Text: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
We’ve spent a few weeks now with Jesus and his parables.
We’ve seen that Jesus told parables, in part, to hide the message of the kingdom of God in plain sight. He spoke to the crowds, who weren’t truly invested in his mission, only in parables. But to his disciples he would later give their meaning.
We’ve also seen that Jesus spoke in parables to make people think. Even when Jesus gave the meaning of his parables to his followers, a lot would remain unexplained. There was enigma in his parables. Mystery.
In the life of following Jesus, our tendency is to equate biblical knowledge with faith. If someone is certain of what they believe, we reason, that person must have great faith. But it only takes a little bit of life experience to undermine this assumption. We all know people with deep doctrinal understanding whose moral life is a mess. We know people who will argue for their position on the rapture until they are blue in the face, who then go home and yell at their kids. As a pastor and theology nerd, one could say that I know a thing or two about stuff. But just ask my wife how well I trust God, how often I doubt him, or how much of my day is spent in worry or fear.
And it’s not that the problem is knowledge, either. A carefully cultivated ignorance isn’t really any better. Those who most loudly proclaim how little they know usually have as strong of opinions as anyone else. And none of us—knowledgable and ignorant alike—are really any better at trusting and obeying God than anyone else.
The parables that Jesus gives are meant to veil and unveil at the same time. They are a sort of test. Will we press in or walk away? Will we stick around, or will we find something better to do? In that sense, they are a veil. They are a way for Jesus to point us to something without us knowing exactly what that something is. It’s a way to see how we’ll react.
But the parables also unveil. They are little apocalypses, like the book of Revelation. They paint a picture of reality as it really is, but that our natural eyes (for the moment, at least) cannot see. The parables of the sower and of the weeds aren’t the only way to explain why some people are Christians and some people aren’t. Those who reject the gospel would certainly explain the situation quite differently. But they are Jesus’ explanation for what is happening. If we want to see the world the way Jesus sees the world, we’re going to have to sit down and think about these stories.
In our passages today, the lectionary rushes us through the final six parables left in this chapter:
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that grows into a huge plant.
It’s like a bit of yeast that leavens a bunch of dough.
It’s like a treasure buried in a field,
and a merchant looking for jewels.
The kingdom of heaven is like a net full of fish, some you can eat and some you cannot.
And every rabbi who becomes a Christian is like a rich man with both new and antique treasures in his house.
As a preacher attempting to preach through the lectionary, I almost have to laugh that I’ve been given all these parables to try and jam into one sermon.
But Jesus is painting pictures for us. That’s the point of these texts. And the more we can see the pictures, the easier it will be to see what Jesus wants us to see. The interpretation of these parables is pretty straightforward.
The kingdom starts small and gets big.
It’s valuable enough to trade everything we have in exchange for it.
In the end of time, evil will be judged and the righteous will be saved.
Knowing the Old Testament as well as the New means appreciating both even more.
Fair enough. But how would these stories have been heard by the crowds?
When we bought our house, it was a mess. The folks who originally owned it had gotten a divorce, and for the seven years before we bought it the house had been rented by a series of tenants. All the tenants were young, and the house had a reputation as the local party house. Several of Nichole’s coworkers knew of the place. A few in their 20’s had crashed there for a while. The neighbors hated what the place had become, and were overjoyed to see a young family with a baby move in. The backyard was overgrown with blackberries and scotch broom. The crawl space was infested with rats. The blinds were all broken, and some of the ducts were sealed off as storage compartments (for what, only the Lord knows). The condition of the place was the only reason we could afford it. God’s protection was the only reason some house-flipper didn’t buy it out from under us, clean it up, sell it, and make a quick buck. But when we moved in the place was basically Wild Kingdom. I learned very quickly how to hunt and kill rats.
Now imagine Jesus coming along and saying to us—as Nichole blows her nose from the scotch broom and I wash my hands after pulling a dead rat from the crawl space—“The kingdom of heaven is like a blackberry vine. Though not native to Vashon, it grows everywhere and takes over backyards across the land.”
“The kingdom of heaven is like a Norwegian wood rat. It appears in spaces you’d never expect it to get into, and it multiplies at a rate you could never imagine.”
“The kingdom of heaven is like a plant your wife is allergic to. Even when she goes inside and shuts all the windows, the pollen still gets in her nose.”
How do you imagine we’d react? Let’s assume for a moment we don’t get mad at Jesus. Give Nichole and I enough credit to count us among the disciples instead of the crowds. Ok. We’re not offended. We like Jesus, and we want to understand the kingdom of God. But Jesus’ illustrations are a bit odd, don’t you think? Couldn’t he use some other example? He probably could, but he likes his words to smack us in the face. And they certainly get our attention. And, we have to admit, the more we think about what he is saying, the more we understand what he means.
That is the effect these parables would have had on the original hearers.
Nobody wanted a mustard plant in their garden. It’s the sort of thing that would show up in your field because the bag of seeds you had planted from was contaminated. It grew big, yes. But you didn’t want it to. A mustard bush in your field, to an ancient Galilean, was not too dissimilar to a blackberry vine showing up in your flower garden on Vashon.
And yeast. The translations that say “leaven” are probably better here, because Jesus isn’t talking about a jar of Fleischman’s from Thriftway. He’s talking about a bit of rotten bread that you’d keep and mix into the next batch of flour to make it rise. Somewhere between spoiled leftovers in your fridge and your grandmother’s sourdough starter. No wonder leaven, or yeast, is a symbol of sin in the Bible, and unleavened bread a symbol of purity. But Jesus isn’t saying the kingdom of God is full of sin. He’s saying it spreads like yeast in a bowl of dough. The unleavened flour doesn’t de-leaven the yeast. The yeast leavens the flour.
The kingdom of heaven spreads, in other words, like rotten bread mixed into flour and oil. Or, if you prefer, like blackberries in your back yard.
And the strangeness of Jesus’ stories continues…
For example: If you think about it, the man who finds the treasure in a field is basically a thief. What’s he doing digging in a field that isn’t his? Doesn’t the treasure belong to whoever owns the field? Doesn’t the fact that they sell him the field indicate they don’t realize the treasure that lies within? This man has given up all that he owns, but he’s still kind of stealing this treasure. Who are these idiots who sold him the field? What are we to think of this guy? Is the story about them? About him? Or about the valuable treasure?
And also, nobody liked a merchant. They were, for the most part, a necessary and valuable evil. A parable about a merchant selling all he has to buy a big pearl was like telling a parable about Jeff Bezos selling Amazon so he could buy an even more expensive website. Nobody claps for Jeff Bezos in a story like that. But that’s not the point. The point is, What could be more valuable than being the owner of Amazon?
What Jesus is trying to give us with these stories isn’t information but perspective. He turns our conceptual worlds on their heads to startle us and make us think. He wants to see what we will do when we get the answers we seek, but in an unsettling form. His words are intended to shape us more than they are meant to inform us. They are meant to feed us more than they are meant to make us feel smart. If heard and attended to, they tell us how the world really works. If believed and lived by, they tell us who we really are.
Let’s Pray
Mikael Ivaska 