The Kingdom of Heaven [Proper 12A - Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

 

The Kingdom of Heaven

 

The crowd was skeptical, because the evidence was lacking.  Despite Jesus’ prayer for the kingdom to come, everywhere they looked it appeared to be business as usual.  The Roman soldiers still harassed them; their taxes still funded an enemy empire; the roads were still lined with cruel, bloody crosses.  Jesus prayed for the arrival of a new kind of kingdom, but nothing changed.  Jesus talked a lot about what could be, about a future better than their present, but, as far as anyone could tell, there was nothing to see.

 

It is actually the problem with all things God: the obscurity of it all.  An invisible God haunting this physical world, occasionally lighting a bush on fire, infrequently knocking a bloodthirsty zealot off of a horse.  But those are the splash moments, the outliers; mostly everything else is pretty quiet; mostly God is found where the prophet Elijah found God: in the sheer silence.  Our God is, apparently, so into faith and belief that God refuses to serve up the proof that would be so helpful.  Instead, God lives like a spy, a divine sovereign with a secret career, hiding from even those who love God most.

 

And so Jesus had his work cut out for him.  He was God Incarnate, God in the flesh, but in stunning disguise: from a poor family, of an insignificant village, lodged in an embarrassing corner of a disinterested Empire.  And he was called to proclaim the coming of a kingdom that no one could seem to find and no one could understand. 

 

I don’t envy Jesus; the kingdom of heaven was a tough sell – difficult to detect and hard to explain.  If the concept was simple, one parable would have done the trick.  Actually, if it was simple, parables would not have even been necessary.  Jesus used parables because his unenviable task was to convey the ineffable.  And the kingdom of heaven is certainly ineffable.

 

But, according to Jesus, it is also like a mustard seed.  Now Jesus does get a little carried away here.  I think he was very aware that a little hyperbole woke up the crowds.  And so it is worth mentioning that mustard seeds, while quite small, are not the smallest of all the seeds.  There are some orchid seeds that are stunningly small – a fraction of the size of a mustard seed.  But the point is, of course, that the seeds are very small and the seeds do seed things. 

 

And also, not to nit-pick Jesus, but mustard shrubs are not the largest of shrubs. Leyland cypress can grow to be six-stories tall; mustard shrubs top out around eight-foot high.  And also mustard shrubs are not trees, do not become trees.  But at least, unlike delicate orchids, they are study and expansive enough to support the living quarters of a small bird.  They spread out; they are stubborn; their little seeds get everywhere.  They might not be the smallest or the largest, but mustard shrubs are absolutely and significantly larger and more prominent than the tiny seeds from which they come.  They start small and out of sight, but in time they make their presence known.      

 

Jesus was clearly more of a rabbi than a horticulturalist; but what he lacked in scientific accuracy he made up for in poetic profundity.  Jesus wasn’t teaching a gardening class; he was dropping clues about the kingdom of Heaven.  Jesus understood that little seeds mostly go unnoticed and always go unseen – seeds of a shrub, seeds of the kingdom.  But just because something is unseen, doesn’t mean it is not there.  And just because something is small doesn’t mean it can’t become something big.  Though unnoticed, those tiny, hidden seeds are alive and active – even when they are out of sight.  Under their thin husk lives a world of possibility.  Under the hard surface of the ground, hope is stirring, something is happening.

 

To the skeptical crowd, Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.”  You can’t see it, but it is growing.  You can’t feel it, but it is about to break into this world.  It always starts out small, but it intends to be terribly invasive, to burst onto the scene and choke out the terrors that harass creation.  The kingdom is coming.  And it will be beautifully wild and absolutely mess up the carefully cultivated pathologies of this world.

 

But not everyone grasped the profundity of Jesus’ parable.  Some in the crowd were more comfortable in the kitchen than in the fields.  And so Jesus tries again.  The kingdom of heaven is like yeast. 

 

Yeast is also very little.  It is a single-cell organism.  And once it is mixed in with the flour it is lost.  The eye can no longer perceive it.  It is hidden – like a seed under the soil. 

 

And yet, it is active.  It makes the dough come alive; it makes the dough rise and expand.  Once it is in there, there is no getting rid of it.  It just takes over.  In this case, in Jesus’ example, a little yeast animates sixty pounds of dough – enough bread to go around, enough bread to start a party, enough bread to feed a revolution.      

 

The kingdom of heaven always starts small: like a baby in a manger, like a seed in the soil, like a yeast in the mix, like a spark in a pine forest.  But then it grows.  There are moments when the growth is too small to notice, but the kingdom is never stagnant; neither is it tame; neither is it content to allow the worst aspects of the status quo to dominate the grand narrative of history.

 

While the kingdom is at times obscured by the pain and misery of this world, by the violence and brokenness of our age, Jesus would warn us not to dismiss the tremors of this unseen agitator.  I know that sometimes heaven feels forever away, justice feels like an impossible dream, peace like a distant fantasy.  But if you pay attention you can feel the earth moving, starting to shake.  That shaking you feel is the kingdom coming; it is the prayer of Jesus coming true. The barren ground under our feet is pregnant with hope, is teeming with divine possibility. 

 

We are children of that coming kingdom – with eyes on the possibility and hope clutched in our pounding hearts.  Even when it feels like a futile endeavor, and at times it will, keep dropping seeds, keep sowing love in this world.  Little by little, those seeds will break through; they will alter the landscape; they will make their presence known.   

 

I don’t know why God things starts so small.  But I do know that the end God has in mind is not small at all.  These tiny sparks, set in the tinder of hungry hearts, planted in the barren places of this desperate world, will grow into a fire; the fire will spread; it will spread and spread until the old kingdoms, with their oppressive wrath and their greedy strivings, are burnt to the ground.  And then, finally, like a seedling pushing through the soil, the kingdom of heaven will come. The answer to Jesus’ prayer will rise out of the ashes.