Two images from today's readings — a linen girdle rotting in a rock crevice, and leaven hidden in three measures of meal — present radically opposed visions of hiddenness. One concealment corrupts; the other transforms. These reflections explore what it means, psychologically, for something essential in us to be separated from its proper place, and what it means for something living to be deliberately buried where it can work.
First reading
Jeremiah 13:1-11
Thus saith the LORD unto me, Go and get you a linen girdle, and put it upon your loins, and put it not in water.
So I got a girdle according to the word of the LORD, and put it on my loins.
And the word of the LORD came unto me the second time, saying, Take the girdle that you have got, which is upon your loins, and arise, go to Euphrates, and hide it there in a hole of the rock.
So I went, and hid it by Euphrates, as the LORD commanded me.
And it came to pass after many days, that the LORD said unto me, Arise, go to Euphrates, and take the girdle from thence, which I commanded you to hide there.
Then I went to Euphrates, and digged, and took the girdle from the place where I had hid it: and, behold, the girdle was marred, it was profitable for nothing.
Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Thus saith the LORD, After this manner will I mar the pride of Judah, and the great pride of Jerusalem.
This evil people, which refuse to hear my words, which walk in the imagination of their heart, and walk after other gods, to serve them, and to worship them, shall even be as this girdle, which is good for nothing.
For as the girdle cleaves to the loins of a man, so have I caused to cleave unto me the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah, saith the LORD; that they might be unto me for a people, and for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory: but they would not hear.
Gospel
Matthew 13:31-35
Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field:
Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.Another parable spoke he unto them;
The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.
All these things spoke Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spoke he not unto them:
That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.
— Interpretation —
Let us consider two acts of hiding.
In the first, Jeremiah is told to take a linen girdle — a clean, intimate garment worn close against the body — and conceal it in a cleft of rock by the Euphrates, far from himself. After many days he returns to find it ruined, good for nothing. In the second, a woman takes leaven and hides it in three measures of meal, and the whole is leavened. Both involve something hidden. Both involve time passing. But the outcomes are opposite. One produces decay. The other produces transformation.
Now, if we read these images only as historical lessons — about the disobedience of ancient Judah, or about the future growth of the institutional Church — we miss something that concerns us directly, today, in the privacy of our own inner life. These are not merely stories about others. They describe processes that are happening within us at this very moment.
Let us begin with the girdle. A girdle cleaves to the loins. It is intimate. It belongs to the body. And God says, through Jeremiah, that Israel was meant to cleave to Him in exactly this way — as close as linen against skin. The girdle is an image of something in us that was designed to remain in contact with what is highest. We might call it our capacity for inner hearing, our receptivity to meaning beyond the literal and mechanical level of life. This capacity is not something remote or abstract. It is as near to us as our own breathing. It was made to stay close.
But what happens? We are told to take this very thing — this intimate capacity — and hide it far away, in a crevice of rock, by the waters of a foreign river. And I think anyone who is honest will recognize this movement. We do it constantly. We take what is most alive in us, what is nearest to our real nature, and we bury it — in ambition, in resentment, in the ceaseless imaginary conversations of the mechanical mind, in what the text calls “the imagination of the heart.” We exile our finest capacity to a place where it cannot function. And after many days — after years, sometimes — when we go looking for it, we find it marred. We find we can no longer hear what once was audible to us. We have become, in the precise language of the Gospels, deaf and blind. Not because the capacity was destroyed in its essence, but because we separated it from its proper place. We hid it where it could only rot.
This is a terrible image, and it is meant to be. But it is not the whole picture.
Now consider the leaven. Here, too, something is hidden. A woman takes leaven and conceals it in three measures of meal. But this hiding does not produce corruption. It produces an extraordinary, quiet, invisible expansion. The whole is leavened.
What is the difference?
The girdle was taken away from the man — separated from the living body. The leaven was placed into the meal — introduced into the very substance that needed transformation. One hiding is exile; the other is penetration. One removes something living from where it belongs. The other places something living exactly where it is needed.
And this is the critical psychological distinction. When we bury our capacity for inner hearing in external pursuits, in fantasies of self-importance, in identification with every passing mood, we are performing Jeremiah’s act — we are hiding the girdle by the Euphrates. But when a moment of genuine understanding — even a very small one, the least of all seeds, as Christ says — is allowed to enter our ordinary nature, our “three measures of meal,” something entirely different begins. It works silently. It works in darkness. It works without our watching it or measuring it or demanding results. But it works.
Notice that Christ says the Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven hidden in meal. He does not say it is like meal receiving leaven. The Kingdom is the active principle, not the passive substance. And it must be hidden. It cannot do its work if it is constantly examined, displayed, turned into an object of pride or self-congratulation. The woman hides it. She does not keep uncovering it to see how it is doing.
There is something here about the nature of genuine inner growth that contradicts nearly everything our mechanical nature believes. We imagine that transformation should be visible, dramatic, measurable. But the parable tells us the opposite. The mustard seed is the least of all seeds. The leaven disappears into the meal. Things kept secret from the foundation of the world do not announce themselves.
The question each of us faces, quietly, today, is simply this: where have we hidden what was given to us? In exile, where it decays? Or in the substance of our actual daily life, where — unseen, unforced — it might yet leaven everything?
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
Scripture: King James Version
