Sermon on Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Pastor Jennifer Garcia
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant” says Emily Dickinson in one of her poems.
“The kingdom of heaven is like…” says Jesus.
This week, we have more of Jesus’ parables in Matthew chapter 13. This chapter has no less than seven parables about the kingdom of heaven, God’s Beloved Community that Jesus is working to spread on earth. Our reading today contains five of them.
Why so many parables?
In chapter 12, people just aren’t getting it. Some are trying to cancel Jesus for doing things on the sabbath, and others are accusing him of getting his authority from evil sources.
Even after the sermon on the mount and all of the people Jesus has been healing, people are still suspicious of him.
They aren’t responding to the good news as good news.
They’re getting sidetracked, distracted by petty arguments and litmus tests, instead of imagining what Jesus is trying to create.
So what does Jesus do? He tells the truth, but tells it slant.
He tells stories, parables specifically.
Jesus’ parables don’t generally wrap up neatly with a moral at the end telling us exactly what we’re supposed to get out of them.
They’re more like puzzles—puzzles that don’t have a tidy solution.
Instead of solving them, we sit with them, let their details wash over us, turn them over and over looking at them from different angles, running our fingers over the rough edges and sharp turns.
Why a mustard seed, when surely a towering cedar would be a much more impressive shelter for the birds of the air?
Why is this woman making bread with fifty pounds of flour? Who are the hundreds of people she can feed with all that bread?
Why would a pearl merchant sell everything to get a single pearl, however flawless? Not a very sound business decision…
I don’t have answers to these questions. That’s part of the beauty of parables. We can spend the rest of our lives plumbing their depths. Just when we think we have answers, they twist, and we see something new.
Jesus tells the truth, but tells it slant. We humans can’t fully grasp the concept of the Beloved Community. It’s a truth too big to fit into words.It’s too much for our limited comprehension. So, Jesus tells stories instead of giving us schematics.
I won’t pretend to have solved these parables as if they’re crossword puzzles. But here are threethings about these parables that I’ve noticed and learned from scholars this week:
1. First, the Beloved Community starts small and grows beyond imagining.
We see in the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the yeast that something tiny (whether a seed or yeast) grows into something huge that provides shelter or nourishment for others.
I’ve always felt like cooking and baking is close to magic. If you’ve ever watched sugar and water bubble into golden caramel on the stove or set aside a tiny, lumpy ball of dough and come back to a smooth, fluffy bowl filled to the brim, it’s pretty miraculous.
Gardening is similar, especially gratifyingly fast growers like sunflowers. Every time you turn around they’re a little taller, and soon their golden crowns are blooming, and it doesn’t seem possible that they came from a seed smaller than your fingernail.
The kingdom of heaven is like that.
2. A second noticing is that the Beloved Community is worth giving everything for.
The person who found treasure in a field and the pearl merchant both sold everything they had to obtain what they wanted.
There’s a sense of urgency in both of these parables. Once the characters have found what they’re looking for, they can’t wait until they have it for themselves. It’s worth giving up every penny, every possession.
The kingdom of heaven is like that.
3. A third noticing is that the Beloved Community is surprising, counterintuitive, and maybe even illogical.
The characters in those parables about the field and the pearl sold everything they hadin order to get their treasures. But it doesn’t make much worldly sense to do that. Perhaps the character who bought the field can sell the treasure fast enough to get money to provide for his needs, but if not, where is he going to sleep?
And if the pearl merchant doesn’t sell the pearl right away for a greater profit, what was the point of buying it? What’s he going to eat until then?
Perhaps there’s a mustard tree in the field the character bought, and he can sleep under it.
And perhaps the woman who made all that bread will share a loaf with the merchant.
But one way or another, this all-in approach doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, unless there’s something bigger at work here. It just doesn’t make sense financially or logically. It goes against the way the world normally works.
The kingdom of heaven is like that.
Butfor us, just as for Jesus’ early followers, it’s hard to imagine what could be worth going to such extreme, illogical lengths.
There are wars and disease and natural disasters and injustices to contend with. Surely, “every man for himself” is a more practical, if rather cold, philosophy.
And plenty of communes and intentional communities that have experimented with living in a counter-cultural, mutual wayhave started out strong, but have dissolved as challenges arose.
Sometimes the troubles of this world seem overpowering, like the only truth is that life is hard and those who don’t approach life either as a self-sufficient tower defending against the world or a tank ready to crush everything in their path aren’t going to make it in this cruel world.
But Jesus offers something different.
He offers truths, told slant, because that’s the only way they can be understood over the thunder of “every man for himself.”
He offers stories, because that’s the only way we slow down enough to set down our shields and our weapons.
These stories give us only glimpses of the counterintuitive Beloved Community.
And still, glimpses are all God needs to start sowing the good news into our hearts.
The Holy Spirit helps those seeds grow in both our hearts and our lives until one day when the Beloved Community will be a tree with enough branches for everyone to have a nest.
First Lutheran practiced looking for glimpses of the Beloved Community when we did our Where do you see God? activity during the Easter season. We watched for moments when we noticed God present in our lives and shared them with each other.
The parables are like that—they help us notice glimpses of the Beloved Community showing up in the world.
Glimpses like when someone asks for help, and an avalanche of people show up.
Or when something is so beautiful it takes your breath away.
Or when someone does something so generous, it’s kind of embarrassing.
We may only get glimpses of the Beloved Community, but we don’t have to wait for them to come to us. We can follow the Spirit and create our own glimpses.
After all, with God’s help, the tiniest seeds grow into trees large enough to shelter a multitude.
The kingdom of heaven is like that.