A Sermon preached on Sunday July 26, 2020 Proper 12 at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
1 Kings 3:5-12, Romans 8:26-39, Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
One of our brother Andy’s T-Shirts shows the periodic table of elements – the table of all 118 chemical elements, by number and by the letters they are known by: O for oxygen or N for nitrogen or Al for aluminium (or for some of you aluminum), except in Andy’s case it shows one more element called Ah! … the element of surprise.
And most of today’s parables of the kingdom contain that element of surprise. Let’s look at them.
First Jesus tells us that the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of the Almighty God and Creator, is best compared with the smallest of all the seeds. Now that’s a surprise, but even more surprising is that this smallest seed grows into the greatest of shrubs and becomes a huge tree, offering shelter and a home for the birds of the air. I read this as telling us that any and every little act of kindness, however small, however insignificant it may seem at the time, will build up the kingdom of heaven and that the kingdom is a place of welcome and shelter for all. As Jesus later goes on to say, even with faith only the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains. (Matthew 17:20)
In the next parable the kingdom of heaven is once again compared to something very small and everyday – leaven or yeast – and the element of surprise in this story is the effect, which is completely unnoticed at first. The woman took a little yeast and mixed it with a lot of flour and as a result all of the flour is leavened, infused and will rise, will grow, and as bread will nourish others. For me this is about the power of God’s word – spread by many, often seemingly without immediate impact, until of the world is leavened and can grow into God’s kingdom and nourish us all with the bread of heaven. Later (Matthew 16:6) Jesus will warn the disciples to be on their “guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees." By that he means that bad teaching can also spread, rumors can spread, hate and jealousy can spread, the world can be poisoned or spoilt, but only if we leave the space, only if the good is not spoken and not heard.
In the next two parables the element of surprise is the discovery of something of great value: a buried treasure, one single pearl of great value. But I think the point is not the treasure as such – the kingdom – but the people who find it and what it does to them. One was looking, one was searching for fine pearls, one had been seeking the truth for years and now has found it and makes it the center of his life. But the other, the one who found the treasure in the field was not looking at all, it was a complete surprise, and yet one that makes him change all his plans and start a new life. The kingdom of heaven is open to both of them and all of us. We know this from other parables that Jesus tells. The gate is open, the choice is possible, people can be transformed right up to the very last minute, the final hour.
The penultimate parable today, about the net and the fishes, which is very similar to last week’s parable of the wheat and the weeds, reminds us however that while we have a choice between forming ourselves around justice, love and the good, or around injustice, hate and lies that there are consequences to that choice. As Paul writes to the Romans (8:28), God has called us all according to God’s purpose. Our call - as mustard seed or yeast, as the finders of treasure - our job is live as examples of the good choice, to demonstrate that God’s way of love is possible, so that all can hear and we hope react to God’s call into the kingdom.
People were and are always being surprised by Jesus and Jesus’s teaching. But they shouldn’t have been. It really wasn’t totally new. In the final parable in this chapter, Jesus says that “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.” (Matt. 13:51) Every scribe, every scholar, everyone who teaches in Christ’s name is bringing old wisdom and new visions together. Every gospel has a different focus. Matthew is particularly interested in showing Jesus’ life as a fulfilment of the prophecies of old and his teaching as being in continuity with the teaching of Torah and the Prophets – but with new and fresh and exciting expressions. So, the “scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven” could almost be an autobiographical statement on Matthew’s part.
It would equally well apply to St. Paul. He too was always taking the “old” and making it new and relevant. For example, in the passage we heard this morning from his letter to the Romans he alludes to the story of the near sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, to Isaiah’s image of the suffering servant and cites from Psalm 44 to help make his point about the inevitability of God’s love.
The New Testament is so full of things described as new: new birth, new life, a new covenant, a new commandment, a new heaven and a new earth that we might begin to think that the old is automatically bad. Jesus’ warning not to put new wine in old wineskins (Matt. 9:16-17) could also be interpreted that way. But no, all these new things build on the old, on the existing – they just develop, adapt, and transform them. Old wine and new wine both have their places at the table. Jesus’ new commandment to love one another as I have loved you (John 13:34) is grounded in the old commandment to love God and your neighbor. But now it’s become personal, concrete – do as I do, live as I live, love as I love.
As Anglicans, we are a church supposedly founded on the three legs of scripture, tradition, and reason. We do “old “very well. And yet we also follow Jesus’ commandment to bring out the old and the new. We take the traditions we have received and enact them with flexibility, compassion, and grace. We reform our practices and structure, we adapt our theology to address today’s problems, we correct our inevitable human errors – I’m thinking especially of how we excluded people just for how they were made. And as we’ve discovered over the last months, we are willing and able, again with many human errors, mainly mine, to make good use of new technology, using it as our seed and yeast and to help people discover that treasure that should not be hidden away: God’s kingdom waiting to be found.
At the core of the kingdom of heaven is a very old truth and an eternal promise. It should not therefore be a surprise:
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)
Amen.
