Preached at Creekside United Church of Christ (Minneapolis, Minnesota). Text: Matthew 13:33.

Imagine with me that you’re in an aisle of a grocery store, holding one of those rectangular baskets with handles that flip up. Put your hand out like you’re carrying it. (I’ll look less dumb if you join me.) Standing in the baking goods aisle, you reach for a five-pound bag of flour, and place it into the empty basket. Feel the weight as the powdery paper sack drops into it. Now, imagine that’s one terrible news headline, one calamitous thing, landing heavy as a bag of flour in your basket. How many other headlines and stories are you carrying after these last few weeks? Bombs dropping in Iran and missiles in Israel. Disinvestment in medical research, veteran services, disaster relief, suicide prevention. Five pounds, five pounds, five pounds. The supermarket basket is too full for more, but there’s additional pounds to come. Open your arms wide to a great bushel basket now—it can carry more. Add to it the pounds from Supreme Court decisions, ICE abductions, wildfire smoke, and political assassination. Palestinians murdered waiting for their sacks of flour. Do you feel the weight? You’re holding this awkward bushel basket, needing both hands, moving gingerly, so heavy in your arms, and unable to do anything else. How much are you carrying, the piled-up woes of the world this week? Fifty, sixty, seventy pounds—what to do with all that weight? There’s so much potential in the flour—enough to make more than a hundred loaves! But by itself the flour is just inert, dead weight.