The Kingdom of Heaven is like a simile...

Matthew 13:31-33,44-52

Jesus put before the crowds another parable: "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."

He told them another parable: "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."

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. 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.

"Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes." And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."

Continuing directly from last week's gospel, Jesus begins speaking in a different way. Instead of using parables, he uses allegories. He uses a format that says "The kingdom of heaven is like ______________." As you go through the list, you can draw some things out. In each, the image begins with something earthly and small (a mustard seed, yeast, treasure, a pearl, a net) which brings forth different responses. In the first two, the seed and the yeast lead to a great tree and bread. In the next two, the treasure and the pearl cause the finder to sell off everything to acquire it (the field and the pearl itself). In the last one, the net catches a great variety.

Each of these visual metaphors tries to tell us something about the kingdom of heaven: one of Jesus's primary focuses. The fifth metaphor makes another reference to angels participating in what we might call The Great Sort. But as in last week's gospel, I think we are less interested in what we are supposed to be doing, but in what we are supposed to value. Who we are to be. More than simply "good". I think we are to learn how to see value in the mustard seed and the yeast, act on the real treasures and pearls presented to us, and to use the nets for their intended purpose.

What strikes me most about this lesson is what happens after the fifth example. Jesus asks

"Have you understood all this?"

and the crowd said

"yes."

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't know that I would have said "yes". Jesus doesn't tell the crowd what the kingdom of heaven is, just what it is like. And what it is like seems to be very different things that would mean different things to different people. Trying to reconcile the "pearl of great price" with the mustard seed for example mix up how we interpret the kingdom of heaven. And without knowing what Jesus intends when describing the kingdom of heaven, these analogies only evoke the appearance of a hazy intrepretation of something we wouldn't necessarily recognize when we saw it. It reminds me of the old saying about a set of three blind persons describing an elephant by their individual perspectives: one describing the tail, one it's legs, and one it's trunk.

Jesus's language, discussing the Kingdom of Heaven (like the Kingdom of God in Mark) is a description of something else (outside of this world), something that is coming, and something that is here: all at the same time! How confusing, anyway!

For a lot of us, we are looking for what this means: to us, to God, to those that heard it the first time. What does it mean? It means living in the world that God has been encouraging us to live in for over three thousand years, abandoning the culture, the national groupings, and governmental structures of the world: all of which prevent us from adopting God's.

How do you respond to this suggestion? Would you be willing to put God before not only obvious stuff, but those really important things: friends, career, patriotism? Would you support all people, especially those that are poor, sick, imprisoned, displaced? What about the stupid and willfully ignorant?

The Wheat and the Weeds

Matthew 13:24-30,36-43

Jesus put before the crowd another parable: "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. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, `Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?' He answered, `An enemy has done this.' The slaves said to him, `Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he replied, `No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"

Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field." He answered, "The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!"

Jesus’s favorite means of communication is through a parable, a story. The special thing about a parable is that the question of its historicity (did it really happen or is it made up?) is irrelevant. Jesus is telling a story as a metaphor, but only occasionally tells the crowd or his disciples what the metaphor is for. Even then, he is simply removing one layer of mystery.

This all seems easy enough, but we often get parables like this week’s gospel as told by the evangelist known to us as Matthew. These parables can distract us from what Jesus is really getting on about. He sets the stage by talking about the kingdom of heaven being “compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field”. Jesus then tells how “an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat” while the people were sleeping. The slaves got up and realized that wheat and weed were mixed together.

What I find truly intriguing is that the slaves make the bold question of their master: “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?” Ouch!

The Master instructs his slaves to leave the weeds among the wheat and that the reapers will separate out the weeds from the wheat at the harvest. At that, Jesus stops talking to the crowd. When the disciples are alone with Jesus, they ask what it means. Jesus gives them the answer key to unlocking the parable, but it raises more questions about when, why, and how. It talks about the harvest as “the end of the age” and speaks in very apocalyptic imagery. I will get to this in a second.

I am interested in what Jesus is telling the crowd and his disciples by talking about the “weeds” and the “wheat”. It is easy enough for us to read this passage and think about the good people (usually suggesting that this means faithful Christians) are the wheat and that everyone else are the weeds. Or to simply say “good” people and “bad” people. This is easy enough. But what is Jesus telling us? In the parable to the crowd, he talks of the slaves wondering what to do with the weeds, and in Jesus’s explanation to his disciples, the slaves are not listed as representing anything, most especially zealous Christians. In fact, Jesus doesn’t appear to be instructing us to do anything here. In fact, over the question of the very nature of the field, it is not about us.

And this is where the apocalyptic talk comes in. Normally, I have a hard time figuring out the intentions of a passage like this one. In one way, it is quite explicit, almost too clear for the reader. At the same time, the vague terms such as Son of Man, kingdom, the evil one, the end of the age, and the furnace of fire. These terms give us clues to what Jesus was saying based on the Older Testament, but modern apocalypticists (such as John Hagee) are likely to put suggestions into Jesus’s mouth. This is the danger of apocalypticism.

But Jesus is using this “fiery” talk to comfort his disciples. We would see strange comfort in this, right? But it is not comfort for our intellects, but our base desires of retribution and separation. We are so worried that someone less good will get the same thing. It’s the proof that follows the “trust me”. It’s the part where Jesus says “Hey, good people have it great, bad people, well, let’s just say screaming and gnashing of teeth is only the beginning.” It’s the moment that gets the person to say “Got it, Jesus!”

So what do you make of this parable? Do you agree with my thoughts? What are your thoughts?

In a world that already separates each of us according to groups and designations, what are your thoughts about God separating us this way? Or is it a relief to know that it isn’t up to us to separate ourselves in that way?

Do you find comfort in this passage? Why or why not?

Sibling Rivalry

Text: Genesis 25:19-34

This week’s Older Testament lesson is the first story of Esau and Jacob.

Remember Abraham, father of the Jewish people? His son was Isaac, who, like Abraham, lived as the scion, the family leader. This concept comes from the place of the first-born male having a birth right. We recognize this in royal families, most famously the Tudor’s in England where Henry VIII’s pursuit of a male heir is legendary.

There is also a natural leadership position that comes from the first-born, male or female. Parents expect certain things from them, as do siblings. From my own family, I have watched as my father (the eldest of three) was given health responsibilities for his parents when they were too old to do it for themselves.

You can see how easily this can become abusive—and how girls can be rejected by this process. Regardless of your emotions about it, there is something special about all first-borns.

In this week’s reading, we get the ultimate sibling rivalry. Jacob and Esau are twins, born at virtually the same time. But Esau came through the birth canal first. Esau is the first born.

We also get a strange piece of scripture in the midst of this, when in verses 27-28 it says:

27: When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents.

28: Isaac loved Esau, because he was fond of game; but Rebekah loved Jacob.[1]

It horrifies us to think that a parent could preference one child over another. This is an uncomfortable proposition.

These elements build to the story’s conclusion when Esau trades his birth rights for a pot of stew.

• From Jacob’s perspective, he is being cunning and Esau is being foolish.
• From Esau’s perspective, he feels that he is dying and Jacob is extorting him.

Soon after, Jacob, with the help of his mother, tricks his father into giving him Esau’s blessing. This leads to the heart-breaking scene in chapter 27 in which Isaac tells Esau, despite his objections, that “I have already made him your lord, and I have given him all his brothers as servants…” And Esau pleads and weeps. It is just awful!

In the far future, decades later, the brothers reconcile. We get Jacob’s story during the interim, and he is clearly of interest to the Hebrew people. The church has since often taken Jacob’s side, as their Jewish ancestors valued his “street smarts”.

I might suggest that we look at it from Esau’s perspective. He has been wronged, and his rage sends Jacob away. In fact, over the ensuing chapters we see how sorry Jacob becomes for his treachery and how Esau not only gets over his grief, but learns to love his brother again. Like Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son, we are to examine the story as the brother that stayed behind. That we are to learn how to forgive when things don’t go our way or how we expect them to.

Think of the last time a friend did something to wrong you. Maybe s/he stole from you or maybe s/he took credit for something you did. Maybe s/he was trying to look good in front of your friends at your expense.

How did this make you feel? What emotions rose to the surface? And do they rise now in thinking about it?

What are your feelings now? Have they changed since then?

What would it mean to try to see what drove him or her to this? Was it public approval? Was it greed? Was it jealousy (of you)?

What would it take for you to forgive him or her?

Jesus calls us to reconcile with others. Even Jacob and Esau eventually reconcile. What could you do to reconcile with this person?

---

[1] Translation is NRSV.

We aren't just children, we're infants

Text: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Nothing quite makes a person feel like an outsider like being a teenager. Your parents either treat you like you’re too young to know anything or too old to “act like a kid”. For some, your behavior expected and for others it is scandalous. Not to mention that peer groups make you feel like you’re the only one who feels the way you do (even when everyone does).

In the early church, adults were adults and children were property. Now, teenagers were often considered adults. But families, which included children, unmarried offspring, and any slaves, were seen as the possession of the family’s leader: the father/husband. The early church never worried about a youth program because they weren’t full members anyway.

We have hopefully learned something from this, but it sets the stage for our gospel from last Sunday. In it, Matthew wrote that Jesus was talking to the crowd and uses this to insult them: he calls them children. He asks “To what will I compare this generation?” and his response is children. Jesus then says:

`We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;

we wailed, and you did not mourn.'

In calling the people children, Jesus is saying something about the people AND about children. He is saying that, like children, the people are selfish and self-centered. They expect others to dance for their own amusement and to care for them when they cry. It is this selfish expectation that Jesus is condemning.

But I can’t help but read the slight that is inherent to this suggestion. Jesus is suggesting that children are all selfish and self-centered; that children are the insult to which these people could be compared.

These suggestions are easy because children don’t have enough advocates or often a means to defend themselves or a voice in society. For Jesus to use age and personal development as an insult is cruel and mean-spirited.

Jesus throws us for a loop, though, because in the second half of the passage he is telling the crowd that they are children. He isn’t saying them that they should “act childish”, a euphemism for being self-centered and demanding, but that in relationship to God we are all children. That young or old, we are just as naïve and ignorant as when we are born. In fact, we aren’t just children, we are infants. We are small children, whose struggles are learning to walk and talk, to play and to share, to love and to reason. That our problems are that elemental.

In what other ways are we still infants? What are the things that we still need to learn from our parent (God)? What are some of the things that God has tried to teach us that we seem to have trouble getting?

In what ways are you still an infant? With which elements do you still struggle? With which parts of reading and writing (communication) do you struggle? And playing? And sharing? And loving?

Deplorable, despicable, and dastardly

Text: Genesis 22:1-14

I love Genesis. I find the first stories of our community so powerful. Reading the creation story, Noah, the tower of Babel, the journey of Abram and Sarai. I love these stories.

But not this one.

This one I hate. I hate in the same way that I love the others: in that purely emotional way. In that way that you reserve for things that confuse, irritate, and appall you. This story I despise.

This story is Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son, Isaac. It is the story in which we get exposition describing Abraham, leading his son up the mountain. Imagine that he’s telling him “Son, we’re going for a walk. Not just any walk, but a big adventure! We’re going to search for a temple full of gold!” while knowing what is really going to happen. Then when they get to the top, Abraham builds an altar and straps his son to it, all the while saying something akin to “Son, we’re only taking a break. The temple of gold is right around the corner.” Abraham grabs the giant knife, takes it behind his head and…he’s stopped by an angel. The scene is chilling—and seems straight out of a movie. But we are supposed to be grateful that God provides. We are to be thankful that God spared Isaac. We are taught to have that same devotion as Abraham’s—whatever that really means. But I don’t want that. I don’t want to be prepared to do such an obscene and abhorrent (and aberrant?) thing as to murder my own child. I refuse to do that.

If you take this story at face value, it is as small and petty as they come. In showing God as demanding the unthinkable (unspeakable?) from Abraham, it makes God into an abusive and emotionally stunted father, beating his favorite child. Read literally, this depiction of God is completely unlovable.

But as we see in the stories that surround it (Cain, Noah, Lot, etc.), and look at the ‘meta-narrative,’ we get a different view of God: a God that learns and loves as we do. God bargains with Lot and makes promises to humanity in the form of covenants. God endeavors to think, trust, argue, despair. We learn that God isn’t perfect if it means an absence of emotions. God isn’t perfect if it implies distance and cold analytical skills. What would it mean to simply say “God isn’t perfect”?

In our postmodern world, it is hard to read this story as its first hearers would have understood it. We think that there are certain things that are out of bounds—they depict poor taste, or are “cheap and tawdry”. But we often use extreme notions and hyperbole to approximate the intensity of our points [if you don’t believe me, watch Fox News and see who gets compared to Hitler and what government program gets described as “socialist”]. To say that our devotion to God must approximate willingness to murder just seems out of bounds today. In fact, it is just such an example that supports abuse and the worst of our evils.

For the intended audience, the story isn’t about Abraham or Isaac, but God. It is about how God loves, what God expects, and how small we are next to God.

What do you struggle with? What matters of faith drive you crazy? What keeps you from “getting” a piece of scripture?

Take some time to imagine what it means if God is a little bit jealous and a little bit weird. Does this change your feelings toward God? Does it worry you? Or does it comfort you?