A Great Surprise

 Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
July 30, 2023

12 Proper A 

          When I was a child, every Christmas my uncle would send us a huge box of assorted chocolates. There was a chart on the inside of the top of the box telling us which confection was in each of the little plastic cups.  Every night, we would get to choose one chocolate from the box, and because there were only three children in the family, two pounds of chocolate lasted a very long time.  This is where I learned to avoid chocolate covered cherries and this is the beginning of my relationship with chocolate covered cashews.  There was something for everyone in that box and we each got to pick what we liked.

          Jesus’ parables this morning are a bit like that box of chocolates.  There is something to help everyone understand the Kingdom of Heaven.  If you are a gardener, perhaps the parable of the mustard seed is helpful.  Or for bakers, there is the parable of the yeast.  For entrepreneurs, the parable of the hidden treasure might be helpful.  For those in sales, we have the parable of the pearl of great value and for those who like to fish, Jesus offers the parable of the fishing net.  Jesus’ buffet of parables apparently worked for the disciples since at the end of the passage Jesus askes them “Have you understood all this?” and they all answer “yes.” 

          However, Jesus is not offering the disciples or us a buffet from which to pick and choose which parable works for us in understanding the kingdom of heaven.  Jesus is offering us a five course meal of parables and all of them, taken together, are needed to understand the kingdom of heaven.  And understanding the kingdom is important since Jesus taught us to pray “thy kingdom come.”  We should probably know what we are requesting of God.  What do we learn from these five little parables, taken together?

          First, all five parables involve something small and hidden. The mustard seed is small and hidden in the ground.  Yeast is small and hidden in flour.  The buried treasure is small enough to be buried in the ground.  A pearl is small and hidden among other pearls of lesser value.  The net is not small, but the web pretty much disappears when thrown into the sea to catch fish.

Secondly, each parable involves work.  Someone sowed the mustard seed into the field.  The woman took the yeast and mixed it in with the flour.  Someone had to dig up a field to find the buried treasure.  The merchant had to search for the pearls, and someone had to throw that net into the sea.

Lastly, in each parable, that which started off small and hidden becomes large and visible.  The mustard seed grows into the greatest of shrubs.  The yeast does it work and creates an enormous amount of dough.  When the treasure is found, the man sells all that he has and buys the whole field so that the treasure is his.  The merchant sells everything he owns to buy the one pearl.  And the net catches fish of every kind.

So, from these parables, we learn that the kingdom of God starts off small, and with work grows into the full stature of the Kingdom of God.

However, the explanation of Jesus' parables is rarely that obvious.  Pretty much anything we undertake starts small and with work matures into full potential. As we have noted before, Jesus rarely dispenses common sense.  But when we dig a little deeper, we see that each parable is a bit subversive.  The mustard in the parable is actually a weed but in this parable the mustard seed is compared with the greatest of all kingdoms, the kingdom of heaven.  Yeast is a symbol of corruption and impurity in Scripture and is cleaned from homes in preparation for Passover.  Someone who finds buried treasure in someone else's field then buys the field to own the treasure without telling the owner is a thief, and merchants rated right up there with tax collectors and other cheats.  But this cheat sells everything to buy the great pearl, which made it impossible for him to do further business so he likely goes broke.

From these parables, then, we learn that Jesus can use weeds, thieves and cheats to make the Kingdom of Heaven come alive.  Scripture is full of stories about the way God uses thieves, cheats, and weeds.  Our reading from Genesis this morning is evidence of this as Laban tricks Jacob into marrying Leah before he can marry Rachel.  The tables have been turned on Jacob, since Jacob tricked his father to steal his brother's birth right. This is the family through whom God will bless all the families of the earth.  King David was hardly a paragon of virtue yet God used David to create a great nation, and even Noah had some serious character flaws.

Jesus is telling us that when we cannot see the kingdom, when it looks like the powers of evil are winning, when all we can see is sickness, conflict, metaphorical weeds and real thieves and cheats, when no rational person would believe that the kingdom is present, Jesus calls us to believe that we are in the midst of the emerging kingdom.  Jesus calls us to believe that God continually answers our prayer “Thy kingdom come,” that the kingdom is growing in our midst despite all evidence to the contrary, and that God might even be using weeds, cheats, and thieves to make that happen.  The message of the gospel is not that the Kingdom of heaven is present only when our lives and the world are full of peace, love, and chocolate.  The gospel message is that even in the hardest of times and the scariest of places, the seeds of the kingdom of heaven are present and make a gospel difference.  Of course the Kingdom is present in my grandchildren’s hugs, in the energy of our worship and fellowship, and in the good things we try to do for the world around us.  But the kingdom is especially present when we come together at Christ Church to have a funeral and reception for grieving people most of us do not know, or when people of vastly different viewpoints on many things maintain friendships and work together for the common good, or when we do the hard work of listening to those with whom we disagree.  The kingdom for which Jesus taught us to pray is like a great surprise waiting to be discovered by those who dare to look in the most unpredictable places.

                                                                                        Amen.