Yours Is The Kingdom. Part 1

Excerpts from Matthew 13: 24-43

•‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away.

•‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’

•‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’

Whenever we hear the “Kingdom of heaven” parables, there is a tendency to turn them back on ourselves. We imagine the Kingdom as a static place in which we are called to be and do certain things like sow good seed, grow like trees and be like yeast. We turn the precept of the Kingdom into a place where the price of admission is a list of our spiritual accomplishments. With this kind of imagery in mind along with the knowledge of how we struggle to make ourselves become tiny seeds or grains of yeast, the Kingdom is reduced to a place full of dry expectations that we aren’t able to adequately live up to. It feels like a classroom where the subject taught is often difficult and hard to grasp and where we fear a failing grade rather than anticipate joyful success.

This kind of imagery is the Gospel turned inside out, backward and upside down. It reduces God to an exacting schoolmaster and makes the Kingdom life feel like a series of dreaded lessons in vaguely understood subjects we never graduate from and are doomed to repeat over and over. This imagery is so far from the radiant truth that it sometimes makes me think, “An enemy has done this.” Jesus began the parables this week with the image of God sowing healthy seeds only to find that weeds had sprung up as well. In the fertile field of the nature of God, subtle weeds of lies about who he is and who we are have been deviously planted alongside the wheat of truth. However, God in his wisdom and goodness doesn’t just rush in and violently pull up the weeds because he knows that the roots of these misperceptions are so entwined with our hearts and souls that to just yank out the mistaken ideas all at once would do more damage than good to our fragile psyches and would leave us vacant and vulnerable. He will patiently wait until the truth is deeply rooted, healthy, strong and flourishing before he attacks the weeds of deceit.

Then Jesus moves on to parables of the mustard seed and the yeast to show who he really is and how, in the end, these weeds of deception cannot overcome the Kingdom. We are not the mustard seeds nor are we the yeast. The Kingdom of heaven is the mustard seed and the Kingdom of Heaven is the yeast. This changes everything. This turns the Kingdom into a dynamic, vital, growing and spreading life force that has no concern for borders or boundaries. The Kingdom is not a place at all; it’s the complete and full nature of Christ. The earth is so full of it that nothing can escape it. It’s his personality, his energy, his desire, his blessing and his love and he is nothing but lavish in pouring it out for us and on us.

In the parable of the mustard seed, it’s noteworthy that Jesus didn’t liken the Kingdom to just any big tree; he chose a tree that starts out incredibly small and insignificant (perhaps like the son of a poor carpenter from Nazareth?) and has the characteristic of totally taking over the area in which it grows. "Mustard… is extremely beneficial for the health. It grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted: but on the other hand when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once." (Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History approx. AD 78) This is the Kingdom. It immediately germinates, takes root, takes over and spreads in an almost profligate way. The mustard tree actually doesn’t attract birds to rest in its branches but Jesus, the Kingdom Mustard Tree, magnanimously offers his plentiful branches and invites all who need rest, healing and protection to rest in him. Our God is full of unexpected and surprising lavishness.

The woman adding yeast to the flour was not making one little loaf of bread. Three measures of flour are equivalent to 8 ½ gallons or 38 liters of flour. Jesus is likening himself to a woman mixing in enough yeast to make at least a hundred loaves of bread. In scripture, the number three is used to signify God’s purpose or his will and the number 100 signifies completeness or fullness. Jesus became our Bread of Life according to God’s will and he became the complete fullness of God abundantly available to us in the Eucharist. Our God is not stingy or miserly with his love. He is bountiful and extravagant.

A few years ago, our pastor, Fr. William Hann, gave a homily on the nature of God in relation to the parable of the sower and the seed and something he said made my spirit leap within me at the time. I know it came straight from his heart and are precepts he utterly and intimately knows to be true. They aren’t just interesting ideas he read somewhere; they are bedrock in his life. Listen to these words that truly reflect the Kingdom of heaven:

“… today's parable of the sower invites us not to discount the fact that a gracious God is also part of our world scene; not as a threatening, punishing or destructive God but as a God who is generous to the point of being prodigal in the way he brings forth new life in our world. It is my firm belief that God is too much for us--too generous, too imaginative and too down to earth … too close. Like the seed bursting open, God will change us--if we allow it. We long to be changed, and we fear it. This parable is of great comfort to us--all of us to whom the gospel has been entrusted. The seed of God is potent and sometimes the harvest is rich. What takes root in our lives bears fruit and can yield even a hundredfold. That's great news and, as someone said, "it's like a refreshing shower" that brings our drooping spirits back to life.”

The Kingdom of heaven is Christ. He was planted and he immediately germinated to become the bountiful tree of life that cannot be eradicated. Jesus is the powerful yeast mixed in with the flour of God’s will to provide the nourishing risen Bread of Life - enough for all and enough for all time. If we insist on thinking of the Kingdom as something apart from us or something that’s withheld from us unless we get our act together, we will find our ability to be open to change sporadic and often ineffective. As Fr. William said, 'we long to be changed – and we fear it.' We fear it because we don’t understand that God is the yeast that causes the rising action within us. He does the planting. He is the creative seed and the harvest he brings forth is joyously and riotously abundant. We look at our own meager resources and of course we fear change. We fear it because we are incapable of making it happen. We have too little to work with and we know it. We need to turn around and run to a God who is ‘too generous, too imaginative, too down to earth … too close’. If you pondered just those words for the rest of your life, you would find yourself being changed without fear or strained effort and you would know that it was the Kingdom of heaven who laughed you into freedom and loved you into life.  

Let anyone with ears to hear please listen. For the love of God…listen!