Matthew 13:31-33, 44-46
Jesus spoke to them in parables: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.
“He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”
I believe that “GOD” is a word with no clear meaning. I’m certainly not alone in that – a great many people believe the same. It is simply a code we use to denote something that is far beyond our comprehension, an idea that simply cannot be expressed in our limited human thought or language -- something (or someone) way beyond our mind’s grasp. We know it’s out there (we know it’s in here) — we have moments of recognizing it — but we cannot explain it.
Like the story of the three blind men and the elephant, we all grasp various pieces of God, from time to time, but never God’s totality. God is just too much. Libraries have been filled with books meant to “define” God, and yet we are no closer to a real answer.
I suspect Jesus was faced with the same puzzle whenever he tried to explain God’s kingdom to his followers: The kingdom of heaven is like a seed -- like yeast -- like a hidden treasure -- like a pearl. Is there anyone who, after reading this scripture, really feels they are now any closer to defining the “kingdom of heaven?” All these things in our reading are part of it, but what IS it?
What we have today is a series of mini-parables – little “drive-by” parables. John Dominic Crossan, in one of his earliest books, “In Parables”, explains that parables are designed to rearrange our thinking about something, to jog us out of our ruts. They are tricks that set us up to think we know the correct answer, that we know where this story is going — and then they take us somewhere totally unexpected.
Think of the Prodigal Son, with its wastrel son who hoped for only the bare minimum of mercy, some food scraps to eat – who was instead given welcome and love, or the Good Samaritan, with the “proper” people – the priest, the Levite, passing by the injured man unmoved, and the despised Samaritan the only person moved to show kindness and mercy.
To us, today, these answers seem like the "right" ones because this is how we have always heard these parables, with these endings. But to Jesus' original hearers, they would have been completely surprising, if not actually shocking. A Samaritan was the good guy? Impossible! And that is exactly Jesus' point.
Take any one of the parables from today’s reading. “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” That sounds like advice from a stock-broker. If the pearl represents the Kingdom, then it does make sense that we might give up everything else in order to obtain it -- but still, it has to be more than something like a pearl. Remember that we have to read the Parables carefully because we learn as much from what is not said as from what is said.
We still do not, to my mind, have a very clear picture of what God’s kingdom is like. It obviously includes all these smaller pieces, but put all of them together and I’m left, still not knowing what it is. We could make long lists of things the kingdom of God is like — there are many more examples in the gospels -- but it's the same issue, just multiplied.
What we do have here, however, is a pretty clear image of what the kingdom of God IS NOT. It is NOT limited, NOT restrictive. It has no walls, no purity tests to pass before we can enter. It does NOT meet our pre-suppositions. It is NOT locked away in sanctuaries for only the privileged to see.
It IS bigger than us and bigger than our limited imaginations. It is right here, all around us – in ordinary people, in the simplest things of life. It is available to us right now. The scriptures give us a starting point, a place to begin our life-journey discovering God, but the journey is always ours to take. The conversation must be between God and ourselves.
We need to stop trying to define God and God’s ways. Stop trying to put them in a box. Instead, we need to let our imaginations grow big enough that we can live into the kingdom of God – the reign of our limitless, expansive, undefinable, uncontainable God! Just “stop” with trying to own God -- and let God be God!
May it always be so.
Like the story of the three blind men and the elephant, we all grasp various pieces of God, from time to time, but never God’s totality. God is just too much. Libraries have been filled with books meant to “define” God, and yet we are no closer to a real answer.
I suspect Jesus was faced with the same puzzle whenever he tried to explain God’s kingdom to his followers: The kingdom of heaven is like a seed -- like yeast -- like a hidden treasure -- like a pearl. Is there anyone who, after reading this scripture, really feels they are now any closer to defining the “kingdom of heaven?” All these things in our reading are part of it, but what IS it?
What we have today is a series of mini-parables – little “drive-by” parables. John Dominic Crossan, in one of his earliest books, “In Parables”, explains that parables are designed to rearrange our thinking about something, to jog us out of our ruts. They are tricks that set us up to think we know the correct answer, that we know where this story is going — and then they take us somewhere totally unexpected.
Think of the Prodigal Son, with its wastrel son who hoped for only the bare minimum of mercy, some food scraps to eat – who was instead given welcome and love, or the Good Samaritan, with the “proper” people – the priest, the Levite, passing by the injured man unmoved, and the despised Samaritan the only person moved to show kindness and mercy.
To us, today, these answers seem like the "right" ones because this is how we have always heard these parables, with these endings. But to Jesus' original hearers, they would have been completely surprising, if not actually shocking. A Samaritan was the good guy? Impossible! And that is exactly Jesus' point.
Take any one of the parables from today’s reading. “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” That sounds like advice from a stock-broker. If the pearl represents the Kingdom, then it does make sense that we might give up everything else in order to obtain it -- but still, it has to be more than something like a pearl. Remember that we have to read the Parables carefully because we learn as much from what is not said as from what is said.
We still do not, to my mind, have a very clear picture of what God’s kingdom is like. It obviously includes all these smaller pieces, but put all of them together and I’m left, still not knowing what it is. We could make long lists of things the kingdom of God is like — there are many more examples in the gospels -- but it's the same issue, just multiplied.
What we do have here, however, is a pretty clear image of what the kingdom of God IS NOT. It is NOT limited, NOT restrictive. It has no walls, no purity tests to pass before we can enter. It does NOT meet our pre-suppositions. It is NOT locked away in sanctuaries for only the privileged to see.
It IS bigger than us and bigger than our limited imaginations. It is right here, all around us – in ordinary people, in the simplest things of life. It is available to us right now. The scriptures give us a starting point, a place to begin our life-journey discovering God, but the journey is always ours to take. The conversation must be between God and ourselves.
We need to stop trying to define God and God’s ways. Stop trying to put them in a box. Instead, we need to let our imaginations grow big enough that we can live into the kingdom of God – the reign of our limitless, expansive, undefinable, uncontainable God! Just “stop” with trying to own God -- and let God be God!
May it always be so.
RSS Feed