Kingdom

Propers: The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 17), A.D. 2017 A

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed sown in field. It is like a pinch of yeast mixed into a large batch of dough.

These are striking images involving something infinitesimally small that radically transforms, and even overthrows, everything else around it, like a virus, like a plague that begins with a single person and explodes throughout the world. And like a virus, the tiny things of which Jesus here speaks are generally unwanted.

Mustard, for example, is a weed. Judaism has traditionally considered it an unclean plant. It begins with the tiniest of seeds—75 thousandths of an inch in diameter—yet it grows chaotically, taking over the garden, refusing to be contained. And if left unchecked, that mustard plant can grow up to be as tall six, 12, even 15 feet high. That’s not a shrub; that’s a tree. It’ll take over the garden. It’ll take over the whole bloody field.

Likewise the yeast. In biblical times a pinch of risen dough would be set aside and allowed to go bad. Yeast is a fungus, after all. And then this little nubbin of fungus would be mixed into fresh dough to provide the leaven for a new batch. Jesus speaks of “three measures” of flour, which is something like 50 pounds, being entirely leavened by a little pinch of yeast. In other words a great mass of good, fresh bread is made possible by just a smidgen of corruption.

In both instances something tiny and unwanted—something small and unclean—spreads throughout the world around it, overthrowing the established order, yet providing sustenance and shelter for those who are in need. And this, He says, is what the Kingdom of God is like! Small. Dirty. Unstoppable. And so it has proven throughout the centuries.

Whenever the Church has seemed small, weak, unwanted, destined for destruction, it is precisely then that she has spread most vigorously, and in unexpected directions. She takes over her enemies like a virus, like a weed in a field, like a fungus in the dough, transforming, remaking, claiming them as her own. So it was with Greece and Rome; so it was with the barbarians, the Teutons and Celts and Slavs; so it was with the peoples of the global South; and so it is today with churches growing silently, inexorably, in China and Iran and all those parts of the world where Christ is seen as a disease, a fungus, an unwanted weed.

Still His Kingdom grows, silently, softly, reaching into every nook and crevice, and into every human heart, spreading like mold behind the wall, like fire through the brush. And He keeps on cropping up suddenly, abruptly, providing sustenance and shelter where we least expect to find Him. We buried Him in the earth like a seed, like a pinch of yeast in the dough. And see how He continues to rise, and to raise up everything and everyone around Him as does.

He goes on. The Kingdom is like a treasure hidden in the field, unbidden, unearned, yet discovered as a gift, a pure act of grace. The Kingdom is like a pearl of great price, which once found shines more brightly and more purely than anything else we could ever desire or possess. And the Kingdom of God is like a net that reaches deep into the waters of this world and draws forth from them everything, every fish, every species, every type and kind and class, and gathers us all into one, pulling us up, pulling us out of this fallen world, out from the waters of chaos and despair.

And yes, there are good fish. And yes, there are bad. And the angels will sort us according to our type. But we are all gathered up into the one net. We are all brought together into a singular body, the Body of Christ, the Kingdom of God here made flesh. And He claims us all, the good and the bad, and none He excludes from His Kingdom, none He refuses to gather nor leave them behind.

And so the sorting, I think, must be for our good. For the God made known in Jesus Christ does not punish out of vengeance or spite, nor for some implacable divine justice too far removed from human need to be anything short of a horror. But rather, God punishes for correction, as a father punishes the wayward children whom he loves, that we may be brought to something higher, to a greater love, to the glory of our Father’s Kingdom. We must always trust that in both His justice and His mercy our God is good, and our God is for us.

For indeed the Scriptures say that God did not create death, let alone eternal death. It was not made good in the beginning. Rather, Jesus promises that it is the will of His Father in Heaven that not even one of His little ones be lost. And in the end, we trust and pray, “Thy will be done.”

You see, for Him, we are the treasure in the field. We are the pearl that is more valuable than anything else He would want or possess. It is for us that God is willing to humble Himself, to empty Himself, becoming the seed of an unwanted weed. It is for us that God allows Himself to be cast aside, pinched off from the living, murdered beyond the walls of the city, and buried deep within the earth—that He might rise again, and not just Himself, but raise up all the world around Him, all the dead from out their graves. He is the yeast who has become our bread.

For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom He predestined He also called; and those whom He called He also justified; and those whom he justified He also glorified. What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold His only Son, but gave Him up for all of us, will He not with Him also give us everything else? ...

Who then will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … No! … 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 of Creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That, my brothers and sisters, is the Kingdom of God.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.