Saturday, May 17, 2014
SERMON FOR PENTECOST 6 PROPER 12 A ~ The Kingdom is like...
SERMON FOR PENTECOST 6
PROPER
12 A
christ church, Bayfield
July 24, 2011
Truly, I love your commandments *
more than gold and precious stones.
more than gold and precious stones.
+ In the Name of God,
the Holy and Undivided Trinity
Today we have five parables of the Kingdom
– all pretty much one-liners. And no allegories, thank God! We are left on our
own to respond, which is the way – I think – Jesus would have wanted it. Oh,
interpretations are fine –necessary even, but I prefer it when commentary is
not written right into the scripture, so that the meaning of these enigmatic
little gems may be discovered anew by each generation and each person,
according to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Speaking of
gems, one – possibly two – of the one-liners has to do with precious jewels.
One is the single Pearl of Great Price, the other is an undefined treasure in a
field, which could be jewels or precious metal or both.
Truly, I love your
commandments *
more than gold and precious stones.
more than gold and precious stones.
The other three are the tiny mustard-seed, the
yeast in the flour, and the big, indiscriminate catch of fish in the sea. Jesus
says the Kingdom of God is “like” all of these five. What is it about these
five similes that is “like” the Kingdom of God? Let’s forget about allegories,
and just look at the characteristics of the images themselves. What do they
have in common?
Well, they
all have to do with something hidden and surprising. And they all include some
kind of process. They are all about a transformation from one thing or state into another – a
wonderful, beautiful, and completely unexpected change. The microscopic
mustard-seed becomes a large bush, almost a tree, even though it is hidden – because – it is hidden in the earth. The woman “hides”
the yeast in the flour, and changes them both completely (ok, nothing unexpected about these commonplace processes, but they are
still rather amazing if not surprising to us anymore). The
hidden treasure in the field, on the other hand, is a total surprise, and the
lucky finder does what is necessary to secure it – trading all he has for it. Likewise, the merchant – not exactly
surprised, perhaps, because he was on the lookout for fine pearls – but when he
found the one that far surpassed anything he had ever seen (and if he found it, then previously it was hidden) he too soldeverything in order to get it. And finally, the enormous
catch of fish – bad ones together with good ones, all hidden from view in the sea but now brought forth and drawn in together,
to be sorted out later, at the end of the day. (Shades of allegorical last
judgment again, like last week.) So, the Kingdom of God seems to have to do
with
Ø something hidden being brought to light
Ø something unexpected or surprising – or at least
perenniallyamazing
Ø something transformative
Ø something very valuable, though unrecognized as such
Ø something humble that turns out to be
great
Ø and something that is surrounded, mixed in with, or even obscured
by other things far less valuable.
There is one more characteristic that these
parables share: there is human effort involved in each simile: human effort
based on human wisdom. Although the mustard seed may fall naturally
and grow up into a small tree by itself, the context of these agricultural
metaphors permits at least the inference that it is planted andcultivated. The rest all explicitly involve humans
actively working on something given, working with discernment:
Ø the woman mixes and kneads yeast and flour, which she didn’t make, and she knows just how to do it
Ø the finder sells all and buys the field where he
stumbled on the treasure: he knows what no one else knows
Ø so does the merchant who does likewise with the pearl
Ø and somebody has to haul in the net full of fish and besmart enough to sort them, at
the end of the day
So, if the Kingdom of God is like these things,
Ø it must be a hidden process
Ø it must involve transformation into something amazingly wonderful and valuable
Ø it must happen through human agency and wit
Ø it must be a process that is underway, but not yet complete
Ø it will require the sacrifice of everything else
Ø and a lot of extraneous and irrelevant stuff will come along with
it, but that is not a cause for alarm – it’s unavoidable and we can fix it
later.
Whatever it
may be, this Kingdom, this Reign of God is not just
something in my heart. It may be going on in my heart – I hope it is – but it
is also going on in the world: in the fields where mustard trees grow and
treasure is buried, in the forgotten drawer containing the pearl, in the sea,
in the rising bread dough. All these secret hiding places may well refer to the hearts of persons, but they also for sure refer to the world as a whole. We have to workand sacrifice in order to realize the promise of the Kingdom
of God – both in our own spiritual lives, and in our social and political
world.
What we
have to sacrifice is not to be compared in value to what we are in the process
of getting – the lucky finder’s and the merchant’s all is no more important than the stinking heap of bad fish, at the end of the day. These are the temporal things that we have to pass through – trade in, sort out, leave behind – in order to
attain to the things eternal. This may seem like a terrible, impossible
task. Like Solomon, we recognize that we are but little children, who do not know how to come out
or go in. First, by the
intercession of the Holy Spirit praying within us, we must receive wisdom – an
understanding heart to be able to discern what is right, so that we can distinguish good fish from bad,
the temporal from the eternal.
Wisdom is
not only knowing the difference but acting on the knowledge. We have to be
smart enough to put the yeast in the flour in just the right proportion; we
have to be wise enough to recognize that the buried treasure, or the pearl, is
worth way more than all we possess. All of Solomon’s wisdom is worth nothing unless
it is put into practice.
When it is put into practice,
it becomes a joyous process. We can go in [our] joy to sell all that [we] have. Everybody in the
parables is overjoyed. Why? Because they are wise to the fact that what
they are getting is more than worth the sacrifice and work, because the commandments of God – as the Psalmist calls the Kingdom – are more desirable than gold and precious stones, and because, however daunting the prospect of
the work and sacrifice, we need not worry, because as the Apostle says, íf God is with us, who can be against us?
AMEN
MARANATHA
COME, LORD JESUS!
