[Sermon delivered at St. Mary's Episcopal Church at Solemn Morning Prayer, the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, July 30, 2023]
✠ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in Essence and Undivided. Amen.
Our Gospel passage today[1] is a collection of many little parables, thrown together by the editors of the Lectionary. Any homilist using this text invariably must make a decision:
· Do I focus on one small section and dive deeply into it?
· Do I throw these all together into a confused mess and pray someone gets something out of it?
· Do I give up and preach on something else?
I am sure we all have heard some variation on the above approaches, some more successful than others, but it does not change the fact that this passge is a literary rectangle. It is both a wreck and a tangle.[2]
The issue is that this passage is ripped out from the midst of two larger parables, the Parable of the Sower[3] and the Parable of the Tares.[4] After delivering the Sermon on the Mount,[5] then kicking His ministry into high gear,[6] Our Lord Jesus stops and delivers another sermon, this time from a boat. Unlike the practical Sermon on the Mount, this sermon is riddled with parables, delving into the psychology of the Kingdom of God, as it were. The Parable of the Sower explains the ways people can process the message of the Kingdom of God. The Parable of the Tares shows how the Kingdom of God interacts with the larger environment, what we shall call the Kingdom of this Age. The other parables, the ones we read today, further explain the two larger parables, how the Kingdom of God turns and infiltrates the Kingdom of this Age, and what it means to receive the Word, the Kingdom’s message, with joy.
First we should look at the mustard seed and yeast together. These metaphors represent growth and infiltration from small, even humble beginnings. The mustard seed symbolizes a humble beginning that eventually becomes a significantly large and important movement, exponentially larger than its start. It starts out hardly noticed, the Kingdom of God slipping unheeded into the territory of the Kingdom of this Age, and then in relatively short order growing to become larger and more noticeable, providing shelter and relief for many who otherwise would have none. The yeast is similar, a small and limited speck with a short reach, that eventually suffuses the whole loaf, the Kingdom of God initially limited to one remote corner of the Kingdom of this Age suddenly being found everywhere and changing the very character of the society which it infiltrated.
Second, we examine the hidden treasure and the immensely valuable pearl. These metaphors indicate giving one’s all for the Kingdom of God and in turn receiving much more than what one had put in. Purchasing land, both then and now, is expensive, and often requires for many spending everything they have, but if it contains a treasure hoard it more than makes up for the purchase price; likewise the person giving up their everything for the Kingdom of God finding they have inherited both heaven earth.[7] Likewise the pearl, or any other gemstone, speaks about something that appreciates in value, becoming more precious, not less, with the passage of time, and not only being of high value but of great beauty beside, the Kingdom of God eternally growing, expanding, increasing in beauty, increasing in value, far beyond its original cost.
Third, we reflect on the sorting of the fish, a metaphor for the end of the Age. While seas, lakes, and rivers are full of creatures edible and inedible, or ancient wheat fields were riddled with toxic weeds among the good grain, the people who have embraced the Kingdom of God are mixed in with those who cling stubbornly and beyond reason to the things and values of the Kingdom of this Age, refusing to give up what they have in return for something greater, linking their fates with the fate of something perishable.
These fundamentally unsettling parables must be taken together to be fully understood. The Parable of the Sower presumes that for the Kingdom of God to take hold in someone, that person must prepare themselves, setting aside jaded cynicism, distraction, and half-hearted commitment. The Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Yeast imply fundamentally reworking society, subverting the established order. The Parables of the Buried Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price indicate that the Kingdom of God requires a high price of its followers, rolling over their investment in the Kingdom of this Age into the Kingdom to come. Most unsettling still, the Parables of the Tares and the Sorting of the Fish set before us that judgement, a taboo subject of the twenty-first century, is a very real thing and will come about at the end of the Age and its Kingdom.
You may likely have heard the following reactions to these parables: “How dare God presume to demand change from us, how dare God presume to ask everything of us, how dare God presume to judge us?” These are very common and human responses. For those whose knowledge of the Gospel and of Jesus had been superficial, these parables confront the listener with the fact that the Gospels are not that different from the Law, the Prophets, or the Epistles.
These questions, however, show a marked lack of perspective on our parts. We ask these questions from within the context of a closed system, namely Creation. If we consider that God, Who created this system from nothing, is not only the source of light, life, being, goodness, and all other virtues, but also IS Light, Life, Being, Goodness, Love, and all other virtues, and that the opposites of these virtues are simply denial and rejection of them, then we must consider that clinging to Darkness, Death, Nothingness, Evil, Hate and all the other anti-virtues no longer point out a presumption on the part of God but insanity on the part of Humanity.
Humanity, indeed all of Creation, is insane. True, God created everything to be good. God is faithful, that is, He is consistent and acts with integrity toward His Nature, thus God creates nothing evil, nothing rotten, nothing bad, but…somewhere, somewhen, Creation soured. While God selflessly created everything that everything could freely love Him, this introduced the risk that if something is free to love God, then it also is free to reject God. We call this the Fall. The rejection, therefore, of Health, Life, Goodness, Love, Being, Light, results in a plunge into insanity, evil, hatred, darkness, corruption, and eventually nothingness.
Again, people ask, “Why does God not just make us love Him and embrace the good?” Would that not destroy our freedom? Would that not destroy our intrinsic worth? Would that not actually replace real love with robotic devotion? Is that love or puppetmastery?
No, God gave us the freedom to reject Him, and in the greatest tragedy of the cosmos we have. In doing so our Nature has corrupted, so that each new human that comes along has this darkness inside their core, tarnishing the image of God in which we had been created. Here is the judgement, not God walking away from us but us walking away from Him, wandering off into the Abyss under our own power because the tares in our souls choke out the wheat that is supposed to be there. Yet in His love for us, His selfless love, He has given us a way to reverse course, to combat the Corruption, to fasten back upon the Light and to commune with Him as He indwells us.
Christ died for us.
God the Word, the eternally begotten Son of the Father did not simply assume a body, but took on Our Nature by being born into this corrupt system. He took and rebuilt it and redeemed it and offered it back to us, free of the taint of corruption. In assuming freely this new Nature, we allow it to infiltrate us and to grow, not just in us but around us, like a mustard seed or a clump of yeast. In giving our all for it, we grow into the selfless love that is at the core of the Godhead, and that love spills out all around us. In allowing these things, we transform from the prideful, selfish creatures that reject and run from God into the selfless, humble creatures that truly reflect the image of the God who created us.
Here we can easily echo the disciples in asking, “Who then can be saved?”[8], but Our Lord reminds us that with God, anything is possible.[9] In this life God the Holy Spirit is our constant companion. The Spirit constantly whispers to each of us, telling us that there is another way, that so much pain and death is not the only answer. If we pay heed and let the whispers take root, like a mustard seed, like a grain of wheat, they begin to supplant the toxic weeds sown in us by our pride and the Enemy’s guile. If we begin to clear the ground, give the Word a place to grow, then it begins to make headway. If we submit and accept the free gift of a new nature, then the Kingdom of God begins to take hold within us. If we spend the time and the effort and pay the price of letting go of the culture of the Kingdom of this Age, then the Kingdom of God is ours. What can compete with that?
✠ Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Holy Dominic, and all the saints, Saviour save us. Amen.
[1] Mt. 13.31-33, 44-52 [2] The pun is an adaptation from a Muppet skit about rectangles. (PBS, “Kermit’s Lecture about Rectangles”, Sesame Street, season 1, episode 17, December 2, 1969) [3] Mt. 13.1-23 [4] Mt. 13.24-30, 36-43 [5] Mt. chh. 5-8 [6] Mt. chh. 9-12 [7] Mt. 5.3,5 [8] Mt. 19.25 [9] Mt. 19.26