Worship - 26 July 2026

Summary Of This Week's Theme

It would be hard to miss the celebrations of Saint James in Es Castell this weekend.  As my faithful friend, the now-retired Catholic priest Father Alberto, once remarked, the fiestas are probably more about celebrating Menorca than religion.  Still, they remind us of James the Apostle, patron saint of both Es Castell and Spain.

James is an interesting disciple.  Along with his brother John, he could be ambitious, argumentative and sometimes alarmingly hot-headed.  Shortly after Jesus had placed a little child among the disciples as the model of God's kingdom, James and John wanted to call down fire on a Samaritan village that had refused them hospitality.  They clearly still had much to learn.  Yet they had left everything to follow Jesus.  In time, through the shock of the cross and the wonder of the resurrection, they discovered that God's kingdom really was the pearl of great price.

Meanwhile, our Old Testament reading continues the wonderfully messy story of Jacob's family. Having deceived his brother Esau, Jacob is now deceived by his uncle Laban, who tricks him into marrying Leah instead of Rachel.  The trickster is tricked. It is one of the Bible's most comic episodes, though it also sets the stage for years of jealousy, favouritism and family conflict.  God hardly appears in the story, yet somehow God's purposes continue to unfold through thoroughly imperfect people.

Perhaps that is exactly what Jesus is teaching in today's parables.  The kingdom of heaven is like yeast.  Not the neat little packets we buy today, but the sticky, fermenting, rather smelly lump of sourdough that made bread rise.  It is also like mustard seed: not a prized garden plant, but something closer to a weed, capable of spreading everywhere.

God's kingdom grows in surprising places, through people and situations we might easily dismiss.  It often emerges from the untidy, complicated realities of ordinary life rather than from perfection.

At the end of these parables Jesus asks his disciples, ‘Have you understood all this?’ They confidently answer, ‘Yes.’  Surely God smiled! 

Perhaps the beginning of wisdom is not claiming to understand everything, but remaining humble enough to keep learning. cJames eventually did.  Jacob, perhaps more slowly.  And so, we pray, may we.