Pentecost + 11

So, for the 4 of you who might be reading this blog from time to time, I didn't realize how long it had been since I posted. I was away the past 2 Sundays on vacation, so that is one reason. Another is that I have been in kind of a black whole of sermon writing and feel bad that my congregation had to listen to some of the stuff I've been giving them lately, so I won't put it out there for anyone else to suffer through. But, today's was ok. I think the time off did me some good. So, I'm back home, back to work, and back on track. Hope you're having a lovely summer!

Matthew 13:31-52

31He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” 33He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

44“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 45“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; 46on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. 47“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; 48when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. 49So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 51“Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” 52And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”


I am struck when I read this passage by the way it begins. The author of Matthew tells us that Jesus is using parable here to make his point as he often does. He has just completed the telling of the well-known parables of the sower and the weeds. These parables are well-known to us not only because they are often used in Christian teaching and preaching but also because they are actually explained in their context—something Jesus rarely does when using parables to teach. They are often more like riddles or stories, and their meanings are implied or inferred by the hearers. But these parables in our passage for today are less like stories and more like simile. Rather than telling a story about a mustard seed, a loaf of bread, a treasure-seeker, or a fisherman, Jesus simply uses them as objects in comparison with the kingdom of heaven.

Do you remember from English class what a simile is? The Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines simile as a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared. So, rather than trying to find an image or a story of something or someone who could be easily compared with God and God’s reign, Jesus uses things that are not at first glance similar to God or God’s reign at all. Like, comparing God with a mustard seed? This must have sounded a little strange to the hearers—God being what we understand to be bigger in being than anything we can imagine and a mustard seed being very small indeed. Or God, the creator and ruler of the universe, being made to be like yeast—a fungus that is capable of fermenting carbohydrates into alcohol and carbon dioxide; something women used in the simple, everyday act of making bread for their families. Or our omnipotent, ever-present God being likened to something hidden away and kept under close guard by an ordinary human being. Or our all-knowing God of great wisdom being like a merchant who made what seems like a foolish decision to sell everything he has so that he can take a gamble on buying one item of great price. Who knows what might happen to him and his livelihood? Or how about God, the one who orders all the galaxies that exist and who has set everything in motion that we know to be compared not to a fisherman but to a fisherman’s net—a tool that is manipulated by the hands of the one throwing it into the water so that the most fish can be caught and a better livelihood can be made.

Simile after simile here represents how God and God’s kingdom are unlike anything that we know. I suspect that if there had been room for one more section in this chapter before Jesus begins to discuss his unwelcome homecoming, someone might have asked what all these unlikely comparisons between God’s reign and this random assortment of things and situations could mean. They seem, at the surface, more like contrasts than comparisons. And yet, when you listen a little more closely, you begin to understand that the point of the whole thing is not to tell us what we already know about God’s reign. In fact, the whole point of Jesus was not to bring us a message of good news that we already knew. If we truly already knew it, why would it have been necessary in the first place? No, these parables serve as a device to jog our brains and our complacency a little bit. Is God only like some big field in which miracles of sharing bread and fish take place? Is God only like the power contained in the presence of Jesus when he is able to calm the storms on the water and in the hearts of the disciples? Is God’s will completely contained in the act of taking a delinquent child back into the family in an act of great hospitality and forgiveness? No. Good for Jesus for stretching our minds a little bit by forcing us to think of God and God’s reign in heaven and earth a little differently.

So I want to ask you to do a little more of this today. Let’s say we’re writing our own version of these parables using simile to describe the kingdom of God by comparing it to unlikely things. The mustard seed is not actually the smallest seed that exists. But it is a seed that produces a plant much larger than itself in the end. Wanting to describe how God’s reign may just have small beginnings which then promise much bigger and greater endings, what image might we use to describe it? Could we say the kingdom of God is like an African American woman who refused to sit in the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, simply because a white passenger needed a place to sit? Look what happened next: it was not the first time a confrontation over race occurred on a bus, but it was an event which catapulted the Civil Rights movement into action, and look where we are today. We’re not there yet, but we’re a lot further down the road toward the way God intended us to live and thrive together in our difference and uniqueness as the whole people of God.

And how about the parable of the yeast? Probably making a lot more bread than just for her family, the unidentified woman in this simile uses enough flour and yeast to make hundreds of loaves of bread. It is not the amount that matters; it is the role that the yeast plays in the whole process: the agent of change. Thinking about what we add to things to cause them to become something else, to rise and expand into a new thing, what image can we find to describe the kingdom of God in the same way? Could we say it is like welcoming the poor into the lives of the rich, welcoming the poor into the pews of the church, welcoming the poor into a society which thrives when they stay poor so others can get rich? It is like helping people repair their houses as some of our very own church family did just yesterday so that they can continue to safely live in their own homes when they could not afford to make the repairs necessary to stay in their homes where they may have been for decades? This kind of demonstration of the love of God toward neighbors is a further demonstration of the way God means for us to live with and for one another—when the small things that we do in the midst of the big struggles of life create change by keeping people in their homes when their economic situation threatens to evict them out of the lives to which they have grown accustomed over a long period of time.

Then there are the two parables in verses 44-46 that paint the kingdom of God to be worth risking everything we have for the chance to have the one thing that is far more valuable than anything else: a relationship, a place to be with and belong with God. While we may search for this kind of treasure, this kind of relationship and belonging in other situations in life, to what that we know can we compare such a sought-after thing as the kingdom of God? It is not only the place we belong, it is also the place we want to be in the end when things are finally made right and everything is as it was meant to be in creation. How can we have a glimpse of that kind of reality in this life? This past week we had the second ultrasound in which the doctor and sonographer measure all kinds of weights and lengths of our child as she continues to grow. Watching that little body, that little life, that little soul on the screen in that dark room—even for just a moment—was a miracle of seeing for me. It was an extraordinary experience of understanding that God continues to value us, each one of us, enough to continue to plant new life as a treasure in the ground of the struggle to make it that we each face in one way or another. Someone once told me that he believed that as long as babies were being born that God had not given up on us yet. I would take that to the next place where God not only hasn’t given up on us yet but also continues to invest deeply in each one of us and the life experience that we each have. That investment, that relationship is worth more than anything we own or could ever hope to have in this life. That is the kingdom of God.

And perhaps the image of the kingdom of God with which we may be the least comfortable, or perhaps just the least comfortable talking about to others: the separation of the good from the bad in the end. This is often described by using words like heaven and hell, or righteousness and sin. But the bottom line is that we do not like to think about or talk about the kingdom of God as being a kind of weeded-out existence in which some folk are embraced and others are sent away. Why would a loving God dwell in this kind of life? At this point, Jesus is speaking directly with his disciples: the group of 12 he was training to be the ministry of love and reconciliation that he was beginning after he was gone from their human presence. They were the ones who were to understand better than anyone else the dangers of living a life unconnected to God—dangers of loneliness, depression, brokenness, and never finding a place where one could truly be who God had made him or her to be. Therefore, they should get that this little parable was a call to them to continue their lives of fishing, only now using the net that God would provide to bring all manner of people toward the loving presence of God so that they could all have the opportunity to accept God’s love and transforming grace in their lives. They were the simile. They were the nets. And so are we. And we are the scribes in the last few verses that bring together the old and the new, the scripture on which we have based our faith tradition and the life that Jesus breathes into it, helping it to be a living source of faith and understanding for us.

So what do we take with us from this encounter with Christ and his vision for the ultimate reign of God? What is your parable of God’s kingdom? What is mine? What is your experience of God’s presence and promise in your life, and what difference does it make in how you live? Simile teaches us to think about things differently, to look at something from a different perspective. The topic for today is God’s ultimate reign in this life and the next. What does that mean for how we live this life? And what does it mean for what is to come?

For starters, we can participate in the small beginnings God uses to lead us to great endings, great big culminations of the work of making the love of Jesus real in this world. We can also be a part of changing things for the better, of helping this world to become more and more like what God intended when our own will became mixed with God’s. And we can begin to meditate on and truly come to believe what Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection has demonstrated to us in a very real way—that we are more valuable to God than the punishment our sinful choices deserve. Our joy, our life, our gifts, our presence in the world is more valuable to God than punishing us for making decisions that tear us away from God. We just need to wake up and realize it and participate in life that is abundant, not selfish; sustaining, not destructive; hopeful, not hopeless.

How will you do that? What will your parables be? And how will they tell the crowds, the world, our neighbors about the wondrous, loving kingdom of heaven?

Amen.