What is the kingdom of heaven like? A couple of weeks ago, when the scripture was Jesus' parable of the sower, Marian's sermon reminded us that the kingdom of heaven expresses God's reckless sharing with us and brings frighteningly excessive returns.
From a very small investment, extravagent returns. That is what the kingdom of heaven is like.
Then,
31 Jesus told them another story: The kingdom of heaven is like what happens when a farmer plants a mustard seed in a field. 32 Although it is the smallest of all seeds, it grows larger than any garden plant and becomes a tree. Birds even come and nest on its branches.
Sometimes we take shortcuts when we talk
about this parable.
We call it the parable of the mustard seed,
but it isn't about seeds.
(The Greek is terse and many translations
use the shortcut, reading
the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.)
I think the Contemporary English Version
gets it right: the kingdom of heaven is like
what happens when
a farmer takes action,
when the farmer takes and sows
a tiny bit of life into the wide, dark field.
The kingdom is like what happens. When the farmer throws out the seed, it changes. A very little seed grows and becomes a bush as large as a tree. When the farmer invests a little living seed, the yield is disproportionately great.
33 Jesus also said: The kingdom of heaven is like what happens when a woman mixes a little yeast into three big batches of flour. Finally, all the dough rises.
How many of you have ever made bread? It isn't very complicated, but it does take some hard work. You take a lot of flour, some oil, some water, usually a few other ingredients, a lot of time, and just a little bit of yeast.
Three big batches of flour! and just a little yeast. But you don't merely dump the ingredients together. You take them and mix them; you knead them, and leave them to rise together; you punch the dough down again, and let it rise again.
The kingdom of heaven is like what happens when you do all these things. A small amount of living substance is mixed into a large amount of dough – 3 batches! – and it grows.
44 The kingdom of heaven is like what happens when someone finds a treasure hidden in a field and buries it again. A person like that is happy and goes and sells everything in order to buy that field.
A person finds, buries, goes, sells, buys. The kingdom of heaven is like what happens when a happy person actively pursues a goal. The kingdom of heaven is change, even complete replacement of everything one has in pursuit of everything one really wants.
45 The kingdom of heaven is like what happens when a shop owner is looking for fine pearls. 46 After finding a very valuable one, the owner goes and sells everything in order to buy that pearl.
The kingdom of heaven is not much like a pearl. A pearl is hard, round, and unchanging once it is out of the oyster. That isn't like the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is like looking and finding; it is like going, selling, and buying. And it is like what happens when you go and sell everything you have so that you can buy everything you want.
Have you understood all of this?
A few weeks ago the question was raised as to what it will be like to step into heaven. Immediately, my mind went back five years to my father's funeral. That may be an unusual association to make. We typically talk about heaven as the place where dying is no more. But I am not saying that the kingdom of heaven is like dying or like grieving or like a funeral. The kingdom of heaven is like what happens.
What happened five years ago?
At the funeral, we shared the Moravian Easter liturgy,
the same liturgy we shared here a few minutes ago.
I said,
If we live, it is for the Lord that we live;
and if we die, it is for the Lord that we die.
And all the people gathered there answered,
whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord
.
My father lived to be 93 years old and by the time of his death he was weak in both mind and body. But the stories we heard the day before from person after person assured me that the spiritual garden which my father had tended was growing still.
And so, standing next to the box that held
what had been my father's body, I said,
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.
And all the people said,
Nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
What is the kingdom of heaven like?
It is like what happens when a man loses his father,
and all his friends and relatives
and all his father's friends gather together,
and they look at him, and they say,
God will bring with him those who have died.
The kingdom of heaven is like what happens then.
I looked out at the people who had come
to my father's funeral.
I do not want you to be in any doubt
about those who have died,
I told them,
or to grieve over them as others do,
who have no hope.
I began saying, What is sown as perishable,
,
and you finished, is raised imperishable.
I said, What is sown in weakness,
and you finished, is raised in power.
Have you understood all of this?
There are those who will tell you that the kingdom of heaven is about judgement. Of course, they are right. Wasn't that last parable we read from Matthew a parable about judgement? Jesus said,
47 The kingdom of heaven is like what happens when a net is thrown into a lake and catches all kinds of fish. 48 When the net is full, it is dragged to the shore, and the fishermen sit down to separate the fish. They keep the good ones, but throw the bad ones away.
The kingdom of heaven is about judgement – judgement which is deliberate rather than precipitate, judgement performed when sitting down calmly rather than in the heat of struggle.
But let Paul talk to you about judgement in the kingdom of heaven. You remember Paul. When he was called "Saul" he was as judgemental as any of us. In the midst of the debate, Saul had passed judgement and was heading to Damascus to arrest those accused of being Christian. Then he saw the light – and heard the judgement that was on his own head. So let Paul, who knows judgement, talk to you about judgement in the kingdom of heaven.
31 What can we say about all this? [he asks.] If God is on our side, can anyone be against us? 32 God did not keep back his own Son, but he gave him for us. If God did this, won't he freely give us everything else?
33 If God says his chosen ones are acceptable to him, can anyone bring charges against them? 34 Or can anyone condemn them? No indeed! Christ died and was raised to life, and now he is at God's right side, speaking to him for us.
Here is the good news about judgement in the kingdom of heaven: The only plaintiff with standing in the court of heaven is Jesus Christ and he – for reasons mysterious – is our friend.
Here is the good news about judgement in the kingdom of heaven: It is a biased judgement, it is unfair. Justice in the kingdom of heaven is stacked heavily in our favor. We will not get a fair judgement in the kingdom of heaven, thanks be to God.
So judgement in the kingdom of heaven is not about justice at all. It is about friendship. Judgement in the kingdom of heaven is the discernment of a friend who knows us deeply.
35 Can anything separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble, suffering, and hard times, or hunger and nakedness, or danger and death?
No, none of those.
How about stupidity, ignorance, or riding your bike in the middle lane of Holmgren Way next to a semi-trailer because you thought the truck was in a right turn only lane? Or very carefully looking both ways as you approach an intersection, and then driving past the stop sign? How about refusing to join Facebook? Or even picking the wrong political party? Or the wrong college, or the wrong career?
You know the answer to that, of course.
And yet, aren't those are the kinds of worries
which most of us have, most of the time?
This puts me in mind of a quotation from
Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert
of Harvard University. They said,
Unlike other animals,
human beings spend a lot of time thinking
about what is not going on around them,
contemplating events that happened in the past,
might happen in the future,
or will never happen at all.
Those things may keep us from being fully engaged
in the kingdom of heaven,
but they don't prevent God from loving us.
None of these concerns pertain to any treasure
which is worth selling everything you have.
None of those things are worth enough to worry about,
and certainly not enough to separate us from God.
So the trivial and the embarassing are not enough to separate us from God's love and friendship. Let me try a different example, one taken from the opposite end of the scale. This example is also from real life.
Suppose that you lived in northern Uganda. Suppose that you are about 9 years old when you are captured by rebel soldiers. They force you to be part of their army. They beat you and humiliate you to make you a soldier – at 9 years old. Eventually, they take you and some other child soldiers to a village. There, some farmers are working the fields. Here the rebels force you and two of the others to kill 3 innocent farmers for no reason at all. Can murder and humiliation cut you off from the love of God?
38 I am sure that nothing can separate us from God's love – not life or death, not angels or spirits, not the present or the future, 39 … Nothing in all creation can separate us from God's love for us in Christ Jesus our Lord!
What happens when a child soldier in Uganda discovers that God still loves him? What happens when a troubled teen in Green Bay discovers that God's people still care? Or a homeless mother, or a convicted felon? The kingdom of heaven is like what happens when you do these things.
Have you understood all of this?
28 We know that God is always at work for the good of everyone who loves him. …
37 In everything we have won more than a victory because of Christ who loves us.
Our Lamb has conquered!
Let us follow him.
Scripture quotations from the Contemporary English Version, copyright © 1991, American Bible Society.
Easter liturgy from the Moravian Book of Worship, copyright © 1995 by the Interprovincial Board of Publications and Communications.
Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert, "A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind". Science, November 2010 [vol 330], page 932.
Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine, War Dance
.
Rogues Harbor Studios, Fine Films, Shine Global; 2007.