Koonung Heights Uniting Church
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
We will have a break from that family that we have been following over the past 3 weeks and jump over to the gospel reading today. But you did hear the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures – Jacob the trickster gets tricked. The deceiver deceived and has to spend another 7 years serving Laban to win the hand of Rachel. The Universe has a way of catching up with us.
The most constant theme in Jesus teaching; the central burning obsession that drove him in his ministry would be the Kingdom of heaven. His first words of public proclamation were repent get ready, turn, reorient, why? for the kingdom is upon you. The appearing and manifesting of the way of God in human affairs upon earth. So don’t think Kingdom of God as some vague, after life equivalent to how we often think about heaven. Think life on earth. Gritty, bloody, precious, tender, resilient, faithful life on earth.
Today we often substitute for Kingdom the term Reign of God due to sensitivies about both sexist and imperialist language. I will probably alternate between reign and kingdom.
Even if we substituting terms still today 2,000 years later we ask- where is it, how do we recognise it, participate in it?
Jesus clearly believed you have got to approach the reign of God with some thought. You can’t just walk up and snatch it as a prize. In reaching out your hand to grasp it it will slip through your outstretched fingers. You got to be more subtle, more whimsical. No-one is argued into the kingdom. On the contrary they will be proved to harden their resistance simply to keep face or out of pride or whatever. Rationality and logic has its place in the Christian faith but Jesus’ favoured way of portraying the reign of God was in parables. Maybe there is a bit of the old maxim the medium is the message. Maybe the paradox of the parable is saying something of the paradoxical nature of the Kingdom. We may ask, do parables reveal or conceal the kingdom; do they do both at the same time? If it has to be explained is it like having a joke explained…
And so the reign of God is often conveyed by Jesus in parables. You can’t say you know a parable just because you can recite the story line. Good Samaritan…A person is travelling on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho when he is set upon by robbers.. no you know the parable of the Good Samaritan when you … what did Jesus say? go and be a neighbour.
The elements of the parables are ordinary, weeds, inheritance, fishing, leaven and flour, sowing tiny seeds, robbers on a country road. But it is not the elements or the physical things that contain the message or the insight. It is the action. What happens to a seed or leaven in the flour, or the mugged traveller. There in the interactions the extraordinary thing happens, the transformation, the wonder of the reign of God.
The mini parables or images we have today are short on details, pithy one liners, just an outline of a plot unlike the more developed stories that we have in Luke such as good sam or prodigal son; but very rich in meaning and through them all is a sense of urgency; something important is in the balance here.
- like a mustard seed growing;
- like leaven spreading in flour;
- like treasure hidden in a field and discovered;
- like a priceless pearl found in the market;
- like a net that catches all kinds of fish.
That is probably 4 images too many for one sermon but I will make brief comments on a few.
Image for kingdom is mustard plant, a shrub, produced from small seed. But when fully grown the mustard plant was considered a weed. You don’t want it in your lovely ornamental or vegetable garden. It was almost unstoppable and spread of its own volition. Out of our control, wide spreading, virulent, expansive. It could not be tamed and cultivated.
In the words of the Paul Kelly/Kev Carmody song From little things big things grow.
I imagine that is why Jesus has selected a undesired weed for an image of the kingdom? The mustard shrub is hardly up to the prevailing plant image for the Kingdom of Heaven – the mighty cedar trees of Lebanon.
And then two parables of things that are highly valued – land with treasure hidden in it and a pearl.
And we are left pondering what are you willing to part with in order to obtain the treasure or pearl?
The treasure in the field and the pearl are there now but they may not be available tomorrow so you must act decisively.
We are moved to ponder hiding and discovering, kingdom discloses something that there previously but you did not see it.
it is ‘hidden’ from the wise and intelligent in Matt 11.25; it is hidden from the crowds in the telling of parables, and is a ‘secret’ given only to the disciples in Matt 13.11; it is like the hidden treasure; and Jesus’ true identity becomes a secret from Matt 16.20 onwards, only being revealed in the later, post-resurrection proclamation.
Most of us adopt a moral framework when we talk about welcoming or entering the kingdom. Following Jesus is about becoming a better, more moral person. And there is teaching from Jesus about that. The parable of the Good Samaritan ends with Go and be a Neighbour. Go and do likewise. Put yourself on the edge, at risk, by befriending the outcast and friendless.
But the parable of the treasure suggests the kingdom is nothing like that. The kingdom isn’t morally hard, it’s just hidden. The kingdom is here and available, but we cannot see it.
But if we do come to see it, our response isn’t a long slog of spiritual discipline and mortification. The response is, rather, happy, easy, fast, and automatic. I am going to see all I have and buy that field of hidden treasure or pearl.
The kingdom is close and available but you have to act energetically and decisively to secure it. Something extraordinarily valuable is “within your grasp.” Will you act decisively to receive it? The kingdom of God, Jesus is saying, is like that.
Jesus asks his disciples, “Have you understood this”? If we were reading Mark’s gospel I suspect the answer would have been a perplexed, “aaahhh not really” because Mark’s disciples are thick headed buffoons. Matthew has a higher regard and so the answer is a crisp, “Yes”! Though who has not claimed to have understood something, or laughed at a joke they did not get just so they would not appear cloddish and ignorant. But if saying Yes they have understood Jesus’ teaching perhaps they should recall that it was
Mark Twain put the matter simply and wisely: “Some people are troubled by things in the Bible they can’t understand. What troubles me are the things I can understand.”
And the final comment about scribes, We are so accustomed to hearing “scribe” as part of the axis of evil in the gospels (Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Chief Priests, etc.). It seems to be a good term here, perhaps a reference to the disciples or perhaps a self-reference to Matthew, explaining why his gospel is different than other gospels that have been written.
A scribe is someone who brings out new stuff from the treasury. Matthew’s gospel does this and Jesus himself is an example of the wise teacher who gives new meaning, insights from the ancient scripture/tradition. Just said to someone the other day as we were looking at our worship space and reflecting that we worship in a space that is 160 years old and that has both the church and the organ on the Heritage Register. I said that I like that being in a building that has been sacred space to a community and I feel the baton has been passed to us. We receive the tradition and make it our own. What we were on about is to “contemporase the tradition”- what every Christian should be on about – some trained specifically.
