The Kingdom of Heaven Is Like …

 

Matthew 13:31-52

More than two decades ago when I was going through the process of ordination to ministry, our denomination was going through a process of its own. At that time, there was a lot of conflict, competing forces wanting to shape the way the church would look, feel, and move in the world going forward. It was mostly about whether or not the church would fully embrace our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.

We were in the thick of this controversy when I went before the presbytery as a candidate for ministry to be examined. In this process, all the ministers of the presbytery were free to ask me any questions they wanted that in any way pertained to my faith. The first person who rose to ask a question wanted to know what I thought about salvation.

He began by saying that he knew the idea of universal salvation was currently popular – the belief that every human being is saved and goes to heaven. It was clear that he disagreed with the idea. And his question to me was this: Do you believe there is a biblical foundation for the notion of universal salvation?

What his question was about was what the kingdom of God is like – which is a concern that the gospels share. According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus had an awful lot to say about what the kingdom of God is like.

Just in this one passage from Matthew, five times we heard Jesus say, “The kingdom of heaven is like…”

This is the way Matthew phrases it – while in Mark and Luke Jesus often speaks of the kingdom of God, in Matthew he refers to the kingdom of heaven. It is the same thing.

As soon as he begins to speak and we hear, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” we know we are about to hear a parable. And so we must listen carefully.

When we listen to a parable we must be ready to hear what is behind the words. We also must be willing to listen to ourselves – notice where we are surprised, where our feelings are provoked, our buttons pushed. Pay attention to how we can make use of what we do know to learn about something that we do not know.

It is necessary to speak about the kingdom of God in parables, because the kingdom is beyond our knowing. The parable, which uses words and images to walk alongside our lives, our experiences, and begins to help us see the shape of something that is beyond our experiences.

The parable is a teaching tool that is also an art form – painting pictures, evoking feeling, inspiring response. And in this handful of verses in Matthew 13, Jesus gives us five of these gems.

Five parables about the kingdom of God, and each one is exquisite in its own right. Each one deserves a full hour to explore its value. But our time is finite, so I would only offer a few brief takeaways from these sayings. A few things we can learn from these parables about the kingdom of God.

First – The kingdom has always been with us. Take the parable of the yeast. If you have experience making bread, you know that the yeast comes first. It is dissolved in water, then the flour is mixed in to create dough. Back in the days Jesus told this parable, they weren’t using the convenient little packets of dry granulated yeast that we buy from the supermarket – their yeast was much messier.

When Jesus spoke about a woman hiding yeast in flour, his listeners would have imagined a small amount of starter, like people now use for sourdough bread. Wet, soggy, stinky. Not the most pleasant substance, but what was needed to make the dough that would become bread. Therefore, just as there never was any dough without the yeast, there never was any world without God's kingdom. The kingdom of God is hidden in everything in the world God made.

This means that the kingdom will be found in the ordinary stuff – not in some pristine and pure location, because the world is not pristine and pure. The kingdom of God co-exists with all the brokenness of the world. We, the church, co-exist in this world with everything and everyone who opposes the kingdom. We work with humility and hope. We may not see progress, but we maintain hope. Too often we will see the evil increase and grow in power - but we do not abandon our work or our hope because we know that the kingdom is always with us.

The kingdom has always been with us.

Second – The kingdom is contrary to what is expected. It is amazingly powerful, yet inscrutably small, like the mustard seed. It is, in the words of the Apostle Paul, power made perfect in weakness – and we see this well in the life of Jesus. He was not a soldier going against soldiers; just so, the church is not an army fighting against an army.

This is crucially important for the church to know. We have been given a mission, and this is to bring the light of the kingdom to this world. But we won’t do it by meeting the world’s brutality with our own brutality.

This is radically different from everything we know of the world. This means that the kingdom changes our perspective – it must. Just as in the parable of the hidden treasure, which a man unwittingly stumbles upon. He never before knew it existed, but once he did, this changes everything for him. He knows now that everything he may have valued before is nothing in comparison to this treasure.

Imagine this: something that has always been present but never before seen - when we see it, we are radically changed by it. It might be a serendipitous discovery, like the man who found the treasure. But it’s not always like that. Our process might be a much slower and more deliberate one - like the merchant who, at last, found the pearl of great value. He will search no more; he has found what he was searching for. Either way, it leads to a fundamental and complete shift. Now we know what really matters.

Finally – the kingdom is for everyone - and all of creation. As the fisherman throws his net into the sea and pulls out anything and everything that gets caught up in it, so does the kingdom of God. All the good Christians get in the same bus with everyone else. Really - everyone. We might not particularly like it; we might resent it; we might feel we have absolutely nothing in common with these folks – but we don't need to worry about it. Because, as the final parable says, God's angels will sort it all out in the end. And they will use God's judgment - not ours – and that is a good thing, because our judgment can be lousy. As the Episcopal priest Robert Capon says, in the final sorting, it is not the inherent goodness or badness of the fish, as we might see it, that matters, it is their acceptability to the fisherman. Their usefulness, their beauty in God's eyes.

This one is, you might have noticed, a parable of judgment. But the judgment is not a threat, it is a promise. It is good news that God will eradicate all evil: every disease that afflicts us, every murderous impulse that takes hold of us, every selfish and craven habit that consumes us. We will all be cleansed of the evil that harms us.

And yes, I suppose if we are unwilling to let go of that evil - well, then we will be cast out right along with it.

But hear me when I say: the kingdom of God is for everyone. And this is what I might have said in response to the questioner at my ordination exam. Do I find a biblical foundation for universal salvation?

I knew then that what he was concerned about was whether the church was going to let a minister into their ranks who might believe that Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists could possibly go to heaven along with us. Whether men who love men and women who love women and people who, somehow, just have a different sense of who they are, different from what the world might see – he wanted to ascertain whether I thought all these people are welcome in God’s kingdom.

I began my answer that day saying that I honestly did not know if there is clear biblical support for universal salvation. But I also said that what I did know – was very certain of – is that it is clearly God’s desire that we are to love all of God’s children, in the same way God loves us all. Period.

And that, I believe, is how the kingdom of God works.

The kingdom is a wondrous and mysterious thing. It is radical, subversive, powerful – it is always and everywhere. The kingdom of God opens its arms wide to God’s creation with absolutely unconditional love. It is patient, as St. Paul describes God’s love. It is power made perfect in weakness.

The kingdom of God has been given to us. We have been allowed into the secrets of these hidden things – yeast and seed, pearl and treasure. The question is this: what will we do with all this?

I have heard it said that where the will of the king is calling the shots, there is the kingdom. So, is the will of God calling the shots in your life? Will you be an effective agent, witness, model for the kingdom in this world?

Will you?

Photo by Marin Tulard on Unsplash