The kingdom of heaven is hidden in plain sight. It is the domain where God lives and the Spirit moves, bringing the treasure of grace, mercy, and love into the ordinary soil of our lives.

In our passage today, Jesus offers five more parables that play with this idea from different angles: yeast folded into flour, treasure buried in a field, a pearl found after years of searching, a net dragged up from the sea, and a household that keeps both new wealth and old in a single storeroom. The kingdom of heaven is often a fairly subtle thing, hiding in plain sight, waiting for someone willing to look again, and perceive what is otherwise missed.

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From outward appearances, nothing seems to be happening, but a few grains of live yeast, worked by hand into a large bowl of flour, will transform the whole mass by morning. Jesus compares the kingdom of God to this kind of work, hidden rather than announced, growing from the inside until everything it touches is different.

This week, Grace Easton brings us the story of the yeast, and what it means for that same kind of growth to take root in us.

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Each person who views a work of art will experience it in entirely different ways. Some will barely notice it, others might acknowledge the virtuosity of the artist or admire the quality of the frame or materials, while others might have a truly transcendent experience as they gaze in wonder upon something that resonates deeply within their spirit.

Jesus spoke in parables in order to allow the love of God to have the same effect on us. Jesus trusts these stories itself to draw out what is already stirring in us, drawing us into light and life as God intends all humanity to experience.

This week, the story of the seed and soil.

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This morning, as we close out our centennial season, our children and teenagers are leading us in worship, reading scripture, and preaching; a living reminder of the ancient promise that God’s spirit would be poured out on sons and daughters, and that the young would speak and see and dream.

Through the story of David’s anointing, we are reminded that God consistently looks past the surface, past what is impressive or expected, and sees something deeper in the people he calls. And through the story of David and Goliath, we are asked a question that every generation of this church must answer for itself: when God calls, will we have the courage to step forward? Who we dream to be is shaped not by our size or our strength, but by our willingness to listen, to trust, and to go.

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As our congregation reaches a hundred years, in the midst of our celebrations, we also want to remember all that God has done. The prophet Samuel once set up a memorial stone between two towns and named it Ebenezer, the stone of help, so that anyone who passed by would remember who had protected and sustained them through all the celebrations and trials they had experienced thus far.

This morning, on our Centennial Homecoming Sunday, we are setting up our own memorial stone, with help from a few guests who have journeyed on this road alongside us. Together we proclaim: “Thus far God has helped us,” and “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

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When congregations begin to grow, there is a natural pull toward activity that is not always sustainable. We start looking for programs to launch, ministries to add, and we begin thinking about what all the other successful churches are doing that we should imitate.  Yet we have  discovered that activity alone can not sustain deep community or lasting spiritual formation. So in 2014 we began asking, who are we, and how do we want to organize our shared life of fatih together.

We’re a thoughtful, intergenerational church following Jesus through sacred rhythms, deep community, and wholehearted faith, while courageously participating in God’s Kingdom which is making all things new.

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Our city (our church) would be unrecognizable by those who first founded this congregation, yet our testimony and our story would feel familiar. We are a remnant of the legacy that they planted and tended a hundred years ago.

And what were they planting and tending? A simple commission and a strong desire to serve the Kingdom and the church of Christ in simple faithfulness. Let us remind ourselves who we’ve been and who we are.

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In this year’s annual church meeting, we celebrate a year of God’s steady faithfulness, where ministries grew, recovery deepened, finances steadied, and a hundred-year story kept unfolding. From the Eco-Church certification to the Centennial on the horizon, we are reminded that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and his Kingdom is still being built among us.

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On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit did not come to give one hundred and twenty people a private religious experience. The Spirit came to make a people. A new kind of community. A new kind of family that had never existed in the world before. 

The scripture says three thousand were added to them that day, and Luke tells us in one short, dense sentence what that new community looked like: they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers.

To enact these is to Live Pentecost.

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Today is the feast of the Ascension of the Lord on the Christian calendar, and it is one of the least observed and most underappreciated feasts the church has. 

Most of us grew up in traditions that moved quickly from Easter to Pentecost, treating the forty days between them as a kind of waiting room. The ascension, if it was mentioned at all, felt like a strange footnote, the moment Jesus left, another loss to grieve. But Jesus has been anticipating the ascension not as a retreat from failing in his work, but as the crowning moment in which it is fully realized. 

So this morning we are not observing a goodbye. We are standing at a coronation, and learning what it means to live in the world that the coronation has made.

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