THE APOSTLES’ CREED:

LIVING AS IF

MATTHEW 13: 31-33, 44-52

AUGUST 3, 2008

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

A Sermon by: Jim Roberts

Our lesson from the Gospel of Matthew is a series of parables related by their depictions of life under God’s new reign as proclaimed by Jesus.  All of these brief parables depict situations in which individuals engage in common practices that aren’t extraordinary in any way.  These common practices, however, become uncommon in the results they produce.  The common theme among this series of parables is the surprise of the unexpected in the midst of everyday tasks.

            Listen as we read from the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, and hear from the traditions of old a new word for today.

  He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field;  it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the

air come and make nests in its branches.”

 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

 [Actually, the Greek word the NRSV translated as “mixed,” translates literally “hid.”  Since there are other common terms for “mix” or “knead,” we can assume that “hid” was used intentionally by Matthew to convey the point Jesus was making.  So, let’s read the verse again using “hid” instead of “mixed in.”

  He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

                 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

                “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls;  on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

                “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.  So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

                “Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.”

 And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

Let us pray.

We seek to understand your will, O God: to know what’s so valuable in life that it’s worth all we have and all we are. Grant us discernment to see you at work for good even when events around us seem evil. Nourish us in your Word and set our hearts free to rejoice in Christ’s way. Amen.

             The noteworthy Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher, Teilhard de Chardin, once said: “The great mystery of Christianity is not exactly the appearance, but the transparence, of God in the universe!” and how true that it. According to Jesus’ parables, God’s presence pervades the world around us, but yet that Presence goes, for the most part, unnoticed. It’s like God is hidden from us. Or is it that we’ve blinded or desensitized ourselves to God’s presence among us?

            Professor Glenn Hinson suggests that Jesus intended to underscore how even we who believe shut our eyes and plug our ears to God’s invasion of every facet of our lives. To see and hear God’s presence, “we must tune in,” he says.  We must begin to look at the world through a different set of lenses.

            That’s why Jesus told parables that use everyday, common experiences to awaken us to God’s presence. He was, and still is, trying to get his disciples to learn how to see and to listen by paying attention to common, living parables all around them. By telling parables, Jesus is demonstrating the truth of Psalm 19:1: “The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament (the earth) proclaims his handiwork.” Nature itself provides us an opportunity to see and experience God’s presence. God has built into all of creation a reflection of the Divine presence everywhere, and if we look and listen carefully, there’s a story about God in everything we see.

            In the gospels, Jesus frequently concludes his teachings with the words, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” He quoted Isaiah in 13:16 regarding those who reject his teaching, “For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn—and I would heal them.” Then he says to his disciples, “But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.”   Those disciples may not have had perfect vision and hearing, but they could see and hear well enough to know to follow Jesus, because they did see God in him. To experience the kingdom of God, we must look with our eyes, listen with our ears, and understand with our heart; otherwise, the kingdom is a transparent reality.

            Barbara Brown Taylor talks about revelation, God’s self-disclosure, revealing himself to us. She describes our experience of recognizing God’s revelation as imagination, that every act of faith is an act of imagination.

            Taylor explains that there are Native Americans who call this imagination, faith, “looking twice” at the world.             Isn’t that a marvelous way of describing how we recognize God among us—looking twice. Once isn’t enough, because we have to tune in, and that takes a second, more           intentional look at the world we live in. That second look reaches deep into the imagination where faith dwells, and there we discover a more profound reality—a reality seldom seen by the casual first look. It’s the reality of God’s reign that permeates all of creation. This morning Jesus is inviting us to look twice so that we will recognize God’s presence in our own lives, in others, and in the world we live in.

            When Jesus speaks of the kingdom, or reign of God, he’s not referring to life after death. I’m not saying that he doesn’t ever address our eternal life with God, but that he uses this particular term as a way of talking about life in the here in now, life lived in the present reality of God’s reign here among us. This is life lived “as if”—as if God is already fully in control of the world, as if sin and death and darkness are gone from the face of the earth. He’s speaking to us, his church, his disciples. He’s calling us to be the “as if” people—the kingdom people—the one’s living as if God’s wholeness and truth and justice are already realized.

            This sounds a lot like living in denial, doesn’t it? The pragmatist would say, “Oh, this isn’t practical!” I mean, after all, there’s suffering in this world—people dying of diseases; people being maimed and killed in wars; people being mistreated by others, and there’s not a thing they can do about it; there’s greedy people wasting their blessings, while there are poor and helpless people starving and naked and diseased. How can we talk about living as if God reigns when there’s so much wrong, so much injustice, so much suffering?

            Jesus is telling us that those living—as if there is no God, as if they rule their little part of the universe, as if there is no justice—these are the ones living in denial!

            Jesus tells us to look twice and see the reign of God! Like the farmer plowing a field and the merchant in search of fine pearls, when we see and recognize the treasure of God’s reign hidden in this old world, it’s worth selling all we have, setting aside all of those things that distract us from what God is doing in the world, and buying or taking hold of that reality that connects us to God and what God has determined to be of ultimate importance in life.

            Maxie Dunham tells the story about William Randolph Hearst, the famous newspaper mogul, viewing a print of a painting. He wanted that painting and hired a detective to look for the original. When the detective returned, he had some pretty interesting news. He had found the painting, but he had found it in one of Hearst’s own warehouses! So often we look desperately for God, only to discover that God has always been present in the warehouses of our own experience.

            It’s like yeast hidden in heaps of flour. No one knows it’s there until it has done its work and leavened the whole batch to make wonderful loaves of bread. I think that parable is also telling us that   the reign of God is hidden from those who prefer to live in denial until all of a sudden God’s time has arrived and his reign will not go unnoticed or unheeded ever again.

            It’s like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind.

The good fish are kept, but the bad ones are thrown out. It may seem like evil rules and injustice will reign unbridled, but there will come the time when evil will no longer invade and corrupt that which is good. As Revelation 22:3 says regarding the new creation, when God’s reign is made complete, “Nothing accursed will be found there any more.”

            Friends, have faith, look twice at the world around you… every day. You will find God in the midst of your ordinary living. Then you can hide God’s holy presence in the ordinary stuff of which you and this world are made, and the Spirit of God will leaven the loaf so that the bread of abundant life is made visible to everyone. It’s when we live as if God’s reign is a present reality in our lives that the reign of God becomes a visible reality to the world.

            It’s not our worry as to whether the world accepts it or not. It’s simply up to us to make it visible in our lives, to become parables, living parables, of the kingdom of heaven ourselves. God has taken care of everything else in Jesus Christ; and he shall reign forever and ever. Hallelujah! Amen!p class="MsoNormal">