Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
[Jesus] put before [the crowds] another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it 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.”
He 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.”
“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.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
“Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” And 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.”
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It’s parables after parables after parables today!
Jesus, describing the nature of the kingdom of God, using a variety of images. Everything from yeast to fish, fine pearls to mustard plants.
Unlike other parables of Jesus that tell full-blown stories complete with a beginning, middle, and end, the set of parables in our reading today are short and pithy; they read more like fortune cookies or bullet points. Not one of them really stands alone, but when you put them all together, they start to give us quite a picture of what the kingdom of God is all about.
Jesus tells us that as our imaginations and hearts are opened by these images, we become more and more like the owners of the household who bring out of our treasure what is new and what is old.
Now this I resonate with.
Because the last week of my life has been spent cleaning out the basement of a house that is more than a hundred years old; an unfinished, leaky basement with many little rooms; a basement that has served as a kids’ play area, a woodshop, a canned goods storage space, a darkroom, a laundry room, an ironing room, a sewing room, a study space….plus a chest freezer and giant furnace and a stand-alone toilet over in one corner.
It’s been a week of bringing out what is new and what is old (well, mostly old!), and filling a dumpster to the top with things that no longer have any value, while also rescuing a few treasures along the way.
I feel like I get Jesus’s vibe in all of these parables today. I feel like I could write my own set of parables to go along with his:
The kingdom of heaven is like the precious bin of “keep” items that you’ve collected while tossing out a dumpster’s worth of old basement trash.
The kingdom of heaven is like a man who keeps one half-full can of paint in his basement workroom, and that one can turns into a hundred rusted cans of all sizes, filling the shelves with the lost memory of decades worth of house projects.
The kingdom of heaven is like discovering your grandparents’ wedding picture hiding in a box of musty old books.
The kingdom of heaven is like a dining room table loaded with your favorite take-out, with extra chairs pulled up so that all the sisters and cousins can fit around it.
The kingdom of heaven is like rinsing off all the dust and sweat under a hot shower at the end of the day, and then putting on clean pajamas.
The kingdom of heaven is like discovering that the overgrown bushy weeds along the side of the house have been adopted as safe shelter for two cardinals.
Our parables today are particularly wonderful because they offer us a buffet of images and encourage us to keep adding to the table. Our parables today trust that we know the kingdom when we see it. Our parables don’t demand knowledge; they ask us to take a leap of faith.
It’s a little funny that Jesus asks the disciples if they understand everything he’s taught, since he has intentionally been teaching in parables and not directly….and it’s even funnier that the disciples say “yes,” because we’ve met these disciples, right? “Misunderstanding” is their middle name…
The thing is, I think they say “yes,” and I think they believe that they are understanding, not because it makes perfect sense in their heads, but because they understand that it is changing their hearts and changing the world.
This is the beauty of our parables today. They don’t speak to logic. The speak to imagination and faith. They invite us to places of hiddenness and wonder and wild growth. They bring us along for the thrill of discovery and the unexpected joy of finding treasure in lost places. They offer us the comfort of shaded shelter and plenty of bread. They spark in us the excitement of watching the smallest things become the biggest things, the things that flourish.
These parables don’t care about what we know. They care about exciting our hearts.
Which is very very good. Because I need the kingdom of God to be beyond my knowing. I need it to be full of images beyond my own imagination. I need it to be bigger than my own cynicism and anger and limitations; I need the kingdom to be bigger than the pains of this world; I need the kingdom to be bigger than whatever hope I can muster up on my own.
I need the kingdom of today’s parables: a kingdom that is not easily tamed, a kingdom that is not easily defined, a kingdom that cannot easily be boxed in.
I need the kingdom of today’s parables: a kingdom whose seeds have been planted - seeds of mercy, seeds of justice, seeds of compassion and love - and a kingdom that is open-ended enough to let those seeds grow as they will, freely and without limit.
Jesus assures us that this kingdom is ours to receive and ours to share, and this is our good news. It is growing every day in beautiful and unexpected ways, inside of us and outside of us and through us; and this unruly kingdom is filled with hope and it is filled with mystery and it is filled with good news.
Today’s kingdom parables give us hope that there may yet be pearls of great price to be found in the barren fields of pandemic. And that there may yet be treasure that comes from the weeds of confusion and division in our society. And even the seeds of an awkwardly-timed building project may come to provide shelter and security for those looking for a safe place to nest.
We don’t know how any of this will happen, but we delight in the possibilities, and we are called into God’s holy work of tending and building hope for these things.
And in the meantime…
We pray, saying “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
And we search the scriptures together for poetry and promise that sustain us in the hard times and that quicken our imaginations for the new creation God has promised us.
And we walk with open hearts through this world, that we might catch glimpses of the kingdom peeking out from around each corner.
And we talk. We speak of our hope, we speak of what we treasure, we speak of beauty and kindness. We share stories of birds that greet us on our morning walk, and the phone call that came at just the right time, and the coincidence that was was almost too remarkable to believe, and the tears we shed during the evening news, and the treasures of forgiveness offered to us or belly-laughs shared with a loved one. Each of these stories is a parable unto itself, a story that reveals a bit of the kingdom.
Because whenever an image of grace or love or hope or sneaky compassion causes your heart to skip a beat, or break open a little wider, it is, without a doubt, an image of the kingdom of God, unfolding bit by bit.
And that’s the heart of today’s parables. They spark our imaginations, they make us laugh, they raise eyebrows, they lead us beyond ourselves to see hope in our world. They give us all promise that the kingdom is here and it is living and we are a part of it.
We walk through this world with wonder and with courage, trusting that the kingdom will come and it will surprise us, and it will bring us the saving grace that our hearts and our world so long for.
We step into each new day not in fear but in faith, imaginations running wild, trusting God’s presence with us as we wait for what the kingdom will be.
Let us pray.
O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.