"What Is the World Like When God's Will Is Done?"
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
How can we speak of God and
how God works? There are no words that
are true enough…right enough. How can
the language of earth capture the reality of heaven and of God’s purposes for
earth? How do we speak of holy
things? Sometimes we struggle to find
the right words. We don’t do it well.
But because we need to try, we tend to talk about holy things by making
comparisons to ordinary things…things we know.
Jesus did it all the time. Throughout the gospels, and in Matthew’s
gospel in particular, Jesus was always making comparisons. Sinners are like lost sheep. The word of God is like seed sown on
different kinds of soil. The kingdom of
heaven is like a wedding feast. God is
like the owner of a vineyard. Over and
over again in Matthew, we hear Jesus saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like this…”
Have you ever wondered why Jesus taught that way? He taught in parables and made
surprising comparisons between holy things and ordinary things. He kept breaking open peoples’ understanding
of things and inviting them to explore them all over again. Like Jesus’ first
disciples, we like explanations far more than being teased into thinking harder
or asking tough questions.
According to C.H. Dodd, who was one
of the great New Testament scholars of the last century, a parable is “a
metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by
its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about
its precise application as to tease it into active thought. Parables are suggestive, evocative, sometimes
disconcerting, offering glimpses into the kingdom of God, but
not explanations or definitions.[1]
Robert Farrar Capon, another
biblical scholar who specialized in the parables of Jesus puts it this way: “With
Jesus, parables are used “not to explain things to people’s satisfaction but to
call attention to the un-satisfactoriness of all their previous explanations
and understandings.”[2]”
The gospel lessons the lectionary
gave us for the past two weeks were about the sower and seeds and about weeds,
and they may have appealed to the farmers in the crowd. But the parables we
have today might have been more meaningful to fishermen, bakers, and merchants.
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus strings a series of
comparisons. The kingdom of heaven is
like a mustard seed, he says…like yeast…like buried treasure…like a fine
pearl…like a net cast into the sea. The
images come quickly, right after another, with no preparation, no explanation,
no time for questions and answers.
Jesus
zings us with them—these five—like a slide show…or like scenes glimpsed through
the windows of a fast-moving car. The
kingdom of heaven is like this…and this…and this, Jesus says. It’s almost like Jesus doesn’t want us to get
stuck on any one of them, but to be dazzled by the number and variety of things
the kingdom of heaven is like.
The first two comparisons seem easy enough, at first
glance. The kingdom of heaven is like a
mustard seed or a handful of yeast-- nothing big or much to look at. But the results are amazing!
In verse 32, the surprising turn is that the seed grows
into a tree where even the birds take refuge.
The mustard plant is an annual herb that normally grows no more than six
feet in height and would be considered a shrub, rather than a tree. It’s in the imagination of the parable that a
mustard seed can produce a tree with branches…and be similar to the imperial
trees that symbolize kingdoms.
Tom Long suggests that Jesus must have had a twinkle in
his eye as he played on the popular image, drawn from the Old Testament, that a
mighty political kingdom is like a great and strong tree. He may have been alluding to the depiction in
Daniel of Babylon as a tree standing at the center of the earth, with a top
that reached to heaven, a tree that was visible to the ends of the earth,
abundant enough that “the birds of the air nested in its branches, and from it
all living things were fed.”[3]
They thought great kingdoms are supposed to look like the
massive cedars of Lebanon or towering sequoias; instead, Jesus offers the
humble image of a mustard bush. The
kingdom of heaven is like a mustard bush?
The main point is that the kingdom grows to great size from very small
beginnings. But another point gets made
as well. This greatness doesn’t come in
the form we expect.
As
it turns out, the parable of the yeast has the same kind of unexpected twist. To our ears, it may sound like a gentle cooking
illustration. But in Jesus’ day, yeast
was a popular symbol for corruption. To
observe that “a little yeast leavens the loaf” was similar to saying “one bad
apple spoils the barrel.”
Not only that, but what the woman does with this yeast
implies some stealth. You’d miss this in
the New RSV and the NIV, but according to the original Greek, she hides the
yeast. And she is apparently baking for
a small army, because she hides the yeast in “three measures of flour”—which is
about fifty pounds of flour—enough to make bread for a hundred people!
When you put all this together, the parable of the yeast
pictures the kingdom as a hidden force, working silently to “corrupt” the world--
that is to corrupt the corrupt.[4]
We
can’t see the kingdom pervading the world.
But when its hidden fermentation is accomplished, the bland flour of the
world will be transformed into the joyous bread of life.
The
next pair of comparisons are harder.
Jesus has left the crowds and gone into a house. He’s talking with his disciples privately
when he tells the next two parables: the
parable of the hidden treasure and the parable of the pearl. In each case, someone sells everything that
he has in order to possess something of great value.
The point for both parables is that the kingdom of heaven
is like this. When people truly
encounter it, and realize what it is, it enters their hearts, seizes their
imaginations, and overwhelms them with its precious value. No price is too great. Nothing that they own can compete with its
value.
The
final glimpse we had today compares the kingdom of heaven and a fishing net. The fisherman throws the net into the sea,
and he doesn’t have any idea what kind of fish he will catch. He doesn’t hesitate to cast the net for fear
that he’ll catch the wrong kind of fish.
He casts the net wide and deep.
The sorting out of the good fish from the bad fish will take place later.
So it is with the kingdom of heaven, and with the church. The doors of the kingdom of heaven are thrown
open… the programs are open to all… the net is cast wide and deep. Into the church come people who are deeply serious
about the things of God and people who are looking for a pretty sanctuary in
which to get married. Some of the people
are lonely or hurting. People show up
who are hungry to do righteousness, and some come because their spouse or a
friend comes and they come along because they’re going out for lunch
afterward.
The kingdom of heaven and the life of God’s people is
wonderfully open and nondiscriminatory. Everybody
is welcome to come on in. The job of
sorting everybody out is left to the angels-- in God’s time.
Have
you understood all this? Jesus
asks. Do you understand the profound
truths of God? The deepest mystery of
life—the secrets of the kingdom of heaven?
Then, how are we to live, according to these glimpses of
heaven?
This is important. The Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom
of God is a constant theme throughout the New Testament. In the Gospel of
Matthew alone, “Kingdom of Heaven” is used over 30 times. The term has been
understood in various ways: in pointing to the Parousia and return of Jesus, to
the true life that is after life, to the promise of the social gospel, where
the Kingdom can be created here on earth, in this lifetime. I think Jesus is talking about the Christian
project on more than one level, talking about the Kingdom of Heaven in the time
that is “not yet” fulfilled, but also in the “now,” as his followers embody his
love and compassion and justice and, in doing so, gradually transform the
world.
God’s presence and power is at work in the world, even
when people don’t notice it until a time when it’s unmistakable and
transformative. Even when we can’t
perceive it, even when it looks like nothing is happening and there are no
places for the birds to nest and no bread to feed the hungry crowds, the
Kingdom of heaven is present and coming.
Do we understand these things?
I believe Jesus calls us to live with open eyes, minds, and hearts, never knowing where or
how or when God’s surprising grace will erupt amidst the ordinariness of
life.
Like those who go out and sell all they have for a field
with buried treasure or a pearl of great value, God sometimes calls us to
decisive, uncalculated action. Such
extravagant living goes against the careful, calculating kind of living most of
us have been taught to practice. The subversiveness
of this and many of Jesus’ teachings challenges us to live as people of faith.
The good news is that the kingdom of heaven is hidden in
the ordinary stuff of life--at work infiltrating, permeating, and growing in
unexpected and inevitable ways. The
kingdom is incarnate within us and grows through us, if we trust God enough to
fill us and use us.
Like the yeast, which was hidden at first, mixed
invisibly into the flour, the insignificant suddenly becomes significant,
bubbling and fermenting and expanding, as flat, passive grain can be
transformed into fat, fresh, life-filled bread.
As we study the Bible and pray and worship together, we
can come to understand these things about the Kingdom of Heaven and find our
lives being changed, coming more into God’s reality and rule.
As disciples of Christ, we are called to make a
difference in order for God’s kingdom to come, on earth as it is in heaven. Like
the first disciples, we may find ourselves doing things like sharing all we
have with others, caring for those who are marginalized, and working more
boldly for God’s peace and justice in the world.
We can find encouragement in Jesus’ parables: Hang in
there! God’s new reality is closer than you think, already hidden in our lives,
even if we can’t always feel it or see it.
No matter what it might look like, God’s kingdom will
prevail. In the face of conflict, we can claim God’s peace. In the face of
illness, we look to God’s healing, in whatever form it may take. In the face of
hate, we can proclaim love. We can live in hope, because the kingdom is
coming. In God’s time, it will transform
everything.
This is the Good News of the gospel.
` Thanks be to God!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian
Church
Dearborn, Michigan
July 30, 2017
[1]
C. H. Dodd, Parables of the Kingdom (Scribner, 1961).
[2]
Robert Farrar Capon, The Parables of the
Kingdom (Eerdman’s, 1990), p. 6.
[3]
Thomas G. Long, Matthew. (Westminster
John Knox Press, 1997), p. 153. The
scripture citation is Dan. 4:10-12.
[4]
I am indebted to Tom Long for this insight, in Matthew, p. 154.
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