Fr. Henri Nouwen was a Dutch born Catholic priest who lived in the second half of the last century. In addition to writing over 40 books on spirituality, he’s probably best known for his work as the priest/director of a community for the mentally handicapped just outside of Toronto called Daybreak. Now Fr. Henri was an extremely educated man. He taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard and held a number of Doctorate degrees. He was a man who had arrived at the highest level of academia. And so when he moved to Daybreak unexpectedly he experienced an interesting conversion. He explains that the first thing he noticed when arriving to work with the mentally handicapped was that their liking or disliking of him had absolutely nothing to do with any of his successes in life. Since none of them could read his books…his books couldn’t impress any of them. And since none of them had gone to Notre Dame or Yale or Harvard it didn’t matter that Fr. Henri was a brilliant professor. They didn’t know that he was a sought after retreat master and confessor either.

Fr. Henri made it his habit to sit and eat with the residents of the community every day. And he fondly recalls one night at dinner when he offered to pass the meatloaf to one of the mentally handicapped residents…another resident sitting at the same table exclaimed loudly, “No no no Father…Don’t give him any meat…He doesn’t eat meat…He’s a Presbyterian”.

He entitled his chapter where he told this wonderful dinner story…The Temptation to be Relevant. He explains just how formative his experience with the mentally handicapped was because it forced him to re-discover his most basic identity. These simple…childlike…completely unpretentious people forced Fr. Henri to let go of everything that he thought made him important…everything that he thought made him relevant…his Degrees…his ability to speak multiple languages…his insights into theology and spirituality were no longer important. In his new role all he was left with…particularly in the eyes of his new housemates…was his humanity…that fact that at his most basic level he was just another person equal in dignity…equal in value…equal in bad habits and equal in the need to be saved by God’s grace. I suppose that if we were to speak with Fr. Henry today he might say that that moment in his life…when he realized his simplicity in the midst of his new reality…was the closest he came here on Earth to the Kingdom of Heaven…not the reception of his doctorates or his lectures on the mysteries of mystical spirituality…it was right there at that dinner table when all his defenses and titles were shed…in the most basic moments of the human condition that the Grace of God actually made itself present…in other words…in his experience with the people at Daybreak he was not far from the Kingdom of Heaven!

The Kingdom of Heaven is like….we’ve heard this phrase over and over again these past few weeks in this Parable barrage from Matthews 13^th Chapter. The Kingdom of Heaven is like the sower who went out to sow the fields of our souls only to find rocky ground…thorny bushes…trampled pathways…along with some good soil. The Kingdom of Heaven is like that same man who sowed seed in the garden of his own soul and despite his best efforts…the wheat he wanted came up mixed with weeds. The Kingdom of Heaven is like the smallest…most insignificant seed that no one believes will ever grow up into a magnificent tree. The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that a simple…unsophisticated woman in some unremarkable kitchen kneads into dough. And now today…the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant who does the exact opposite of what good merchants do. He sells his entire inventory so that he can carry just one single item…the pearl of great value…which may very well ruin his business all-together.

That’s the point of the story I shared about Fr. Henry and it’s the point of all of these parables. They’re all the opposite of what we normally think the Kingdom of Heaven is like…they’re un-remarkable moments…in fact they’re moments where we come into contact with the Kingdom of Heaven not necessarily by success at all. You see…the most common belief in the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth…is when we are “blessed” with success…or our business overflows with profit…our bodies healthy…perfect relationships…great careers…wonderful vacations…and hopes and dreams that always come true. That’s what we naturally think the Kingdom of Heaven is like. That’s when we think the Grace of God is fully at work in our lives. It’s strange though…these wonderful moments…they’re not the most intense encounters with God’s grace at all.

Think about it…the parables are completely about us…the unimaginable perfection that exists within our souls (created in God’s own image) and the unimaginable dysfunction that exists in our souls. The Sower brings us to reflect on our rocky ground and thorny personalities and clumsy pathways…and that’s OK. The wheat grows in our soul’s field right in the midst of weeds! And that’s OK. The mustard seed shows us just how small we really are. And that’s great. The boring…un-sophisticated…un-glamorous work of needing yeast into dough doesn’t sound very glorious to me. This merchant who sells everything to place his trust in one single item…to some business people that’d be pretty reckless. If we look at all these parables from Matthew 13…one thing is the same…the Kingdom of Heaven…the real presence of God in our midst…the encounter with God’s grace that we so intensely desire…involves the honest admition that we are human…sometimes ridiculous…often filled with anxiety…usually feeling small and insignificant and living pretty much un-glamorous lives…this is exactly when we finally arrive into the heart of the Kingdom of Heaven. I know it sounds counter intuitive…but it is where God’s grace abounds at its fullest.