Sermon: Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52, July 30, 2023 Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Sermon: Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52, July 30, 2023

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

We’ve just heard some great parables of Jesus. But they’re also perplexing, right? Especially hearing one right after the other. These parables beckon our further consideration and imaginative exploration that we might learn more about the good news of the dominion of heaven coming near to us in Jesus Christ. For Jesus’ parables are in many ways stories he tells about himself. So, let’s jump right in.

I invite you to imagine a mustard seed…. A tiny little thing that becomes a great shrub – usually 2 to 6 feet tall. A mustard plant is a bush. But Matthew reports that Jesus says the mustard seed becomes a tree. What’s going on here? Since the parables of Jesus call for some playful creativity in interpreting their meaning, let’s think of the tree as the tree of the cross, an instrument of execution that becomes the tree of life for us and for all of creation, where the birds can make their homes. We could say a lot more about the mustard seed, and the tree as the cross, but I don’t think you want an hour-long sermon!

So, moving on…. Now, I invite you to consider yeast…. known to us as a little packet of powder. But in fact, yeast is a living organism that gets folded into, hidden, if you will, amidst flour and water, salt and oil. And as the yeast feeds on the flour, it produces carbon dioxide air bubbles that cause the bread to rise. Picturing the rising of the loaf, I cannot help but think of Jesus’ resurrection. And with bread in mind, how can we not also be reminded of the Eucharist, through which the risen Christ is made known to us in the breaking of bread?

Moreover, the three measures of flour mentioned in the parable that get leavened would end up being enough bread to feed between 100 and 150 people. Here I think of the miracle of the loaves and fishes where a little bit goes a long way in feeding thousands of people. You see how this works? Jesus’ parables call for playfully using our theological imaginations. So far so good?

Now, let’s wonder about the treasure hidden in field…. The man was plowing along and ran into something which when he dug it up turned out to be hidden treasure – which he buried again, perhaps another hint of Jesus’ death. But this is a burial that does not end in despair, but joy. So much joy that the man gives up everything to lay claim to it. Jesus’ saving death is like that. And he buys the whole field where the treasure is, a mission field, if you will, evoking our call to discipleship – to give up everything to follow Jesus who is our true treasure into the fields where Jesus leads us.

Next, picture in your mind a pearl of great value and the merchant who sought it out…. Maybe you recall how pearls form. An irritant, a foreign object like a grain of sand, or parasite, enters the shell of the oyster, and if the oyster cannot secrete it out, then the oyster covers the foreign object with the same material the shell is made of. That’s how you get a pearl, a precious gem in the ancient world as valuable as a diamond is to us.  

But perhaps here’s how the pearl relates to Jesus and the dominion of heaven that has come near in him: Christ, like the merchant, seeks us out, even we who are irritants, sinful foreign objects. Christ covers us, covers our sin, to make of us precious gems like pearls of great value. Indeed, Christ gave up everything, even his life, in pursuit of and in finding us. By God’s mercy, forgiveness, and grace, active in Jesus’ death and resurrection, we become pearls of great value.

Finally, then, there’s the net thrown into the sea…. In the Sea of Galilee where Jesus’ disciples were fisherfolk, nets may have been six feet wide and maybe a hundred feet long, a huge dragnet that catches everything in its path. And only at the end of the age will God sort out the great catch. Like the parable of the wheat and the weeds which we heard last Sunday, we peacefully co-exist together, the good and the bad, until that final accounting on the last day, when we trust that all will somehow be made righteous in God’s eyes and by God’s grace, not be thrown out.

So…. Have you understood all this? Jesus’ followers readily answered yes, when, of course, they were probably just being polite at best or presumptuous know-it-alls at worst. To really understand Jesus’ parables, we are beckoned to take some creative liberties, especially to see Christ in the stories which point to the dominion of heaven.

But in our human sin and mortal finitude and short-sightedness, more often than not, we’ll miss the point and maybe reduce the parables to self-help guides for better living. Which is to say, we’ll overlook the ultimate significance of mustard seeds and yeast, hidden treasure and pearls of great value, failing to see Christ’s presence and hand and action in these ordinary things.

And yet Jesus Christ, the focal point of all these parables, brings us into the heavenly dominion regardless of our capacities to understand. His death on the tree of the cross brings life and shelter for us and all creation. His resurrection leavens the loaf which we feed on in abundance at the feast at this sacramental table. His buried body is treasure that brings joy and the willingness to give up everything to follow Jesus. By his death and resurrection, Jesus covers over multitudes of our sins such that we become pearls of great value in God’s eye.

And we’re caught up with everyone else in the vast net that God casts in the waters of baptism to emerge and to be brought into the fold of God’s family, our evil having been separated from us, our having been made righteous by God’s amazing grace.

Thus, each and every gathering here on Sundays is a living parable that opens up for us the wisdom and the truth of the dominion of heaven. Like Solomon, as we heard in today’s first reading, we leave worldly ambitions behind and come here, seeking instead sacred, heavenly wisdom. And in the proclamation of the word and in the celebration of the sacraments, God gives us the wise and discerning minds we seek (cf. 1 Kings 3:10-12).

And this holy wisdom has its beginning and end in the radical sovereignty of God’s love in Christ. Here’s how the apostle Paul puts it in Romans, as we heard this morning – and if you really want to understand the parables of Jesus, listen again to this: “If God is for us, who is against us?... Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?... No, in all these things we are more than victorious through the one who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (cf. Romans 8:31-39) This is what Jesus is all about. And this is what the parables of the sacred dominion are all about – God’s radical, unconditional love for the world that finally wins the day.

Finally, renewed in our trust in the perplexing wisdom of God, and with the eyes of faith, God sends us beyond this place to seek the least and the last and the lost of the world, those as little as the mustard seeds, the holy treasures among the most humble who may be hidden in our plain sight, the pearls of great value in the world whom everyone else has overlooked. And when in our joy we find these treasures among our neighbors, friends, family members, co-workers, we invite them into the net with us, that place of rescue, safety, and community, and belonging, where together we await the final victory of love over hate, of life over death in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.