I was visiting with an ill couple on Friday. I was not the first visitor and I will not be the last. Flower ministers, Casseroles on Call, members of the Prayer Shawl ministry, fellow parishioners and the prayer chain are all engaged. This is a much fuller response than we could have mustered in years past when we were half the size we are now. This parish is like a mustard seed that someone planted. It was once tiny and mostly self-contained but as it has grown its branches have extended far and wide, and many have come to nest in its shade.

The couple that I went to see Friday have been at St. James for decades. They have experienced much of our growth - and they have peered deeply at the changes with eyes of faith. They notice, with joy, that more light, life and love go out as our programs and members expand. Indeed even though our hospitality toward others has increased there is still more than enough for all to be fed. It is as though the widow in the lesson from Elijah had joined the St. James Bread ministry, hid in the kitchen off Macdonald Hall and is baking loaf after loaf from a seemingly bottomless flour sack.

I should have poked my head in the kitchen and found her before I left the parish on Friday morning. I was going to bring communion and to deliver a fresh baked pie, a still warm casserole, and the prayers and good wishes of our Saint James community. Those good wishes were made all the more real by the smell of warm piecrust and the promise of good and delicious food that would be sufficient for the next few days.

My hands had been full with the box of food when I went to my car from the church offices. I had meant to go back a second time to get my communion kit but, as so often happens, someone stopped me to ask me about something completely unrelated and I got distracted by the much reduced time I had left to get to the couples home. I leapt in my car and drove away, rather fast. I got there on time but without my communion kit.

This turned out to be a good thing. A bottle of sherry from the cupboard and a slice of bread from the breadbox were their offering. We placed them on an altar that was masquerading as a wooden TV tray. As I spoke the words recalling that night so long ago the tray became, for us, the table at which Christ broke bread and said, "Do this in remembrance of me." And we felt His presence in the breaking of the bread. And we drank joy from the simple sherry glass that had become a chalice.

Faith transmutes those who abide in it - and their sense of people, places and things around them. Having faith will not stop us from dying when our time comes, but grasping the knowledge that death doesn't win in the end will change the way we play the game dramatically. Faith encourages us to live life with hope and expectation when there may be few visible signs that this is a reasonable course of action.

But appearance and reality are often miles apart. So much of Jesus' teaching, particularly the parables, is an attempt to get us to shift our stance in life so as to see things differently. Jesus is not feeding us pie in the sky or the bread of fools. He is offering himself, the Bread of Life, the Way to the Father. But because the Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure in a field, a lost coin, a pearl waiting to be discovered -we need to understand that a casual gaze from an armchair is unlikely to allow sufficiently clear vision to recognize, much less obtain, any of the treasure that is really out there but hidden from our daily view.

Here's a visual analogy: hold your hands in front of you with your index fingers up. Close one eye and line your fingers up in a straight line -like this. Notice how the finger farthest from you disappears! This is the stance from which we often approach things of the Spirit, how we assess what is happening around us. How many times has some assumption, belief or practice filled our near horizon and blocked our view of what God is doing right in front of us?

Now move your eye to the left or right of the finger closest to you and watch what happens- two fingers! They were there all the time. But our perspective hadn't allowed us to see the fuller picture. Astronomers use this principle of parallax, and some mathematics, to determine the location of stars and their distance from us. Jesus used parables and simple everyday words to point to the Kingdom of God.

Jesus' words make visible a hidden world that is as real as the fingers on your hand but often goes unseen because we will not turn and look in a new direction. That's what the word "metanoia" means in Greek, by the way. We usually translate "metanoia" as "repent," but let me suggest that when you hear the word "repent" you substitute an image of Jesus saying, "come stand over here, closer to me - the view is clearer from here."

Let's turn to Mark's Gospel now. But instead of watching from far away, let's move closer to Jesus. Close your eyes if you like. Jesus is just to our left, he's close enough that we could reach out and touch the hem of his prayer shawl. Jesus is talking to his disciples and to hangers-on who may be more interested in getting a sandwich than receiving the Bread of Life. He loves us all. We can feel it in his presence. Jesus nods at the Scribes across the street. He says that position and authority are not to be used to fleece the flock or aggrandize the shepherd. Scriptural study and prayers are to draw nearer to, and glorify God, not call attention to the person. Jesus is talking specifically about the Scribes, but this is good general counsel. The things we say and do in the name of God should be about God's will not ours. Then Jesus sits and turns our gaze to the parade of people… and it is a parade.

People with fine clothing, gold jewelry and gems stride up to the treasury with retinues in tow. There were no loudspeakers in those days but who could miss the noisy presence and conspicuous actions of such folks. They pour their coins into the moneybox, "clank, clank, clank" - making it ring like a bell to announce their magnanimity. Our eyes widen at the amounts some of them present. But Jesus just shakes his head.

Then a small plainly dressed woman slips in from the shadows. She does not speak. She looks neither right nor left. She gazes upward for a moment. Then her hand opens, revealing two coins of the smallest denomination.

Then she puts them in the box with the same tenderness with which a mother lays down her child. She doesn't pause in front of the treasury any longer than is necessary. In the blink of an eye she has slipped away down the street.

Jesus was laconic a minute ago, but now he is bright eyed and alert.
"Did you see," he seems to say, "…Did you see what just really happened?"

"Don't think about the amounts, Jesus says, "Think about what they mean. Some peoples' gifts are like leftovers when one compares them to the banquet with which our Heavenly Father has fed them. But the woman is like that boy by the lake who offered up his whole lunch - from which you and I fed five thousand men and all those women and children. Like the boy, the woman gave everything she had. Then Jesus turns to us and asks, "So…who has given more, the people in the parade, or the woman?"

Open your eyes, now.

Little and much, poverty and riches, so much looks radically different when we stand next to Christ and listen to what he says. The lecture I'll be giving at 9, "Symbol, Image, Language and Culture," is all about this. If we want to see the hidden treasure, and help others to do so, we need to be willing to stand in a different place. Come and see what the view looks like from there.

Or look at the St. James treasury. Something worth noticing is happening. Many must have stood in a different place this year -heard the words in a new way, or seen something they had not noticed before. While we were watching Jesus, the Scribes and the widow, many members of St. James have slipped in, looked up and given an average of 48% more. Almost 30 people who have been inactive have come back and added almost $60,000 on top of that. Over all we are 36% ahead of where we were this time last year. We still have many people to hear from, but much fewer than in year's past.

Remember that reality and appearance are not the same. I am not celebrating the money itself. The pledges are just an indicator that points to something else. I am encouraged by the changes in heart, and the increase in hope, faith and gratitude that the increased giving represents. Gratitude and abundance are like a distant star and a mustard seed we hold in our hand. When we stand close to Jesus we can see stars in the heavens that were lost to us before. When we realize that even the heavens are God's gift to us, how could we not grow in gratitude and want to draw even nearer to the Way, the Truth and the Life?
AMEN