Matthew 13.31-33, 44-52

He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all 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." He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and [hid in] three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."

"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. Again, the kindgom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes." And he said to them, "Therefore 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" (NRSV).

Today’s text, found in Matthew 13, isn’t really “a” text at all, it seems to me. It is a little collection of multiple texts, very short little sayings of Jesus, all of which seem to be fairly freestanding, independent, and, let’s face it, completely obvious. As a kid I always thought it was funny that we would study these in a class, or that a preacher would preach on one. I mean, “the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that grew into a tree.” So … the kingdom of heaven starts small, and then it gets really really big. There doesn’t seem to be much else to say about it. It’s pretty clear … so clear, in fact, even the disciples seem to understand these parables, although earlier in the chapter Matthew recounts that they had to ask for an explanation of the Parable of the Sower—not an especially difficult one there, either. But the disciples, not always altogether that swift, do seem to get the short, sweet ones with the really obvious point. These are about their speed. And, I’ll be honest, if the other option is the Parable of the Unjust Steward, I’ll take these any day of the week. Especially Sunday.

This is the first time, in Matthew’s account, that Jesus has spoken to the people following him in parables. And here, for the first time, all of a sudden, everything is a parable; if it’s not a parable, then it’s an explanation of a parable, or an comment on why, suddenly, Jesus has decided to only speak in parables. The Sermon on the Mount, while not exactly easy, is pretty direct; but Jesus has decided to switch strategies here in the middle of Matthew, to change in midstream and start teaching indirectly through the use of parables. Why do this? Jesus’ comments here in chapter 13, just before he relates the various kingdom of heaven parables, seem to say that he does this because people aren’t really getting what he’s been saying all along. But they don't really get the parables either. Perhaps some of them were shrugging and muttering to their neighbor, “so you sow seed on good soil, and it grows, who doesn’t know that?” Perhaps some of them were furrowing their brows and thinking, “this sounds so obvious…but I know there’s gotta be something profound here…” And probably in the back row there were a few troublemakers throwing spit-balls at each other and telling jokes…or maybe now I’m just projecting…

Like anyone else, when I read the gospels, I like to mentally place myself cozily in Jesus’ immediate ring of followers, his closest disciples, the people who were always there, who heard every word, who understood everything. But the gospels themselves often challenge this easy assumption. We realize with unease, embarrassment, maybe horror, that we are the Pharisee, or the hypocrite, or the scribe attempting to trip up Jesus in a legalistic conundrum; this time, I realized I was the anonymous clueless listener who thought to herself, uh, so what?

But I often also feel, reading parables like these, that perhaps I think they’re so obvious because I’m just not reading carefully enough, or thinking hard enough, or being faithful enough, to see the real profundity of them. There has to be something there, right? After all, this is the Bible. This is Jesus talking. It has to be profound … and if I can’t see it, the problem’s gotta be me. This feeling gets even worse when I’m surrounded by very faithful and intelligent people who all seem to be getting something I don’t, or at the very least, taking it for granted that something is there that I’m having trouble seeing.

But I’m not alone in this feeling, either. Other Christians through the years have struggled with the suspicion that these short, sweet little obvious sayings have to mean more than the obvious, have to be more than they appear to be, and they’ve struggled really hard to find the deeper meaning in them. This often led to allegorical interpretation, in which each element of the parable becomes a symbol for something else. Take, for example, Hilary of Poitier, a 4th century bishop, on the parable of the leaven, who claimed that the yeast represents Christ, the woman represents the synagogue, and the three measures of flour, the law, the prophets and the gospel, and also the unity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and also, possibly, the calling of the three nations out of Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Hilary is a little doubtful about this last one, actually, you’ll be relieved to know.) But lest you think Hilary’s the only one looking a little too hard, Jerome—the very learned man who first translated the Bible into Latin, giving us the Vulgate—interpreted the yeast as knowledge of the Scriptures, and found the significance of the three measures of flour to be that “the spirit, the soul and the body” which are then blended into one.

Perhaps this seems very clearly ridiculous. All of this from a parable a single sentence long, which, in my Bible, doesn’t even get its own heading but tags along after the mustard tree like a little kid after his big brother. Certainly the point seems pretty obvious: again, something really small gets really big—the kingdom of heaven is like that.

Not too long ago, the Youngish-Professionalish-Adultish class at my church started studying the parables. Our first discussion centered on this very problem: do the parables have one meaning, or many possible meanings? Do they make one point, or lots of different points all at the same time? I’m sorry to report to you that we didn’t really settle this question. But I left with an interesting image to keep in mind as we read the parables: one way of thinking about the meaning is as a centripetal force, drawing everything into the center, into a single point. Another way of thinking about a parable’s meaning is as a centrifugal force, where meanings spin off, flying away in multiple directions. Some parables seem to draw everything to a distinct, single point; others seem to offer all kinds of possibilities, perhaps so many that we can’t sift through all of them.

Today I want to do a little of both. I think these short, sweet, obvious parables do make a single, overwhelming point, one that is easy to grasp, though, perhaps, not always easy to implement. But I also found, as I read through them again and again, that when read “against each other,” so to speak, that the meanings start coalescing in new ways, offering something new in addition to the single points the parables make on their own.

I’d like to spend the rest our time looking at the three parables in verses 44-50. Like the mustard seed and the leaven, their meaning seems plain, although the message is a different one. In both the parable of the treasure and the parable of the pearl, a single object is found that is of such great value that the person goes and sells everything in order to buy it. The kingdom of heaven, Jesus tells us, is like that treasure, or that pearl: it is of such great value that everything else you have is worth nothing compared to it.

--What is, exactly, the kingdom of heaven? Well, as my husband pointed out to me, whole books have been written on that … and what we have here is not so much a definition as it is a handful of hints, which as disciples, we must put together into a coherent picture, learning inductively what the kingdom of heaven means as we go along. Perhaps this is part of why Jesus turns to parables at this point; each parable gives us another hint, another piece of the picture, in a way that demands further synthesis, further thought. Jesus’ comments to the disciples on why parables may be getting at just this truth: people have been hearing him without understanding, Jesus tells them, and so now he will speak in parables—not because they’re easier to understand, but because they require something different of the listener, a participation in putting together the meaning. The kingdom of heaven isn’t something that we can take notes on as Jesus outlines its main features for us. It’s something to be grasped, bit by bit, along the way.

So far, Jesus has told his disciples that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard tree, leaven, treasure in a field, and a pearl. A handful of clues, if you will. The stories of the growing mustard seed and the leaven hidden in the flour give us a picture of something small, humble, insignificant, which—by doing what it does naturally—turns into something large, strong, and mature. It accomplishes this silently, simply growing, perhaps unnoticed until the final result is accomplished. The parables of the treasure and the pearl give us a glimpse into how important the kingdom of heaven truly is; more important than anything else in the world. Taken as single clues, they tell us that the kingdom of God is both humble, hidden, and yet at the same time great and important.

But these parables also, I think, tell us something else, when read all together. What I want to say here is that in all of these parables, the kingdom of heaven has been likened to something singular: one object, a tree, a treasure, a single shining pearl. The kingdom of heaven has been described in its unity, its wholeness and integrity assumed. The kingdom is one. The kingdom of heaven acts as a single unit: it grows, like a tree; it leavens, like yeast; it is possessed in whole or not at all, like the treasure or the pearl. The kingdom does not come in halves or quarters. It is, essentially, one.

And doesn’t this, too, tell us something significant about the kingdom of heaven? When we discover the kingdom of heaven, we do find it to be essentially one; despite the signs on our buildings, despite doctrinal quibbling, deep down, I think, we all recognize that the kingdom of heaven itself is undivided. Are we not all one in Christ Jesus? Doesn’t Jesus himself pray for unity for his followers, in John 17?

And yet Jesus has one more parable for us, in this 13th chapter of Matthew. He tells us that the kingdom of heaven is like a net full of every kind of fish. Every kind of fish. We’ve gone straight from the kingdom of heaven is like a single shining pearl to, the kingdom of heaven is like a net full of every kind of floppy, stinky fish. All of a sudden, unity is suddenly pushed into the background as Jesus presents with a startlingly different description of the kingdom, a kingdom which encompasses the very outer limits of diversity, represented by not just different kinds but every different kind of fish that there is. Apparently, whoever’s throwing the net into the sea doesn’t really care what kind of fish the net drags in—all this fisherman cares about is if it’s full. When it is full, the net is drawn ashore…and then the sorting begins. But we’re not sorting one kind from another, here. We’re not sorting trout from striped bass or catfish from dogfish or red fish from blue fish—just sorting good from bad. And here, Jesus helps us out a bit more, by telling us that this sorting of the fish is like the angels separating the righteous from the evil at “the close of the age.” The only relevant sorting is good from bad; not light fish from dark fish, or rich fish from poor fish, or smart fish from dumb fish, or even religious fish from secular fish; just good from bad, righteous from unrighteous. The point is, I think, pretty clear: within the kingdom of heaven there is amazing diversity. All kinds of fish get dragged in. All kinds of fish get sorted. The kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of every different kind of fish.

And now we have a great contrast, don’t we, between the essential unity of the kingdom of heaven, and the essential diversity of it; and what are we to make of this?

There are, I think, two thoughts to follow here. One is, Matthew is clearly building the train of thought which will climax in his recounting of the Great Commission, in which the risen Jesus instructs the disciples to go out and make disciples of all nations. Matthew’s gospel was most probably written for an original audience of predominantly Jewish Christians, people who would be struggling with reconciling their Jewish identity and heritage with the implications of Jesus’ teaching for Gentiles. Here in this parable, we see Matthew stressing the universality of Jesus’ teaching: it’s not just for Jewish fish, Matthew tells his original readers, it’s for every kind of fish in the sea. In fact, being one kind or the other makes no difference at all in the end; when you’re sorted, it’s just about being good or bad that counts.

This brings us to the second thought: the only distinction to be made with regard to the kingdom of heaven is essentially ethical—one is righteous or unrighteous. A few weeks ago, reading the end of the Sermon on the Mount together, we noted Matthew’s emphasis on action as a necessary component of righteousness; simple knowledge of what is good is not enough—this knowledge must be acted on. Here, again, this theme in Matthew makes itself felt. In the end, Matthew tells us, the kingdom of heaven is about righteousness.

Bearing these things in mind, I want to look again at the two parables that precede the parable of the fish. The main point, the obvious point, still stands: the worth of the kingdom of heaven exceeds all else. But with an eye toward the idea of the simultaneous diversity and unity of the kingdom, what else might this pair of deceptively simple stories tell us? In the first, a man “finds” a hidden treasure. He’s not, apparently, looking for it. He just finds it, stumbles over it, seemingly. He just happens to be in the right place at the right time, tripping over the right rock, falling face flat on X-marks-the-spot while no one else is looking. In his joy, the text says, he sells all he has to buy the field. In the second, a merchant is in search of fine pearls; and he finds one. Unlike the man in the field, the merchant spends his time looking for what he finds. It’s his livelihood—his whole life, in a sense, is organized around this search for fine pearls. When he finds one, the one, he’s not surprised, but he knows what he must do to get it, and he does it.

One stumbles into the kingdom seemingly by accident; one searches it out deliberately. And yet they both respond to the evident worth of the kingdom; they both understand that though it means giving up everything else, the kingdom is worth it.

Maybe Matthew wants to tell us that the first man is like the Gentile; unprepared, without Israel’s long history and relationship with God, the Gentile stumbles onto the gospel without really knowing what it is that he’s looking for. But he knows, after he finds it, the worth of what he’s found. Maybe Matthew wants to tell us that the merchant is like the Jewish Christian: he knows what it is he seeks, he organizes his whole life around the pursuit, and when he finds it, he knows what to do.

Perhaps in our own context we can read these different ways of coming to the kingdom with a different emphasis. Perhaps the man who stumbles over the treasure is like those of us who were lucky enough to be born in a place where we can, without design, without intent, without even meaning to, stumble into the gospel. Some of us are born into families who have hidden the gospel all around us just so that we can stumble onto it before we even know we should be looking for it. There it is, hidden in the illustrated Children’s Book of Bible Stories on the bedside table, or in the prayer Grandpa says before meals. But some of us, like the merchant, search long and hard, knowing what we’re missing in our lives but not quite knowing where to find it, before we finally catch sight of it. I think about the difference between my own story, my own faith journey, and those of the Christians I met in China. I stumbled into the kingdom before I even knew what it was. My friend Anya waited out every other student after my first English class to ask, when everyone was gone and it was safe, “can you teach me the Bible?”

And yet, as the parable of the fish tells us, it doesn’t matter which way we come to find the kingdom; whether we know what we’re looking for or don’t, whether we’re searching high and low or never even had to search at all, we land in the same place. We are all brought onto shore together in the same net. Anya and I discovered the same kingdom, were brought into the same kingdom.

And, regardless of how we come to find the kingdom, we’re all called to the same response; we’re all asked to give up the same thing: all that we have, whatever it is. It’s not simply that the kingdom of heaven is worth so much more than anything else we might happen to possess; in these parables, the only way to get hold of the kingdom is to sell all you have. Certainly there are echoes here of the story Matthew will tell in chapter 19 of “the rich young ruler,” the young man who walks away from Jesus sorrowfully because he cannot do this very thing. But I think here the intent may include rather more than simply the idea of material wealth—although the context of the parable makes this the most obvious and perhaps the first meaning. There is also a hint of the revolutionary quality of the kingdom of heaven—this amazing thing that turns your whole life inside out, makes you re-evaluate everything, re-order, re-prioritize, perhaps even throw it all out and start from scratch.

At the conclusion of these parables, Jesus asks his disciples, “Have you understood all this?” And they tell him, “yes.” Now, if this were Mark telling the story, Mark would tell us, uh, no, the disciples never really got anything Jesus tried to tell them until much, much later. But Matthew is more optimistic in his portrayal of the disciples’ ability to understand. Matthew tells us that they do get it. And Jesus responds to them with what is, at least to us, a somewhat enigmatic statement, almost another parable in itself: “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” Maybe this is Jesus’ way of telling them they get an A in their first parables class. It seems clear, at any rate, that Jesus is counting the disciples as “scribes being trained for the kingdom of heaven,” and, anyway, what better training for the kingdom of heaven could there be than following Jesus around? But what does Jesus mean by the comparison of the disciples to a householder who brings out new and old treasure?

I want to suggest that here, again, we have an echo of the unity and diversity of the kingdom of heaven. The old treasure is the old wisdom, the law, the prophets, the history of Israel’s long relationship with God; the new is Jesus’ own teaching, the inbreaking of the kingdom of heaven, or perhaps even Jesus himself! As “scholars trained for the kingdom of heaven,” the disciples are to bring out both the new and the old; both witness to the reality of the kingdom of heaven. Some will find the kingdom of heaven as they traverse from the old to the new; some will find the kingdom of heaven in the new, and rejoice then to discover the old.

So, finally, I think, the question of the unity and diversity of the kingdom of heaven becomes clear. Anyone may find the kingdom. The ways in which we here today have found the kingdom are, I’m sure, as diverse as the number of people here today. And yet when we find it, we are all called to the same response. We are all faced with the same necessity. We are all asked, what will you do with your find?