house at 8:10 and walked to his house and then we walk to school and we got there about 8:40. The bell rang at 8:50 so we had time to play on the playground for a few minutes before school started. One day when we got to school, we saw that the playground was empty. We walked into the building and discovered that it was 9 o’clock. We were late! Mrs. Cooper, our teacher, asked us where we had been. In truth, we had been having a very good time and hadn’t noticed that we were late. I’m guessing that this has happened in one way or another to each person in this room. I might just as well have said, the realm of God is like two little boys who were having such a good time talking and laughing on their way to school that they lost track of time. They didn’t notice it. They didn’t know they had a problem. When they got to school they discovered that they were late. What’s going on? Let’s talk for a minute about how we understand the phrase realm of God. Let’s talk about how things are often not as they seem. And finally let’s explore the paradox that is suggested by this parable of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas.

When we say the words “realm of God or kingdom of God” we are pointing to something that we can only imagine. It is a way of life that cooperates fully with God’s purposes: to help with the healing and making whole of all of creation. In broad terms this means five things: an end to violence; the achievement of full human and civil rights for all people, and dominion over the environment—good stewardship and not domination, concern for the future and the practice of Sabbath culturally and individually whether in measured moments or one day per week. God beckons us toward that inner healing that can come through spiritual and Sabbath practices that nurture the soul. This is a description of a positive future, one where we have learned to get along, to resist violence, to respect each other and have affection for each other and where we take good care of the earth—for ourselves and for future generations. This is God’s realm. In one way it is here—we have the tools we need to help create it. In another way, it has yet to come because we haven’t found the right ways to make use of those tools and we are still very much caught up in the concerns of the self.

So keep that in mind as we think for a minute how this simple story of the woman and the jar might be relevant to our lives and the lives we dream of having. The first thing that comes to my mind is something Catherine Foote reminded me of earlier this week. She quoted Antoine de St. Exupery’s book, The Little Prince, who says, “what is essential is invisible to the eye.” I also think of how careless we can become because we have assumed that we can indeed see with the eyes what is essential. And I think of a lesson I learned very early in my ministry that ends with this phrase “very few things are as they seem.” I had been asked to visit the widow of a minister. She was a member of my church and I went to her apartment and she proceeded to tell me her story which contained more pain that I could ever have imagined could be a part of the life of any one person. She wasn’t speaking to me. She was speaking to the church and was its representative. I would never have guessed that her life had had so much pain. As I drove away from that visit I remember thinking of the image of walking down the street and seeing someone you know and saying, Hi, How are you doing? The response, most of the time, is “fine.” And for that split second, maybe that is true. But life is more complicated than that and we could hardly tell the whole story on a sidewalk encounter. So what this parable is evoking for me is the tension between appearance and reality. What is on the surface is rarely the whole story. That’s why I like the phrase “She didn’t know it. She hadn’t noticed a problem.” This is so true of it is it not. We don’t know we have a problem until, suddenly, we discover that the jar is empty.

The parable seems paradoxical. God’s realm is present in its absence. It doesn’t seem to be here yet and yet it is here. What is essential is invisible to the eye—not just the physical eye but also the eye of the soul. It’s paradoxical but it’s not unusual. It’s like my story of being late. My friend and I were not paying attention—we were preoccupied with having a good time and we hadn’t noticed the time. The woman carrying the jar couldn’t have been paying attention because she would have noticed the jar getting lighter and lighter. But her mind was somewhere else and she didn’t notice the leak until she got home. She was preoccupied and not paying attention.

I think the message of the parable is just that. If we are not paying attention, we will miss the experience of the realm of God, the experience of the world that God hopes for us to have. That’s why it says, “The realm of God is like….”

Although God gives us the capacity to make choices as Psalm One suggests, let’s confess that it is hard to pay attention in the noise of an occupied and preoccupied world. How can we be focused on all the things we need to pay attention to? Life is full of the discovering of empty jars, of being late to school and of those sharp realizations that we have not given attention to life’s important moments. But let’s also confess that paying attention to the realm of God isn’t just one more thing to focus on; it is the background for all of our paying attention. We need space to be nurtured so that we can have the focus and serenity required to cope with the activities of daily living. This is one hope we have as we move into our new Sunday morning schedule: that the education offered for all ages at nine o’clock beginning next week will help each of us do some of this work and have fewer empty jars. In meantime, we solicit your feedback as we work together to provide an experience that will be helpful as we continue to live into a world of uncertainty and a world of hope and may be we all continue to work together to provide that space and those moments that can contribute to our healing, to our reconnecting with that essential wholeness where paying attention is a more natural part of living. Amen.