Simple, Small, and Precious

Simple, Small, and Precious

July 26 2026

John Bellaimey

 

Amen. In the name of God, simple, small, and precious. Amen.

Please be seated.

This morning, we get an unusual Gospel reading. Instead of people not understanding what Jesus is talking about, which is the usual deal, he asks if they understood, and they say, “Yeah.”

He has this idea, which he talks about over and over again in many different ways: the reign of God, traditionally the kingdom of God. It’s not like the reign of King Herod or Emperor Tiberius. The reign of God is not military might. It’s not monetary policy.

Instead, the reign of God is like a little mustard seed, which contains the DNA for a plant that grows huge and provides habitat for birds—a whole future in that little dot.

Or it’s like yeast that grows your bread into a loaf. Or it’s like a treasure hidden away, a pearl worth more than acres of farmland. A fishing net that catches everything, and later the fishers sort through the catch, throw away the junk fish, and sell the good fish.

“You get it?” he asks, and they all say, “Yeah.”

He’s using everyday images. His message was not usually that easy, that clear. Alongside all of our regular selves—alongside us being consumers or residents, neighbors, parents, citizens, all the things that we are—we also are made in the image of God. So we’re somehow children of God.

Deep down, that’s who we were really meant to be, and all those other things are extra, if not superfluous. We’re meant to be our deeper self, which often feels tiny like a mustard seed or a packet of yeast. But if we let it grow, that little thing is our greatest self, our truest self. It’s a precious, hidden truth, a treasure, a pearl.

Now, our Old Testament reading is not about the reign of God at all. It’s about the reign of Solomon, this great king.

King Solomon has just married a daughter of Pharaoh, which was the usual thing for a king to do. It was part of diplomacy, along with setting borders and charging tolls to cross them, promising mutual defense—or at least promising not to start a war—sending gifts to their ruler and getting gifts in return, like in this case, daughters.

Solomon married women from every single one of the neighboring kingdoms, and six hundred and something more, probably from his own people. So he was a very busy king. And he also had, in case seven hundred wives weren’t enough, three hundred concubines. So, yeah, if you don’t know what a concubine is, ask your parents.

This was the usual thing that kings did, and the Bible does not say, “Shame on Solomon,” at this point, because that’s how things were—maybe not later, but then.

At one time, when Solomon was asked, maybe later in life, “How’d you get to be so wise?” he said, “Oh, it wasn’t me. I had this dream.”

And in my dream—the one that we heard a minute ago—he was at Gibeon. Now, I had to look up Gibeon this morning, and it turns out it’s one of the many hilltop shrines from before the temple was built and before religion got really focused on just one God: no more gods, stay away from all those other gods.

A little bit before that, he went to Gibeon. He went to the shrine, and he started to pray, and the God of his parents and his grandparents and so on—the one that we all know a lot about from the Bible—spoke to him.

Gibeon was one of those many places that were what the Irish might call a “thin place,” where the barrier between our world and the divine world was very thin, maybe like a veil.

He went there to be closer to God, and he wasn’t disappointed. In his dream, he heard, “What gift would you like from me?”

Maybe God was testing him, but maybe God already knew he would ask for the right sort of thing.

“Wisdom,” says Solomon right away. “Wisdom. You made my father David’s nation great, and I’m going to need a lot of wisdom.”

God really liked that answer and gave him more wisdom, so says the Good Book, than anyone else before or since.

In fact, we don’t have to talk to God in a dream and have God ask us, “What do you want?” God is always offering us gifts. It’s just that we usually don’t notice.

God isn’t offering gifts like a magic genie, but like the creator of the mustard seed, like the maker of the pearl of great price. God is like a host at a banquet, like a generous father forgiving his wayward son, like a patient mom sitting with us when we’re little, when we’re sick.

God is like that still, small voice that we hear, the true self who knows what the most loving thing to do is in any situation, even when other wishes are more appealing.

So we should hope for simple gifts when we’re hoping to notice the offer. Like Solomon asked. Like Jesus’ humble examples. Because God is not just complicated and incomprehensible. God is also basic. God is also obvious. Ask a four-year-old.

Now, it’s going to be really hot today, and I was advised by my darling wife to keep it brief. So I just had five more pages.

We’ve been given such basic, obvious wisdom: Solomon’s one wish; Jesus’ five parables—seed, yeast, treasure, pearl, fishing net.

That’s it.

And God is like that. Living in God’s reign is like that. Maybe not easy, but simple, hidden inside something small or ordinary.

So will I find a mustard seed today, if I have the eyes to see it in the tiny smiles of my grandchildren?

What will be the yeast that makes a certain conversation special, maybe even sacred?

How can I find treasure buried in the work that I have to do tomorrow?

Who will show me a great pearl of wisdom?

What will come back to me when I pull in the net that I cast earlier on?

God is everywhere, and we can see her if we look.

God is always speaking, and sometimes we should listen.

God gives us so much. Usually, we think we bought something, or we made it happen, but mostly it’s God in the form of other people and providence. We think we bought something. We think we made it happen. But it’s usually a gift somehow.

And so may you remember today, and remember this week, to ask God for something simple, something small, something precious.

Amen.

10am Service