Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-53

He put before them another parable: “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.”

He told them another parable: “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.”….

“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.

“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.

“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.

 “Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”  When Jesus had finished these parables, he left that place.

Thy Kingdom/Kin-dom Come

I have been reading this book with an evocative title:  A Paradise Built in Hell.  It is written by Rebecca Solnit and she looks at disasters and crises and the communities that are formed in their wake.

You would picture in your mind that when something terrible happens then sometimes people become terrible, but in fact often and consistently the opposite happens.  A natural or humanity-created disaster we know can be a terrible tragic loss of life with injury and trauma and grief.  But the author of the book lifts up another pattern that emerges as well: the unlikely communities that form following natural disaster, looking at times after earthquake or hurricane or catastrophe when social order breaks down and class distinctions fall away because everything has been lost and even normal commercial economies don’t function in the same way.  And yet, here is what can happen:  people connect, creating a deep community where there had been isolation.  People live in the present and find purpose and meaning in work that matters.  People become creative, finding solutions where there had been none for the real human need before them.

The author finds accounts of folks who talk about these times after terrible disaster with almost euphoria.  She does a deep dive on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, telling stories of Ann Holshauser who on the third day after the earthquake set up a soup kitchen in the park with one tin can to drink from and one plate.  Gifts of food came from the community from all over as folks who had something to share brought it and folks who were able to cook jumped in and all of a sudden she wasn’t the only one but had created an ad hoc soup kitchen from survivors for survivors, given just what could be offered.  The story continued for many after the earthquake as people were cooking for each other, finding humor and camaraderie resilience, even with the destruction around them.  The novelist, Jack London, said after the earthquake, “Never in all of San Francisco’s history were her people so kind and courteous as on that night of terror.”  The author goes through one disaster after the next, some of nature and some terribly manmade and shows that when all breaks down often what results is not chaos but a brand