Learning to Recognize the Kingdom (7-30-2023)

July 30, 2023

Ninth Sunday After Pentecost (A)

1 Kings 3:5-12; Psalm 119:129-136; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

 The service on this Sunday was not recorded because of a power outage in our neighborhood following a severe thunderstorm the previous evening. These are the notes Pastor David used in the service.

If anyone doesn’t think Jesus has a sense of humor, his question to the disciples at the end of today’s gospel reading and his reaction to their response will show you otherwise. After Jesus has told his disciples two long parables, both of which required lengthy explanations, Jesus fires off five more parables, says, “Do you understand?” And the disciples say, “Oh, sure.” Liars! And Jesus doesn’t even miss a beat.

These five parables are all about the kingdom of heaven. As descriptions of the kingdom, they’re random. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard bush where the birds make their nests, like the yeast in dough, like a pearl of great price, like a net that scoops up all kinds of things. It’s not immediately obvious what any of these mean.

But the crowds listening to Jesus would have already had a sense of what the kingdom of heaven is like. Everybody knows that, when God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven, the world will look different from what it is now. Now we are, as Paul says, groaning with sighs too deep for words. Aware of all the problems we have. When the kingdom comes the blind will see the deaf will hear the immobilized will walk and the poor will hear good news for a change.

The real question is when is this going to happen. For most people then as now, it can’t happen soon enough. And how will it come? Will it be like yesterday’s thunderstorm that came out of nowhere and shakes everything up, knocking down trees, impossible to ignore? Or will its coming be more subtle than that?

If we hear these shorter parables today – together with the longer parables of the Sower and the Weeds from the last two Sundays – as telling us how and when the kingdom comes, they are less random. They paint a more consistent picture.

The kingdom, Jesus says, is like a woman who hides yeast in 3 measures of flour. (By the way, that’s a lot of flour, enough to make over 100 loaves of bread.) The yeast is hidden in the dough – you can’t see it, you can only feel its effects. And it’s not like there’s any dough without yeast – the yeast has always been there all along, from the beginning. We only notice it when the dough starts to rise, apparently all by itself. And so it is with the kingdom of heaven. The breath of God, the Spirit of God, is breathing and exhaling carbon dioxide within the very structure of the world and always has been, bubbling up in ways that we don’t always see other than by its effects.

The kingdom, Jesus says, is like a mustard seed planted in a field. Which, by the way, no farmer would plant on purpose. You have a valuable crop like wheat, the last thing you want is a bush that produces nothing of great value, casts shade on the crop you think you’re trying to go – and attracts birds. Exactly what every farmer wants in the middle of their field, something that attracts hungry birds. You might as well say the kingdom is like a dandelion someone planted in their lawn, to give it a little color.

Yet, so it is with the kingdom of heaven. It appears at first as a weed, as an invasive species, not what we were trying to achieve or accomplish. It appears at first as a tiny seed, small even as seeds go, but before you know it the effects are visible – and we have to decide how we feel about this bush that interrupts our plans and projects – even as it makes the birds very happy.

The kingdom of heaven is like a pearl that a merchant would sell everything in order to obtain, like a hidden treasure for which you would buy the whole farm in order to possess. These things are very costly, but they are costs that people pay willingly, even joyfully, given what they are getting in return.

And so it is with the kingdom of heaven. Even if it demands much of us – even if we have to buy the farm, so to speak – the cost is not experienced as a burden or an imposition. The focus is not on what we have to do, but on what we get to do – we get to possess the most valuable pearl, the most intriguing buried treasure. The kingdom grows without our effort, without our notice. The kingdom is always present and has always been present – but doesn’t always line up with our projects and concerns. And if we have to set aside those concerns, if we have to take up the cross – we will not experience those as loss, even if we buy the farm, but as opportunity.

Like yeast in dough, God is always working in the world. Like a mustard seed, God’s work is easy to miss and not what we’d expect to see. Like a net that drags up all kinds of things, God’s work can be messy at times. But if we understand these things, Jesus says, we can learn to see God at work in the world. We can learn to see that the kingdom of heaven is much closer to us than we might have thought. One who has learned how to discern the presence of the kingdom, Jesus says, is like a wine steward who can always bring out the perfect bottle for every occasion, of older vintage or newer, doesn’t matter.

But even if we don’t fully understand, even if we don’t always see God’s presence and activity in our midst – we can be assured, as Paul says in the second reading today, that God is always at work for our good in any situation no matter what, that if God is for us nothing can be against us, that absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God. And that’s what really matters.