Homily – Sunday, the 30th July 1023
Reading: Matthew 13:31-33,44-52
Who remembers the “Love is…” cartoons?
They were originally created by the New Zealand cartoonist Kim Casali in the 1960s as love-letters to her
then-boyfriend and later-husband Robert.
These little drawings ended up being published in many different newspapers world-wide.I grew up seeing them on coffee mugs, key rings and stationary, and I’m sure many of you will know them too.
It is these many thousand poignant drawings I was reminded off by this week’s gospel reading. Matthew introduces us to some of the stories that Jesus told which, just like the “Love is…” cartoons, have a reoccurring tagline (“The Kingdom of Heaven is like…”). They, too, are short, to the point and try to relate a complex concept using everyday images.
So, what kind of world do these parables speak of?
The Kingdom of Heaven is… surprising and odd.
Featuring farming, bread making, trading and fishing, today’s five parables are firmly rooted in Jesus’ everyday environment.
But are they really?
Let’s take the Parable of the Tireless Woman for a start: To Jesus’ contemporaries this wouldn’t have come across as a cute little cartoon, but as quite odd: ‘Three measures of flour’ is not a common household amount (especially when considering that this flour would have been ground on a small hand mill!).
Three measures were almost 20 kg – a massive amount for kneading by hand! And it gets more surprising: Jesus makes a woman the protagonist of his illustration of the Kingdom of Heaven -a strange choice for a man of his time. Women, and women’s work like bread making, were confided to the home, the behind the scenes.
Baking was far from being ‘a thing’. First century folks would have been appalled by the images that flooded social media during the covid lockdown: Grown and respectable men in aprons showing off their newly-acquired skills of sourdough bread making!
Jesus, as portrait by Matthew, however, does very intentionally includes women as key players of salvation history. It’s a revolutionary act of Matthew’s to even make women part into Jesus’ genealogy (and foreign women at that!).
Details of this morning’s other parables are odd too:
Like imagining someone selling all (really all?) they have to acquire a pearl
or a field… Pretty unrealistic, right?
The Kingdom of Heaven is… political.
For me, and perhaps also for you, these ancient bible stories are so familiar, that they feel cute and harmless. The 2000 year gap between their original context and my world tends to erase a lot of the original revolutionary messages.
Jesus speaks of the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ – an abstract concept to us, living in this free country. But back in the day this sort of talk could get you in serious trouble. The Romans ruled most regions around the Mediterranean and their emperor demanded not just taxes, but obedience and even adoration and worship. Proclaiming an alternative kingdom was a dangerous move, that could get Jesus killed, and eventually actually did.
Let’s take the fishing parable for example and consider, that during this time small family-owned fishing enterprises at the Galilean sea were under thread due to taxation and the emergence of monopolism run and exploited by the regional governor.
Yet Jesus paints a picture of a society where fishermen can work freely and feed their families.
Or how about the farming images? At the time of the writing of this passage the land God had promised to all his people was in the hands of only a few. Roman warfare and the misuse of produce
to fuel the luxury in the city of Rome meant poverty and starvation for areas like Palestine and Asia Minor. But within this context Jesus imagines a world where people have the means to sell what they have and actually become landowners. He suggests a civilisation in which not all of the pearls, and other items of great value
are in the tight hands of the top 1%.
Into first-century Palestine and into a 21st-century globalised world Jesus proclaims freedom and autonomy for all people everywhere.
The Kingdom of Heaven is… creation purposefully cared for.
The parables of the gospels are bursting with the abundant gifts of nature: we read about water, soil, flour, fish, birds, plants, seeds and pearls. To me, the odd one out among all the farming and fishing imagery seemed to be the treasure, which appeared before my inner eye like a Pirates of the Caribbean-style wooden chest, filled with gold and diamonds.
That was, until I came across the catholic theologian Markus Locker, who suggests that Jesus’ listeners would have understood the land itself as a treasure – a fertile land, that once had belonged to the common people, and which had the power to feed and sustain them.
(The New World of Jesus’ Parables – Markus Locker)
All these good gifts of creation are, however, not stand-alone protagonists in these parables. The seed is made space for and planted, the flour is painstakingly kneaded, the land in which the treasure rests is bought, the pearl is pursued, the water is fished in and the catch sorted.
The people mentioned here are hard-working and skilled. They are masters of their trades and by doing their day-to-day tasks, invest countless hours and strength into building the Kingdom of Heaven. With determination they make use of the resources they have and the fortunes that come their way. With wisdom and discernment they make decisions, like the fishermen sorting their catch. All must be put at stake for the treasures that God has given.
Eventually, the fruits of our protagonist’s labour are shared with others – be it the birds that nest in the mustard shrub or the village that feasts on the many loaves of bread the woman has made.
The Kingdom of Heaven is… you, me and everyone else.
A single one of those “Love is…” cartoons is not able to describe thoroughly every aspect of a loving human relationship. The same goes for the parables: The gospel writers curate a whole array of vivid imaginary to relate Jesus’ teachings to their readers. All the parables are intertwined with each other to reveal a more complete and more meaningful vision of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Our five little stories don’t just tie in with other parables of Jesus, but interconnect with other parts of Jesus’ life and ministry too: The pearl of great price makes hints towards the ointment that Mary bought and anointed Jesus with, the welcome extended to the birds in the mustard shrub reminds of Jesus embracing the little children and the man buying the field parallels the determination with which the good shepherd seeks the lost.
Indeed, these short little tales echo with the long history of God with his people. Jesus’ listeners were reminded of God’s ancient promise of land for all. They thought of the exodus
when hearing the story of the bread-baking woman.
These parables even reach right into our life reality – 2 millennia later! We rejoice in the freedom and autonomy of the parables’ protagonists and realise that this kingdom vision would indeed be good news to the peoples of countries like China, Iran, North Korea or Belarus. We hear of the net full of fish and instantly think of over-fished seas and micro plastic pollution. When marvelling at Matthew’s inclusion of female key-players we must not forget all the women and other groups of people that are still oppressed even in in our time. We celebrate the discernment and expertise of the fishermen separating the bad from the good catch and realise that in an ever more complex world wisdom is more needed than ever before.
So let us be challenged and reassured by these parables!
Challenged, to take our place in the Kingdom of Heaven, where our work and skill is most needed. For a world with abundant bread needs reliable servants to prepare it.
Reassured, because the Kingdom of Heaven is quietly, but mightily spreading: like a growing mustard bush or the yeast in a large bowl of dough.
The Kingdom of Heaven might at times be small and hidden, like a seed, yeast, a pearl or fish in the water, yet it is certainly there for us to find, tend to and part-take in.
Christine Ghinn
30th July 2023
Freiburg Anglican Church 