Some thoughts for the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time and Jesus' Shocking Domesticated Short Stories

One of my favourite authors is N.T. Wright. He says rather than escaping Earth and going to heaven when we die, the ultimate goal of the biblical story is God bringing heaven and earth together in a renewed physical creation. We need to keep this in mind while we read our readings from Matthew and Romans.

In our gospel reading this week from Matthew (13:31-33, 44-52) Jesus is continuing helping people grasp what he means by the “kingdom of heaven”. He is not talking about what happens when we die. This is about this life now. It is what we pray for every time we pray the Lord’s prayers “God’s will is done on earth as in heaven.” It is when all the dishonesty, rivalry, deceit, dysfunction, misogyny and injustice at work in the story of Laban, Jacob, Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah (Genesis 29) is replaced with God’s way of justice, hope, and generosity. As Paul writes to the Romans, when all that the Spirit of God longs for, groaning with creation in anticipation of, comes to be, and love comes to town (as B.B. King put it).

That is what Jesus is trying to describe in this scatter-gun collection of parables using images from the lives of many of who are listening, We are so used to these images we often see them as comforting moral tales. Amy Jill Levine suggests they are often absurd, provocative, disturbing short stories that invites all who hear them, then and now , to see the reign of God in the world in some very new and surprising ways. Stories of seed scattered willy-nilly, weeds sowed amongst a good crop, weedy mustard seeds deliberately sown, yeast hidden in unleavened four, treasure hidden by one and found by another who sells all he has to have it, a merchant seeking and finding fine pearls, and drag-netting. All these contradictory images help us his hearers know where to look for the kingdom, to know when we are experiencing the kingdom happening around us and in us.

I am left wondering where we see ourselves in these stories. Are we the good soil, good seed, weedy seed, weedy mustard seed, yeast hidden, treasure, a fine pearl, or fish of some kind? Or are we the ones sowing, hiding, farming, searching, fishing? And I wonder what images and similes we would use to describe our experience of the reign of God?

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