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A Mixture of Metaphors                        Mark 4: 26-34                   June 14, 2009

I like metaphors. They make language colorful and help convey meaning in a way that is likely to be remembered.

We preachers are constantly in search of metaphors, so the things we say stick in the minds of those who listen, but it's not just us. Metaphors are impossible to avoid. Most people use metaphors all the time.

Some of them are simple. For example, we might call someone "a diamond in the rough," instead of saying that he or she has great potential but needs time to mature. Or we might describe a grass stain as "stubborn," as if it had a mind of its own.

Metaphors can also convey great emotion. W. H. Auden's famous poem "Funeral Blues" comes to mind. You may remember it from the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral:

"He was my North, my South, my East and West," Auden writes.
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong."

Metaphors can be patriotic - like the stars and stripes we remember on this Flag Day. They can be political - red states and blue states are obviously not literally red or blue. Only metaphorically so. And some can have global significance. The color green is a metaphor all by itself because it translates, in every language, into care for the environment.

Metaphors can also describe the church. They can do a better job, I think, than a traditional mission statement when it comes to conveying what a denomination or congregation is all about.

I've recently come across three such metaphors.

Our friends in the United Methodist church, for example, have a new advertising initiative they call "Rethink Church."

"What if church were a verb?" the Methodists ask in their on-line campaign literature. "What would it look like?" The Web site then talks about important things like engaging the needs of the world through the church, inviting readers to see the church's mission and work around the globe. But it's their metaphor - church as a verb - that sticks in your mind.

An even better example of a church campaign built around a metaphor comes from the United Church of Christ.

This past week, as many of you know, I spent four days on a spiritual-renewal retreat. I spent the time with a group of clergy called "Brothers and Sisters of the Way," a group I've belonged to for the past four years.

Anyway, Les Norman, one of the Brothers at the retreat, wore a metaphor on his shirt. At first I thought it was a drop of blood - possibly suggesting that he was a Red Cross donor - but when I looked more closely I realized it was not a red drop but a red comma.

"Why do you have a comma on your shirt?" I asked. Which, of course, was exactly what he wanted me to do.

Les explained to me that his comma pin is the symbol of f the UCC's latest campaign, "God is still speaking," with a comma, not a period at the end of that sentence.

Actually, the phrase "God is still speaking" is based on a quote by the late Gracie Allen, who said, "Never place a period where God has placed a comma."

I don't know what Gracie meant by that statement. As those of you who are old enough to remember her will recall, no one knew, after all, what Gracie meant most of the time. That was the essence of her comedy.

The "God is still speaking" campaign, however, does have meaning. According to the website of the UCC it means that their churches are reaching out to those who have felt there is no room for them within Christianity and the church - the excluded and alienated, the spiritually homeless, the questioning.

Like most good metaphors, this one makes you think. One author, writing about the campaign, puts it well: "If we scatter periods around God's word, we interrupt God, rather than indicate a willingness to hear the rest of what he has to say. We might be stunned by God's next words, if we gave him a chance to speak to us further."

Still another example of a thought-provoking image of the church comes from Ireland. Specifically from Peter Rollins, a Priest who works with an Emerging Church group called Ikon.

His metaphor for the church is a donut.

"I like to think of Ikon as a donut with a hole in the middle," Rollins says. "Usually a church is more like a Danish pastry: you've got the jammy center, which is your leadership. [At Ikon] we try to have a hole in the center so that we are all on the edges."

"Ikon is like the people who run a pub," Rollins goes on to say. "It's not their responsibility to help the patrons become friends. But they create a space in which people can actually encounter each other."

So there you have it. Three definitions of the church, described by three metaphors.

The church is a verb. It is a group of people who are active and engaging in the world.

The church is a body that believes the word of God ends with a comma not a period. It is a group of people who are open and affirming of others with different views and values.

And the church is a donut. A group of people who are relationship-oriented; people who are committed to connecting to one another without relying on any particular leader or group of leaders.

What metaphor comes to mind when you think about our Moravian Church? Think about it. What image best depicts what we are all about? And as you're thinking, remember that your Moravian metaphor can't be one of the old standards. No lovefeast buns or Advent stars or beeswax candles allowed. Only present-day images.

Stumped? Don't feel bad. Large denominations like the Methodists and the UCC spend thousands of dollars developing their "brands" and positioning them to have an impact. We don't have the resources to pay a team of creative specialists to develop a catchy slogan or clever symbol.

But setting that aside, I still think it would be good if we had an image that could serve as a shorthand explanation of what our church means and what it does.

So what do we do?

Examining our Gospel text for this morning might be a good place to start. It reminds us that the Bible is a veritable treasure trove of metaphors, and that Jesus was particularly fond of using them in his teaching. Jesus' metaphors, of course, are called parables. There are two of them in today's text. Both of them are about seeds:

First, Jesus tells his listeners, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how."

Then, a paragraph later, he asks them "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

This is a tricky text, metaphor-wise.

I'm a city boy and don't claim to know much about farming, but from everything I've learned, farmers are some of the hardest working folks in the world. They rise before sunrise and work through the day tilling and cultivating the land so that in a few months time they can harvest what they worked so hard to tend and nurture.

Yet, in Jesus' first parable the farmer's work ends after scattering the seeds. God delivers a bountiful harvest to a farmer without expecting the farmer to do anything more than sow a few seeds and reap the profits.

The second parable, about the mustard seed, is also tricky. This tiny seed, when planted, Jesus says, grows into a huge tree that provides shade and shelter.

These parables are tricky because they turn conventional wisdom upside-down.

Seeds in general don't grow very well unless the one who plants the seed works hard to help it grow; and mustard seeds in particular don't ever grow into large trees. A mature mustard plant might be called a bush, but a tree would be a stretch.

Jesus' point, we must conclude, is not about horticulture. The seeds in Jesus' stories are metaphors, after all. Metaphors for the power of God. Metaphors that describe a power that is beyond our comprehension - and way beyond our control.

Perhaps Jesus' choice of a seed is the perfect metaphor for our church. I'm not sure how to work it into a logo or a marketing campaign, but it does do a good job of describing what we believe. We Moravians believe that God is powerful. That God can take a small congregation of people like us and do some pretty great things. Particularly when we give God the chance to work in our midst.

We agree with our Methodist friends that the church is a verb. We agree with our UCC friends that God is still speaking, and we agree with the folks at Ikon that if we want to be the church we need to act like a donut and care about one another - never expecting someone else to do it for us.

And the reason we can embrace all of those images of the church is because we know that the world - and the church - is in God's hands. In the hands of the God who can make things happen that dazzle us. In the hands of the God that can grow a tiny seed into a huge tree.

So from now on, when you think of First Moravian Church, think of a verb, a comma, a donut and a seed. Or perhaps think of a seed that acts like a verb and grows into a donut that, like sentence that ends with a comma, never stops but keeps rolling along.

Any way you look at it, though, no matter what metaphor best helps you remember it, the church - our church - is all about the power of God.

                                                                             AMEN

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