July 30, 2017
Matthew 13:31-52
At first, our Gospel reading from Matthew seemed like the perfect reading for me to preach about after two weeks spent several national parks in the wilderness of California. Especially the growth-from-small-seeds part. My family spent time among the giant sequoias at Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks and we were shocked to pick up the surprisingly tiny little pine cones that held the seeds to these unbelievably massive trees that my entire family of five’s arms outspread could not reach around! It seemed impossible that the two could be related.
So I was ready to hang with Matthew and his mustard seed with its explosive growth. That little pine cone, so precious that signs everywhere told us we must not take them from the park, was firmly in my mind.
But then I read more closely. And got to the part about the weeping and gnashing of teeth and the fiery furnace. Really, Matthew?! We are going on week three of that stuff now - enough already! Two weeks ago doomsday Matthew gave us the Parable of the Sower with the evil one snatching away the good seeds that were planted in certain hearts. Then last Sunday, he was at it again, with all causes of sin and all evildoers being thrown into the furnace of fire. And here he is again!
Why today of all days, in this otherwise beautiful reading full of lovely and light parables that are all about abundance and value. A small seed’s dramatic growth; a small amount of yeast lightening huge amounts of dough; a unexpectedly discovered treasure; a pearl worth everthing. The Kingdom of Heaven is like those things! I can totally get on board with all of that! Growth and goodness and provision and abundance and value.
So why this nasty addition, Matthew?
“The kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind….” Now, if he’d stopped there, it’s perfect. I love this image of an inclusive net, gathering up everything, just as God gathers us.
But then it starts to go downhill:
“… when [the net] was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.”
This separation stuff is never my favorite. But even then, I appreciate the point. It isn’t for us to judge which among us are the good fish or to separate the good from the bad; that work is above our pay grade.
It’s what happens next that really makes me cringe.
“…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.”
Really, Matthew? Was that really necessary?
I asked John if by chance he would mind if I just snipped that piece off of our reading. Because otherwise, it’s really all perfectly fine sermon stuff. But John assured me that he already preached two weeks ago about how most commentators agree that these terror-inducing fire and damnation passages likely weren’t Jesus’ words, but the early Church’s. So that’s good. I can check that off my list of worries.
But it turned out that John’s resistance to my request to edit this passage to suit my theology was a good thing. Because while I don’t see that gnashing and fire language being consistent with the core of Jesus’ message, it did make me take a closer look at this passage. It made me struggle and wrestle with it, rather than just letting it slide by, pretty and neat and fairly unremarkable.
And upon closer inspection, these parables are anything but pretty and neat and unremarkable.
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed…
Mustard. Not some inoffensive pretty yellow flower like I first imagined, and definitely not some majestic kingly sequoia, but more like the insidious kudzu that takes over the tall trees along the highways in the south, the poison ivy that cunningly blends in along the edge of the trail along the GW Parkway, the dandelions that take over my grass.
The mustard that Jesus talks about here was the menace that took over crops in his day, the stubborn nuisance plant that couldn’t ever be completely rooted out. The kingdom of heaven is like that.
The kingdom of heaven is like yeast…
Yeast. Not the useful dry little particles that we buy in neat packets in the store, but the rotten stench of dough gone bad that good religious people of Jesus’ time equated with death and corruption and impurity, and put out of their homes for their religious observations of Passover.
The kingdom of heaven is like that.
The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure in a field which someone found and then hid…
That treasure finder - not an innocent hiker happening by, but a trespasser, a thief, who, while digging around in someone else's field, came upon something so beloved and precious that it had been stored for safety underground and out of sight. But, rather than alerting its proper owner, the finder obtained it by trickery and omission.
The kingdom of heaven is like that.
The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant…
A merchant. He sounds respectable and hard-working to our modern ears, but he would have been the equivalent of a used-car salesman or a telemarketer to Jesus’ hearers. Someone looked upon dubiously because he so often tried to pass off mediocre goods as first-rate.
The kingdom of heaven is like that.
These are compared to the kingdom of heaven! These are subversive parables, with shady characters and disrespected items being used to describe God’s kingdom. Not kings or respected leaders or life-saving substances or majestic sequoias. Whatever the Kingdom of Heaven is, it isn’t just what we expect, it isn’t just what we find grand or remarkable or even acceptable. The Kingdom of Heaven is present in the most ordinary, and even the most disruptive and disreputable places and people around us. The Kingdom of Heaven is a radical challenge.
Seeing the underbelly of those parables is what makes the next one so important. The one I wanted to cut out.
The kingdom of heaven is like a net that caught fish of ever kind…
Fish of every kind. This net is inclusive beyond my comfort zone. Not just the well-behaved and socially-acceptable. Not just the pure and safe and successful and good-looking. Not only does this net not discriminate, it goes so far as to gather up everything and everyone — no matter how despised — into the here and now and possible of the kingdom of heaven. Together! All swept up into the growth, the goodness, the provision, the value, the abundance of God’s kingdom.
And while I’d still happily take out the fire and teeth-gnashing stuff, even that starts to ring true.
Because we need to know that all of us — every piece of our being — including our less savory and presentable underbelly — is invited into God’s kingdom — where healing grows like weeds, and forgiveness spreads like mold, and our best parts can be unearthed no matter how deeply covered in muck they’ve become, and God can take whatever mediocre offerings we have and transform them into something of great price.
And maybe we also need to know that every part of our experience, no matter how messy or disruptive or unwelcome or painful, no matter how much it makes us weep and gnash our teeth, can also be swept up into God’s kingdom.
Even those destructive and fiery parts.
There was a wildfire raging about 20 miles outside Yosemite while we were staying there, much bigger than they’d seen so close in quite a while.
On a bus ride up to Glacier Point in Yosemite, the driver was talking about the effect of fires on the forests. I’ve always been taught about the terrible dangers of wildfires. And everywhere you turn in the park there were, rightly, signs about the danger of fires and the dryness of the season. Absolutely no smoking. No campfires without permits and proper placement. But our driver told us that the giant sequoias actually thrive in the wildfires. Their thick outer bark protects their more delicate inner core from ruin. And the heat from the fire actually opens their seed cones and allows the seeds to be released onto the ground. The destructive flames recycle nutrients into the soil to help the seeds grow. And the fire clears the forest canopy so that sunlight can reach the young sequoia seedlings.
Maybe sometimes the kingdom of heaven is even like that. Like a raging wildfire that causes us to unclench whatever we are holding onto too tightly so that unexpected new life can emerge into a once too-full space.
The Kingdom of Heaven is tucked into every nook and cranny of life. It is as close as the next weed or patch of dirt or loaf of bread. And its potential is present even in the pieces of life that feel scary and overwhelming and destructive. God is forever invading our orderly sense of things. All that we expect and everything we know has potential to be transformed by our surprising God.
Who knows where God will turn up next?
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