Chapter
9
by Fr. Thomas Keating
The Parable of the Leaven - IV
He told them another parable:
"The kingdom of God is like yeast which a woman took and mixed in with
three measures of flour until all of it was leavened." (Matthew 13:33)
It is characteristic
of the parables to ask the question, "What makes you think that the world
is the way you see it?"
In the minds of the
Jewish hearers of the time, the kingdom of God had certain connotations
suggesting the ultimate triumph of God in the world. The kingdom as Jesus sees
it turns out to be quite different. The life and death of Jesus, in which God
does not intervene, indicates that the kingdom of God is not to be found in
miraculous occurrences, in being rescued from the inevitable results of our
stupidity and misdeeds, in having all our needs amply provided for, or even in
overcoming our sins, but rather in living our lives in union with God.
According to the
parables, God is in complete solidarity with the outcasts of society. Escape
into an ideal kind of lifestyle or rescue from life's difficulties and problems
are both rejected by Jesus as solutions to the problems of living in this world.
The solution is not in getting away from our problems, but in realizing that God
is totally present and supporting us in them. The most striking example of this
is that God does not destroy death, but joins us in death. Our expectations of
becoming paragons of piety, great contemplatives, attaining higher stages of
consciousness--all subtly aimed at carrying us beyond the daily troubles of
ordinary life--are not the way into the kingdom. Rather, the kingdom consists in
finding God in our disappointments, failures, problems, and even in our
inability to rid ourselves of our vices.
I joined the
Trappists in 1944, long before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. After
having lived a strict monastic life for six years, in which I followed all the
rules, appeared at all the spiritual exercises, never overslept or overate, wore
the religious habit all the time including to bed, tried not to judge those who
did not keep the rule as well as I did, rarely spoke to anybody except the abbot
and novice master, worked hard, wrote home only once or twice a year, rarely had
a visit from relatives and friends--in short, after I had faithfully practiced
all the austerities of the Trappist Order, the monastery burned down. I was
breathing smoke as I came down the stairway from the dormitory to the
guesthouse--there was no other means of escape--into the source of the fire. The
building was a fire trap from the word go. If it had not been for someone
calling, "Stay close to the floor and come this way," I would have
died of smoke inhalation. I leapt out a first-floor window and landed in a
snow-bank. It was then that the insight came to me: "Maybe God isn't as
interested in this highly structured lifestyle as I am!"
It took another
twenty years to work that insight into my monastic vision. It is hard for any
insight to penetrate a mindset that is profoundly culturally conditioned, which
is certainly the case in any form of strict religious training. It may take
disappointment, tragedy, illness, loss of friends, and near death experiences to
shake us free.
The parables perform
a similar service. They suggest that our idea of the kingdom may not be the
correct one. Our ideas of God and the kingdom need to be expanded and to grow
continuously. God is just as present in human relationships and in nature as in
religious services. While religious rituals certainly have significant value,
they are not to be identified with the kingdom. For the kingdom of God is in
internal attitudes rather than in external observances. According to the parable
of the Pharisee and the publican, the kingdom of God is more available in
everyday life, with its routines, failures, shrines, and rituals. It becomes
present to us and in us by our consent and by the dispositions that the Holy
Spirit instills within us, the chief of which is faith that God is truly and
secretly intervening to heal us despite any and all appearances to the contrary.
Was God present to
Jesus when he abandoned him on the cross? Is he with us as we struggle with
tragedy or with impossible situations? Apocalyptic myths look for a savior to
resolve all problems. But to resolve all problems is to miss the point. The
kingdom is manifested by our attitude toward our problems, not by their
disappearance. That is how Jesus sanctifies the outcasts and whatever is outcast
in us.
What idea of the
kingdom begins to emerge as we listen attentively to the parable of the leaven?
It is that the leaven, moral corruption, is not always replaced by the
unleavened bread, the symbol of the holy; that daily problems are not normally
changed by any divine intervention that we can see or feel. Hope is the grace
that trusts God in the midst of everydayness with its ever-recurring trips to
nowhere and the recycling of the same old temptations. We are left with the hope
of transformations, but without any experience of it happening.
More information can be obtained by reading the
book The Kingdom of God is Like . . .by Fr. Thomas Keating. It is offered
in our Book
Store.
