The Kingdom Is Like …

Matthew 13: 31-34; 44-51

Charles J. Tomlin, February 28, 2021,

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Kingdom of God Series, 9 of 14

 

He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field;

 32 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."

 33 He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with1 three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."

 34 Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing.

 

 44 "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.

 45 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls;

 46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

 47 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind;

 48 when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.

 49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous

 50 and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

 51 "Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes."    

(Matt. 13:31-51 NRS).

 

Sometimes it’s hard to see how things really are.  

It’s easy, as human beings, who live such short lives, with such a limited perspective on things, to see what everything we need to see.

 

There's a charming story that Thomas Wheeler, one time CEO of the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (a.k.a. MassMutual), tells on himself: He and his wife were driving along an interstate highway when he noticed that their car was low on gas.

 

Wheeler got off the highway at the next exit and soon found a rundown gas station with just one gas pump. He asked the lone attendant to fill the tank and check the oil, then went for a little walk around the station to stretch his legs.

 

As he was returning to the car, he noticed that the attendant and his wife were engaged in an animated conversation. The conversation stopped as he paid the attendant. But as he was getting back into the car, he saw the attendant wave and heard him say, "It was great talking to you."

 

As they drove out of the station, Wheeler asked his wife if she knew the man. She readily admitted she did. They had gone to high school together and had dated steadily for about a year.

 

"Boy, were you lucky that I came along," bragged Wheeler.

 

"If you had married him, you'd be the wife of a gas station attendant instead of the wife of a chief executive officer."

 

"My dear," replied his wife, "if I had married him, he'd be the chief executive officer and you'd be the gas station attendant."

 

Jesus understood this propensity for us humans to get it wrong, especially when it comes to things spiritual.   That’s why Jesus taught in parables.  Also, Jesus never explained exactly what God’s kingdom was, since we might get it wrong.   He only told us what it was ‘like’.  

 

Well then, what is the kingdom like?  

 

THE SMALLEST OF ALL SEEDS

One of the possible answers to the mystery or secret of God’s kingdom might be seen in Jesus most famous description of the kingdom being ‘like a mustard seed’.   He is implying that the kingdom is like a small, tiny seed can grow into something even bigger or greater than other larger seeds.  That’s certainly part of it, but perhaps Jesus implied even more than this.

 

From what I know about gardening, and I bet you do too, is that a seed is something that hasn’t even been planted yet; it hasn’t even germinated nor spouted, right?  You know what it might be, or what it should become, but what it actually will become hasn’t happened just yet.  

 

And although you have all kinds of faith or hope in what is programed in this tiny little seed, there are, of course no real, hard, or firm guarantees that this tiny little seed will germinate, grow and bear fruit.  Hopes, yes.  Faith, yes.  Probability. Yes, that too.  But guarantees.  No!  It should grow and produce, but that’s hasn’t happened yet, and the outcome still has all kinds of other variables too.  

 

So, when Jesus says the kingdom is like a ‘sower going out to sow’ in one story, then tells us it’s like a small, tiny little mustard seed, he may be pointing out not only how small things can become big, but he might also be saying that whole reality of the kingdom hasn’t even begun to grow enough to see exactly what God has planned or envisioned.   It might even mean that God has left exact design of the coming kingdom open, so human can make their own contribution to this kingdom ‘project’.

 

So, if it is true that ‘it does not yet appear what it or what we will be’ because this kingdom is now just like a ‘tiny seed’ but is also like ‘yeast’ rising in uncooked bread,  what in the world can it mean that this same ‘not-yet-germinated’ and ‘uncooked’ kingdom (which may rise, or may not) can also be a ‘treasure in a field, a pearl of great value, or is like ‘net’ that catches all kinds of fish?   How do you put all these images together and make some kind of logical sense to it?  

 

And since no one fully knows how this kingdom will grow (or if, at least in our generation), nor what this kingdom will eventually look like, who in the world would dare invest to buy into something we have firm idea of what it will finally be, or if it will be?   Who would buy into that?  

 

Well, my only answer is that people do it every day when they buy into the stock market, don’t they?   Think about it?  Who really knows what is going to happen to your money?  You hope that what you invest will grow.  The odds are that it will, but those are odds which still sounds a lot more like Las Vegas than a God’s coming kingdom.  

 

Recently, I got a scary letter from my retirement fund advisor and the very first line said something nobody ever wants to read about everything you’ve ever saved up for retirement.   THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES YOUR INVESTMENT WILL KEEP ITS VALUE.   

 

A line like that sure makes God’s kingdom look a lot more promising than a retirement fund or stock market, doesn’t it? 

 

So, just how promising is this kingdom Jesus says is like the ‘smallest of seeds, a hidden treasure, or is like a net that will catch, who knows what?   Is this something worth investing our lives in, especially today, when it looks like the church and the Christian Faith too is shrinking, rather than growing, maybe even disappearing off the face of the earth?  

 

Several years ago,  during when the Southern Baptist political and theological controversy was in full swing,  the President of Mercer University, a noted Baptist School in Georgia,  wrote a book that a lot of people who were in the political takeover did not appreciate.  It was entitled, “When We Talk About God, Let’s Be Honest”.   What made some folks upset is that it implied that there might be some ‘dishonesty’ going on within Baptist circles at the time.   It implied that some Baptist preachers might be more focused on manipulating people with what people wanted to believe than telling the kind of truth that’s often hard for people to swallow, and is never popular, but is nevertheless, true. 

 

Kirby Godsey wasn’t really original with the idea of ‘honesty’ in religion, because about 30 years before his book, an Anglican Bishop in England had written his own book with the title, “Honest To God”.   In that book too, the Bishop was trying to move people forward in the way they interpreted the truth of the Bible, the truth about God, and the truth in the Christian Faith, which may be sometimes difficult to hear.

 

There’s something of that kind of truth-telling going on with Jesus’ parables.   Jesus is trying to tell his disciples, and anyone who might be interested in knowing the truth about some of the mysteries, secrets, and hidden realities about God’s coming kingdom, which people may not want to hear, nor be fully ready to hear.  So, Jesus ‘hides’ these truths or secrets in stories, that you they can remain hidden, if his hearers aren’t ready to make the effort, or mental investment it may take to open their minds and to consider it.

 

And the very first, unexpected, difficult, and challenging truth about God’s kingdom, is that it’s small.  No, it’s tiny.  Well, let’s just admit it, it’s like the ‘smallest of all seeds’.  It looks like it will never amount to anything.  

 

Jesus certainly isn’t like that Vacuum Cleaner Salesman, who used to throw all that dirt on you carpet, and then show you how his product would suck be instantly greater than anything else you’ve ever seen.   Jesus isn’t trying to impress you with how the instantly big or better, the kingdom is, but Jesus is trying to show us that the kingdom must grow and develop, in some very ordinary ways.  

 

The honesty of Jesus that is clear, whether we want to hear it or not, is that God’s is never going start out by being a ‘big’, impressive, human or divine enterprise.  The true kingdom will always start out in small, unnoticed, mostly unobservable things.  True faith, true kingdom work, which results in making a real, lasting, impact, is always about doing small things that may not have immediate results.

 

When I visited an American church in Germany, upon the installation of a new English Speaking pastor,  the pastor preached that day, throwing out a challenge to his little 20 or 30 member church, saying we are going to ‘win this whole city to Christ’.   I thought that was a little too big of a challenge for small little group of English speaking Baptists, who were living in a city of 10 million German speaking citizens.   That pastor was starting out ‘big’, which I thought was too big.  It was like he was planting trees and hoping they would make up an automatic forest, when he should have been challenging his people to plant little seeds of faithful witness everywhere, and then trusting to see what God might do with them.

 

So, what’s wrong with planting little seeds?   Well, it’s hard work, isn’t it?   And it also takes time, too.   There are no instant results.   Thinking about planting seeds, most of you recall the story of Johnny Appleseed, don’t you?   Appleseed was a young man who, in early pioneer America, left the comfort of the colonies, and western frontier areas of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio, not so much planting seeds for apple trees, but even more wisely,  establishing apple orchards and tree nurseries.  He never married.  He lived frugally.  He dressed modestly.  He worked from sunup until dust every day.  

 

A story about his conversion says that preacher was preaching about people indulging in all kinds of luxuries like drinking tea and fine clothing, when he challenged his hearers, “Show me a primitive Christian who will go barefoot into heaven in common clothes!”  It is said that young Johnny walked the isle and said, “I am that primitive Christian!”

 

What I think is most impressive about the story of Johnny Appleseed is that everything he did, he did on a most personal, one-on-one level, whether it was meeting and befriending people, including Indians, which he made his friends, who called him, the great Spirit’, to traveling on foot, often barefoot, doing the simple, hard work of establishing tree nurseries, that would all start out small, but would eventually produce food, long after he was gone.  

 

I think that’s the exactly the simple, honest, kind of image, Jesus had in mind, when he said ‘the kingdom is like it is the smallest of all the seeds, ...which only later becomes a great tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches" (Matt. 13:32 NRS).   The planting of the seed, like the work of the kingdom, goes practically unnoticed and is unremarkable in most every way.   It’s not until much later that the work of sowing, planting and after years of natural growth, that that seed becomes a shelter for the birds. 

 

Thus the kingdom is about doing these small, faithful, hopeful things.   The results will come, but they not always been immediately seen or noticed by us.   Right now, the results can only be believed and lived by faith.

       

A TREASURE HIDDEN IN A FIELD

Another thing Jesus honestly says about the kingdom is that it’s like hidden treasure; it’s like a valuable pearl.  

 

There was a news story a few years ago about an U.S. Air Force veteran who bought a Rolex watch in 1974 through the Air Force base exchange while stationed in Thailand. He bought the watch, a Rolex Oyster Cosmograph after hearing it was good for scuba diving.

 

When he received the Rolex, he decided it was too nice to wear in saltwater and decided to lock it away in a safe deposit box. There it remained for nearly five decades.  At the time he bought it, the watch cost $345.97, which was a lot of money to pay for a watch in 1974, especially for a military man whose salary was between $300 and $400 a month. But it turned out to be quite a good investment.

 

While appearing on an episode of "Antiques Roadshow" filmed in Fargo, N.D., this veteran learned his watch, which was unworn and came with its original box, certification and a guarantee could fetch between $500,000 and $700,000 at auction. Upon learning the value of the rare, pristine watch, this battle-tested veteran collapsed to the ground.

We all like to think about uncovering some hidden, buried treasure.  But hidden treasure can be difficult to find, and even if you find it, it can be difficult to cash for what it’s really worth.  It’s the same way with finding a ‘pearl’ of great value.   Did you notice that only one ‘pearl’ is found, and in order to buy it, the person has to sell everything he has?  How do you live your life when you sell everything you have and all you now own is a pearl to look at? 

The point Jesus was making isn’t just that the kingdom is like a treasure, which it obviously is, but it’s also a treasure that is still hidden to most people, and is somewhat inaccessible to us, at least right now.  That’s why the kingdom is always ‘coming’ but isn’t realized in the world, except by those who believe and give their whole selves to it.   In this way, the kingdom isn’t something we have, but the kingdom has us.  While God’s coming kingdom is invisible to most people, the reality and value of this kingdom is only seen in how we live our lives toward this kingdom which is now only firmly established in our hearts.

 

When John Lewis, the black congressman from Alabama died summer, he left quite a legacy of believing in and hoping for a very different world than the one he grew up in 1950 and 60’s segregated Alabama of the Deep South.  Lewis was part of the Freedom writers who challenged the injustice of that world, hoping that it would invite or force change.  In March of 1965, Lewis participated in a peaceful protest for justice walking across the Edward Pettus bridge in Selma, where he was severely beaten by police and arrested.   The truth Lewis stood for was hidden deeply in his heart at that time, but was still invisible to most of the world outside the black community.

 

In a final letter which Lewis wrote to those young people who are still marching for justice, explaining how Martin Luther King Jr. had inspired him to believe a new way of life in America that doesn’t have to remain hidden, saying:

 “Each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something.  Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.

 

Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.

 

Then finally, he concluded his letter to the young: 

‘Let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.

 

Those are powerful words from a man who was as much of a Christian, as any congressman has ever been, staying true to the heart of Jesus’ message of a kingdom that can still ‘come’ on earth, as it is in heaven, if we will follow, preach, teach, and continue to live the way of Jesus in the world.

 

A NET CAST INTO THE SEA

Finally, Jesus says that the kingdom not only begins small, hidden away in the hearts of those who believe that the kingdom can come, but Jesus ends with an image that ties everything together, with the casting of a net that catches all kinds of fish.

 

That’s the problem and the fun of fishing, especially when you are using a net.  You never know what you might catch.   

Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven is like a net, not the Internet, although there are some similarities, but it’s like a dragnet, that you let down in the water capable of dragging anything in its way to shore.

Someone once lamented, “I've got to stop doing business with anybody I meet at church. I get burned every time."

It’s true, you know,  people who try to do good in this world, whether it’s in the church, in politics, or in some other form of human work or relationships, can get hurt, especially when you have a good heart and you are trying to do good things.   Whether working for good in the church, or in the world, you’ll find all kinds of different people caught up in the ‘net’ of what still needs to be done in this world.  

That’s the point Jesus is trying to make too.   The Kingdom of God is mixed,  and sometime it gets ‘mixed up’ and tangled up in other things.  When you are trying to do good work, and especially when you are trying to do good work, strange things will get hooked in the net.   But it’s not up to us, the fish, to do the sorting out.   As Jesus told in the story about the weeds, he now reminds us that only the angels will straighten things up and sort things out on the final day.

A preacher told how he was preaching in Kansas several years ago in a shiny little Methodist church in a quaint little town. The custodian opened the doors just before time for service and quickly locked them as people left. “We like to keep things nice around here," explained the pastor. “WE like to find a few fine new members to offset the losses and keep things stable around here.”   The preacher commented, ‘Well, I guess the evangelism message of that church was like the Marine Corp motto: “We could use a few good men."

But the church isn’t supposed to be selective about members. It’s supposed to be ‘whosoever will may come.’ Let the wheat and the weeds grow together, and the let dragnet bring in whatever it may, there is plenty of time for sorting at the close of the day.

This is what the kingdom is: It starts small like a mustard seed.  It’s like a hidden treasure of hope buried deep in our hearts, but then, its finally about opening our hearts to let down a net of faith, hope, love to catch, whoever will come and dare to dream God’s dream of a whole new world.  Will you open your heart to God’s new possibilities?    Amen.