I wonder what you
make of Jesus' parables? Some of us will be very familiar with them; some of
us, coming to them for the first time. Some of us, I imagine, find them
confusing; may even have given up attempting to understand them: as if they
were a treasure chest left unopened. Others of us, I imagine, are so sure that
we know their meaning, they no longer surprise and delight us: as if they were
a treasure chest of old treasure but not treasures old and new.
I love Jesus'
parables. They are brilliant, like bright light that reveals one moment and
blinds the next. And how else to describe something that is beyond description;
that cannot be contained by our understanding? Let us look, then, at these
parables of the Kingdom of Heaven, of the nature of God's reign in the world.
Our first parable
describes the Kingdom of Heaven as being like treasure hidden in a field. Who
would have such treasure? A king. Why do kings hide treasure? For fear that it
might be taken, when the kingdom is under threat. When David flees Jerusalem
before Absalom's rebellion, perhaps; or when Sennacherib threatens Jerusalem
during Hezekiah's reign; or when Nebuchadnezzar carried Zedekiah's court into
Exile, taking whatever treasure he could find.
In any event, a king
has fallen, his treasure has not been reclaimed, and appears to have been
forgotten...until at a later time it is discovered. By whom? A treasure-hunter?
Someone who had heard rumours of a buried treasure? Or entirely by chance?
Either way, they have received what had been intended for someone else, for the
king's heir. That might be considered great luck. It might, of course, make
them subject to great envy, the resentment of others. Still, it costs them
everything to buy the field; and there will be no going back to their old life.
Our second parable
describes the Kingdom of Heaven as being like a merchant. Not, the Kingdom of
Heaven is a fine pearl. This is not a different version of the first parable:
it is the absolute opposite. This time, the Kingdom is the one searching. And
the Kingdom finds something that it does not possess, but values. The merchant
gives everything to have it, vast resources for one thing. Now he has nothing
left to trade: his life as a merchant is over. Does this perhaps reveal the way
God views us, our incomparable worth in his eyes?
Our third parable
describes the Kingdom of Heaven as a fisherman's net. Fish are caught in it,
pulled from their lives with violence, and those not fit for consumption are
thrown on a fire. The temptation is to read this parable as describing
judgement for the 'bad' and reward for the 'good.' But, what happens to the
good fish? They get put on a fire too: they are cooked, and eaten - for
breakfast on the shore, or kept aside for a small boy's packed lunch...
This is not a parable
of judgement and reward. It is a parable that reveals to us that it is a
cataclysmic event to be caught up in the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever the
outcome, there is no going back to life as it has been up to this point. That
life is over. The fish caught in the net cannot return to swimming in the lake.
Jesus asks his
disciples, "Do you understand?" And they reply, "Yes." But,
do we?
The Kingdom of Heaven
is too big to contain, to pin down. Its breaking-in puts an end to one life:
whether that of the person who finds treasure, or of the merchant who finds a
pearl, or of the fish. Everything changes.
Today we remember the
life of Benedict Biscop, patron saint of Sunderland. Benedict grew up in
privilege, his life as an Anglo-Saxon nobleman within the Northumbrian court
mapped out for him. But at some point, he is caught up in the Kingdom of
Heaven, and from that moment, that life is over and he cannot go back. Instead,
he goes on a great and challenging adventure, collecting treasures old and new
- not to keep for himself, but with which to bless others.
Benedict brings back
from his journeys a new, choral, form of music; architecture; coloured glass.
He establishes the Great Library. Within his monastery a new form of art will
be developed: the Illuminated Medieval style, a fusion of several earlier
styles - treasures old and new.
And then it is
completely destroyed by Viking raiders. Anything that survived did so by being
'hidden,' either intentionally by the monks or, as with the Wearmouth Bibles,
because they had been sent elsewhere as gifts. All is forgotten. The Codex
Amiatinus, the oldest complete Latin Bible in existence, made here in
Sunderland, was rediscovered eleven centuries later.
What does this tell
us of what God has done?
There are those who
live as if God does not exist. Fish in the lake, oblivious of the net. A pearl,
unknowing of the merchant. They simply do not know. Yet God moves to find them:
discovers their ways, pursues them. Will spend all night out on the dark lake,
will search every corner of the marketplace to claim them from another owner.
There are those who
live in hostility towards God. Kings assaulting his Kingdom, to topple God's
reputation and obliterate his name from history. Yet God moves to confound
them: hides evidence in unexpected places, allows his riches to fall into the
hands of those who do not try to prise his hands open.
The Kingdom of Heaven
breaks in to our lives in longed for and un-looked for ways, in welcome and
unwelcome ways. It breaks in, relentlessly. And when it does, once we have been
caught up by it, there is no going back. Only a new going forward, according to
the ways of the Kingdom.
