The Kingdom of Heaven Is Like...
Scripture Reading: Matt. 13:31-33, 44-52
As an undergraduate I majored in English, which was mildly disappointing for my father, who had hoped that at least one of his five children would study accounting, as he had. Me being the youngest, his hopes died with me. On my transcript he would see courses like Modern American Poetry, the Victorian Novel, and perhaps most impractical of all…Creative Writing.
But in that creative writing course I learned one practical lesson that has served me well in my writing ever since: use concrete imagery. That was something that Professor Forte, who was a published poet, repeated to us over and over again. Metaphor and simile are essential tools for a writer. Use them! Don’t write, “The room was uncomfortably hot.” Write, “The room felt like the inside of a bubbling kettle, the humidity so thick it could be parted like a curtain.”
Using concrete imagery paints a picture. It helps the reader see in their imagination the words written on the page. Also, it gives writing substance, weight, and character.
There’s no evidence that Jesus ever took a creative writing course, but he certainly understood the power of metaphor. In the five parables that we just heard, Jesus uses five separate metaphors to describe what the kingdom of heaven is like. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, like yeast, like hidden treasure, like a merchant who finds a pearl, and like a fishing net cast into the sea.
This marks our third and final foray into the parables that Jesus tells in chapter 13 of the Gospel of Matthew. We’ve already heard him describe the kingdom of heaven as being like a sower who throws seed indiscriminately on to all types of soil. We’ve heard him liken the kingdom to a field in which weeds and wheat grow together until harvesting. Now in today’s reading he gives us another batch of metaphors.
Why so many metaphors to describe the kingdom of heaven? Shouldn’t one or two or even three suffice? With this passage we’re now up to seven!
The kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven, as it’s worded in Matthew, is one of the principal themes of the Gospels. The phrase appears 31 times in the Gospel of Matthew alone. It’s at the core of Jesus’s ministry. Then what is it exactly?
As I mentioned last week, when Jesus uses the phrase “the kingdom of heaven” he’s not talking about “heaven” as in the afterlife. Don’t picture clouds and angels and harps. The kingdom of heaven isn’t about what waits for us in the sweet hereafter; it’s about what God is doing here and now. The kingdom of heaven is not somewhere far off, separated from us by the veil of eternity. It’s already right in our midst.
The kingdom of heaven isn’t about what waits for us in the sweet hereafter; it’s about what God is doing in the here and now.
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Those are Jesus’s first public words in the Gospel of Matthew, which he utters even before calling the disciples. Later, when Jesus sends the disciples into the surrounding countryside, he tells them, “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”
In fact, to demonstrate just now near the kingdom of heaven is, the metaphors that Jesus uses to describe it are mostly objects taken from everyday life: mustard seed, yeast, a fishing net. Even the hidden treasure and the pearl are things that the crowds could easily have pictured. Jesus doesn’t choose any kind of dramatic imagery to describe the kingdom. There’s no majesty, no might, no ostentatious displays of wealth, no armies on the march.
In a way, it’s really kind of a letdown. No Hollywood screenwriter would ever pen a story about God’s kingdom on such a small scale and so utterly devoid of action. A mustard seed that simply grows into a bush? A batch of dough that just rises? A guy who finds treasure in a field and then buys the field? Where’s the drama? Where’s the action? Where’s the scale?
You know that in a Hollywood production the kingdom of heaven wouldn’t be like a mustard seed that grows into a bush; it would be a giant redwood that towers over every living thing! The kingdom of heaven wouldn’t be like bread baking; it would be like a hurricane forming, with mountainous, swirling dark clouds and booming peels of thunder! Now that’s imagery befitting God’s kingdom!
I don’t believe that Jesus chooses the ordinary imagery he does simply so that his audience can relate. I believe that he uses imagery like a mustard seed and yeast because the kingdom of heaven really is like those things. The kingdom of heaven is found in rather ordinary objects and seemingly insignificant people. It’s found in the people, places, and things that are often overlooked, especially by those who occupy the halls of power.
Things don’t get much more insignificant than a mustard seed. On top of its small size, the mustard shrub that grew from those tiny seeds was not a desirable plant; it was considered a weed. It didn’t need to be cultivated because it proliferated where it was not wanted. And I think that’s part of the point that Jesus is making. The kingdom of heaven is not like corn or soybeans or any other carefully cultivated crop that humans plant in neat rows. No, the kingdom of heaven is like an invasive weed that breaks through our neatly ordered fields and gardens unbidden and disrupts the order of things.
No, the kingdom of heaven is like an invasive weed that breaks through our neatly ordered fields and gardens unbidden and disrupts the order of things.
Speaking of weeds, if you saw the most recent edition of the church newsletter, you may have read that in a momentary fervor I trimmed the field of weeds adjacent to the church. I have a new battery-powered hedge trimmer, and I wanted to put it to the test. I trimmed stalk after stalk of mugwort, leaving only a small patch because the street cats like to hide in there.
Given how the mustard seed has become idealized in Christian culture, if Jesus were to update the parable for today, mugwort would make an excellent choice. The kingdom of heaven is like mugwort, a roadside weed that takes over vacant lots and provides shelter for street cats!
Similar to the way in which a wild mustard bush grows of its own accord, without needing to be cultivated by humans, yeast works its leavening magic. All that yeast requires to make dough rise is heat. We don’t need to fuss over it, pulling it out of the oven again and again to check on it. Thus the kingdom of heaven is not something that we bring about through our noble actions and righteous activism, no matter how well intentioned. Instead, as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, we ask of God, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
And as small as yeast is—and it is nothing more than a fungus that is literally microscopic—yeast has the power to transform a lifeless lump of dough into life-sustaining bread. As yeast causes dough to rise, so the kingdom of heaven raises up the lowly, so that the last are first, the least are greatest, and the poor are blessed.
Now let’s turn to the next group of parables, that of the Treasure and the Pearl. As the Parables of the Mustard Seed and Yeast reveal that the kingdom of heaven can be found in ordinary and seemingly insignificant things, the Parables of the Treasure and the Pearl reveal the extraordinary lengths to which God is willing to go to secure that which God deems precious, which is to say, all of us.
“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.”
You might have noticed the repetition in these two extremely short parables. The one who finds the treasure “sells all that he has” to buy the field where he found the treasure. Similarly, the merchant “sold all that he had” to buy the one pearl. Both figures sell all that they have in order to purchase that which is precious to them. They give up all of their possessions to possess the one thing that to them is utterly priceless.
This is what Jesus does to secure you, his treasured possession. He would pay any price for you, even at the cost of his life. Know that all of your sins have been paid for. That thing that you can’t forgive yourself for, that shame that you’ve been carrying…Jesus has fully paid for it and redeemed you. You are now his treasured possession, his pearl of great price, and he will never ever let you go.
Truthfully, I would have liked to end the sermon right there, because even though we have one metaphor still to explore, it’s a bit of a downer, at least it is at first glance. Jesus likens the kingdom of heaven to a fishing net that is thrown into the sea. The net catches the good fish with the bad, the edible with the inedible. The entire net is drawn to shore and the good and bad fish are then separated, with the good going into baskets and the bad thrown away.
If you think about it, this parable is much the same as the Parable of the Weeds. In the Parable of the Weeds, the wheat and the weeds grow side by side in the same field until the harvest. And so here the good and the bad fish swim side by side in the same sea until they are caught in the net. It’s not for the fish to determine which among them are good or bad; that determination rests with the fishermen. Likewise, we are not to concern ourselves with who’s in and who’s out of the kingdom of heaven. The greater mystery to ponder is that all—good and bad alike—are caught in the net of God’s grace. True, some will resist. In their misery and their pride, they will not want to be subject to grace. And God, in his mercy, will respect that.
The greater mystery to ponder is that all—good and bad alike—are caught in the net of God’s grace.
Jesus wraps up his parables by asking the crowd, “Have you understood all this?” So, let me ask, what are we to make of all these metaphors…a mustard seed, yeast, hidden treasure, a pearl, and a fishing net?
Well, I think that Jesus uses so many metaphors because no one metaphor can fully describe the kingdom of heaven. Each one captures a certain aspect of the kingdom. Like a mustard seed and like yeast, the kingdom is found in things that grow in hidden and unexpected ways. Like someone who sells all that they own in order to secure what is most precious to them, Jesus will give everything to secure your place in the kingdom. And like a net that catches all manner of fish—good and bad—in the kingdom of heaven all are subject to the grace of Jesus Christ, even if some would rather refuse it.
What is the kingdom of heaven like? It’s like all of that.