Pictures of the Kingdom: Matthew 13:24-43

The kingdom of heaven is at hand, the kingdom heaven is near, the kingdom of heaven is here. Words we have heard repeated on the lips of Jesus throughout the book of Matthew. Jesus has been letting us know that the kingdom of heaven is not something far off, not something unreachable, not something we will find after our time on earth is done or something we will only know when we find ourselves in eternity. It is at hand. It is near. It is here. It is present. It is around us in the here and now.

Jesus is letting us know that the kingdom of heaven is where ever the children of God are at work doing the work and the will of God here in on earth. The kingdom of heaven is something which comes to this world as we allow God’s will to be done in us and through us, so that in our lives and in our actions God’s will is being done here on earth.

So Jesus give us a set of parables which seem backwards and nonsensical on the surface. Weeds are allowed to keep growing, leaven is presented as a positive thing instead of something a Hebrew woman must remove from her home before Passover, least it contaminate anything else in the house, and invasive plants  are not only allowed to grow in the garden but they continue growing to unbelievable proportions. In the upside down, backwards, kingdom of heaven, where the last are first and the first are last, and bad things are presented as good things, as Christians, we are the harbingers of God’s kingdom, in that we bring it with us. We are carriers, infesting our world with the love, the goodness, the grace, the mercy, the forgiveness, the holiness of God, as we live lives reflecting the very nature of God in all that we do. And Jesus is patient X. When we walk close enough to Christ, and work to imitate his life with our own, when we live out who he is, how he lives his life while we live ours, what he has and who is is transferred to us. We take it with us into the world, contaminating the world around us with Jesus’ light and love. And what we want is an epidemic of Christ-like, holy living in our world. 

If the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, as Jesus says that it is, what does it look like? How will we recognize it when we see it? Jesus gives us snapshots of the Kingdom in the parable we have before us this morning. They are pictures showing us pieces of the Kingdom at work. It is almost as if Jesus is passing around a photo album and as he points to photographs he tells us how the photos gives us a glimpse at the God’s kingdom.

He points to the first photo. We can see a field and in that field wheat and weeds are growing side by side.  Jesus explains that the workers of the field want to pull up the weeds immediately, but the master says to let them grow until the harvest and then separate them lest wheat is accidentally pulled out or uprooted along with the weeds.

 “Oh this is a good one!” He says and as he turns the page. There on the page, we see a faded photograph of a woman kneading dough. On one side of the worktable are measuring cups there are three. She must have used three measures of flour. On the other side of the table we see that she has measuring spoons. She has obviously portioned out a small amount of yeast to put in her dough. “See the small amount of leaven,” Jesus points out, “it has gone into all the dough and although is it hidden from sight and is no longer seen, it has filled the whole thing with its leavening power.” Such a small amount has had a big impact.

Our attention turns to as set of pictures on the other side of the page. Jesus is point to the first one saying, “Oh this one shows us almost the same thing.” Our eyes fall on a picture of someone planting a small mustard see in the garden. And since we are familiar with Middle Eastern gardens and common garden plants we all wonder, “Why would that person do that!” Mustard is like mint, if you plant it in a garden it will just multiply and grow everywhere. Soon you will have nothing but mustard in your garden and very little else. In the next picture we see the mustard plant, it is large and out of control, it seems to be a shrub, much larger than it really should be. And then we look at the third picture, this is truly a prolific little mustard seed. For it has become larger than any mustard plant we have seen, it is practically a tree, and as we look close we see that a pair of birds indeed have mistaken it for a tree and have made a nest deep in its branches, finding safety and protection in its foliage. And we think to ourselves, “the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that grows and grows and grows, threatening to take over everything?” God’s kingdom is like a mustard plant, which grows bigger than we could ever imagine it could become. It defies logic in its growth and becomes a place of safety and security in which others can make a home.

We look at the three pictures and wonder what does it mean to say the, Kingdom of heaven is like wheat and weeds growing together, and also like a small amount of yeast affecting the entirely of a loaf or a mustard seed that grows to astronomical proportions? How do these word pictures help us see the kingdom of heaven all around us? How does this allow us to live the kind of lives kingdom people must live?

Jesus does give us some explanation about the wheat and the weeds. It seems we are the wheat, the people of God, Christians living and growing the Church. Jesus explains that the Church will be full of people who love God; people who are seeking after Jesus Christ, who are working to be reflections of the light and love of Jesus Christ in the world; people who are living out God’s holiness in their daily lives. And also, in the Church, there are people who are not; people who are living contrary to the love of God; people who do not reflect the character of God to those around them; people who are bad witnesses as to who Jesus is, people are false ambassadors, whose value do not reflect the values of God. There are people, who say they are Christians, who are not living out the presence of the kingdom of heaven in their lives.  We are all in the Church together, wheat and weeds living and growing together. And it is hard to tell us apart. The weeds, spoken of in this passage, look very much like wheat until they are full grown. So the master of the field lets them grow alongside the wheat until the harvest so that none of the wheat is accidentally pulled out and uprooted in a pre-peremptory move to rid the field of the weeds before the harvest.

In a world where we have simultaneous scandals involving the Church, where it has been discovered that nuns have been systematically misused by priests over the decades, where the count of young people who have been abused by clergy among Southern Baptist churches in Texas has reached over 700, and that is all on top of the history of priests abusing young boys that has shook the Catholic church to its foundations, we begin to wonder, “What is going on within the Church?”  In a world where almost any time someone finds out that I pastored for a period of time in Kansas, I have to then prove that I share no sympathy for the Westboro Baptist church in Topeka, or their ideal, you have to wonder what is going in the Church today. Or whenever any of us get on social media, we find Christian saying all sorts of hateful things about immigrants, or people of color. Christians who seem to blindly support political figures and policies that, to us, seem to run contrary to the grace, love and mercy to which we believe God calls us to live out in all aspects of our lives. We have to wonder what is going on with Christians? It seems, if we believe ourselves to be wheat in this field, called the Church, and we continually find that we are am surrounded by Christians who seem to be reflecting a different god with their words and their actions than the one we are working so hard to reflect, the only conclusion we can come to is that there weeds growing in among the wheat. And sometimes as we look around at everyone who also calls themselves Christian, it feels like we are completely surrounded by fake wheat (and their fake news about Jesus).

Jesus tells us that the wheat and the weeds will grow together. This is the way it will be until the end, when it will all be sorted out. He also tells us who does the sorting. And guess what? The wheat does not get to do the sorting! When you put it that way is seems so logical. Wheat does not harvest, nor does it pull weeds or throw them away. That is the job for others. Not us. The master decides, the master knows the wheat from the weeds. We are just called to grow in the field. So we should not be too dismayed when it seems that not everyone in the field is a child of the kingdom.

The kingdom of God is like yeast, which is mixed in with the flour in a batch of bread, while only a small amount is put into the dough, that small amount has the power to fill the whole thing causing the entire batch of dough to rise. The people of God at work in the world, living their lives in ways that bring glory to God are leaven, filling the world. The Spirit of God, at work in the Church, in our lives enters into the world through us, and through us, fills the world with the love of God, going into all the places in the world that we go.

The Kingdom is also like a prolific, invasive plant in a garden that takes over and then become larger than anyone could imagine. People may think that the Church, or its people, can only become an over grown plant or a small shrub, that is the most “damage” we can do. But the small seed has grown into a huge plant, and surprised everyone by become a tree, with branches that can provide safety and security to small animals and birds.

This is good news for the Church. The Church may not seem like an overwhelming force. Christians may feel like we do not have much influence in our world. But our impact is larger than we think. We are yeast in the dough, small but powerful in the affect we have on the world. We are the leaven that fills the dough, whose leavening power can fill everything and have lasting impact on the entirely of the world. We are invasive plants, growing and keeping on growing until we have taken over the entire garden. When kingdom people live out the kingdom in our neighborhoods, workplaces, schools and all the other places we live, the impact we have is much more vast than we think.

This is good news for a small church like us. Our size does not limit the impact we can have on our community and the world. A small church can be leaven in its community. We can impact the entirety of our neighborhood. When we live out Christ’s mission, together, here, and in our personal lives our reach is large and broad. We fill the world around us with the leaven of God.

As a church we go so much further than this small white-sided building with stained glass windows. We work to bring God’s kingdom into this neighborhood, the surrounding communities and into the furthest places of our city and our world. We may not always realize all the places we go and all the lives we touch.

Every time there is a fire in Cambridge and a family is displaced, we are there. We are at the YWCA at Easter with baskets and gift bags touch each mother and child who resides there with the goodness of God. There are nearly 500 children at the FMA who are touched by our generosity and reached with our prayers each year when we collect pumpkins. And there are about 70 families we touch each month through the baby pantry. I can go through all the things we do but the 20 (or so) of us gathered here today, reach into our community and our world and have an impact in ways that goes far beyond what we can imagine

It is the same with our individual lives. Whenever we speak the peace of Christ to our co-worker, whenever we extend the kindness of God to the cashier or those around in line at the grocery store, whenever we are careful to reflect the holiness, grace, mercy and forgiveness of Christ in the words we use and the things we post on-line, whenever we act in ways that show the love of God to our neighbors, then we are bringing the kingdom of God into those places. As the people of the kingdom it is our job to be leaven, we are to become over grown plants to over take the whole world with the love of God, to spread the grace and goodness of Christ like a virus in a closed community.

Here is the thing, we are all too familiar with the fact that there are people out there who call themselves Christians that do not act in ways that we recognize as Christ-like. In their words, in their actions, in the ways they interact with people within the Church as well as with the world around us, seem to be less than holy, to say the least, and seem to outright contradict the ways in which, we know, Jesus to be calling us to live. We can see this in others around us and since we all just plants in this field growing together, it is not our place, or job, to remove the weeds from the field and to be honest really is not even within our capabilities to able to tell the difference between what is really wheat and what is really a weed.

Since we cannot do anything about the weeds among us, why don’t we stop worrying about all the other people out there not living the way we think they should live, and work to be good wheat in the field. Let us soak up the Son, so we can reflect his light into the world around us. Let us allow the God of the universe to water us, with the life giving word, so that we can become strong healthy wheat, good plants the master will be proud to harvest when the time comes.

We have no control of what pastors in Texas do or what priests are doing or have done. We cannot stop that one “church” and its congregants from protesting the funerals of soldiers, or anything else they choose to do and say. We really have no control of what other Christians say on the internet, which memes they post or what political views they espouse. What we do have control over is what we say and what we do. We have control over the quality of our own leaven, whether the invasive plant we are growing into is a safe place for others or not.

The kingdom of heaven is like the children of God living out the character of God in all the places they go, the followers of Christ being the hands, feet, voice and presence of Christ to all the people with whom we interact throughout our lives. We live the kingdom, we bring the kingdom, we breath the life of the kingdom into our world daily, by being the people Jesus is calling us to be each and every day.