Pentecost 11 A Matt 13:31-52

The kingdom of God is like....In our lesson today we get a series tiny, quick, short, little parables from Jesus, all describing different things about the kingdom of God. Little, short notes about what God is and does and how God works. If you were to update them a bit they might go like this:

What is impressive to you? What is a mystery to you?

For people in Jesus' time it was the mustard seed. But it seems a lot harder to answer that question today than it was back then. Jesus talks about how tiny a mustard seed is but with modern science we can see things that are millions of times tinier. We can almost map everything about us that makes us human. Our DNA, little variations in DNA, how they work, what they do.

There used to be a phrase that people used about how many angels could fit on the head of a pin. This was a great mystery and a great feat of God for people. We know now that all the things that make a human can fit on the head of pin. One cell that carries the map of who we are. Several cells dividing in a womb that if they continue to divide will be a person someday, can fit on the head of a pin. Something so tiny that you almost have to imagine because you can't see it. Certainly a thing that you have to imagine growing and working and changing because you can't see it and you won't even see their results for a very long time.

Jesus says the kingdom of God is like that. Like something so tiny that you could over look it or that you can't even see at first. Like a seed that you put in the ground and forget about. But it grows. It becomes a living thing, it dictates it's own direction and has it's own needs and value.

Next: What is a mystery to you. Again with modern science we know so much about how so many things work. For Jesus a mystery was a woman making bread, yeast was both mysterious and rather treacherous or dangerous seeming to people in Jesus' time. So the woman hides some leaven in flour and puts it aside and before you know it there is a loaf, there is food to eat, there is the warm smell of bread baking. There is fellowship for the family around this fresh homemade loaf.

Maybe this doesn't need updated even though we know know how yeast works. Bread is bread, we still have to eat to survive and after all these years bread is the most basic and essential part of our diet. And it is still amazing how adding just a little life, yeast is living in a sense, I was always mystified as a small child by how the little grains of yeast would jump around just a tiny bit and cling to the spoons and other cooking utensils. You add just this little bit of life to flour, maybe with a little sugar or salt and water and just like the seed you forget about it for a while. It is hidden and a mystery, you leave it alone but then before you know it everything about the flour has changed. It has become something new, all of it's own, unlike anything else.

The Kingdom of God is like this. So very everyday but a mystery that carries with it the very basic necessities of life and can transform us completely.

Next: 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. Or the Kingdom is like a very, very expensive pearl that a merchant sells everything he has in order to be able to buy.

Ah treasure and the Pearl. I'm not sure that these need to be updated either. We are in quite the credit crisis in America right now because too many people have felt this way about too many things. People have been willing to bet the farm, so to speak, to go into great debt, spend their lives paying on certain things. Houses are the major part of this equation. The need to provide, to have a safe, reasonable place for the family to live has caused people to promise all that they will make working for many, many years. But with many people it has gone farther than this, a new car, new furniture, the newest and best television, expensive recreational equipment, the best decorative items, from fancy antique spittoons to famous works of art. It is like they are controlled by a desire to have these things. Like they are willing to put their whole lives on the line just in order to posses these things. Like they would sell everything they owned, forsake everything else to own a field where this great treasure is buried. Like these things have taken possession of them.

This is how the kingdom of God is, we pursue it and pursue it and pursue it. We want to have God, we want to know God, we want to control God, we want to tell God what to do and what we need. But at some point we finally realize that we don't posses the treasure. It possess us. This is how the kingdom of God works.

I have a parable of my own to add to this. It might be blasphemous to say that the kingdom of God is like the TV series Lost but it seems to fit right in with the things that Jesus is saying.

I don't know how many of you watch Lost but it is about a magical island. It really doesn't seem so hokey until you say that out loud but yes, a magical island. An island where a plane crash lands. And the island provides for the survivors of this crash everything that they need. Food, shelter, companionship, even healing, the magic of the island can make the lame walk and the sick well. That is the seed or yeast bit of the parable. The people who have crashed don't know how the island works. It is small and mysterious, even scary to them but it becomes their whole world. It provides them with every need and it's influence on them grows and grows like yeast or a seed. But the tension in the show comes from people on the outside who know the very thing about this island that is such a mysterious surprise to the survivors of the plane crash. They know that stumbling upon the island is like coming across a great treasure when plowing a field. And so they give up all they have, they sell the things they own, they devote all of their resources to possessing the island. It becomes an obsession and a competition to them. They have seen how it seems so innocent and natural but it contains the power of life. And so nothing else in the world matters as much as to them as having that island.

Now the series isn't over yet and I don't know how it will end but here is the thing, here is how the Kingdom of God is different from Lost, or from a beautiful pearl or from a field with buried treasure. The kingdom of God is a free gift to all of us. We can't buy it nor can we possess it but we can live as part of it and invite as many people as we choose to it and there will always be room. It doesn't need to be hidden and it can't be bought. But it will provide us with more good things, more things like healing, like sustainence, like fellowship, even like warm, wonderful, life sustaining bread, or tiny seeds producing lovely nourishing plants than anything else we will ever come across.

And we can't own it no matter how hard we try because it already owns each and every one or us. It already knows each of our names and calls to us.

The kingdom of God, the kingdom that possesses us in spite of all the work that we try to do to possess it, isn't just an island somewhere that we happened upon or that a few elite people are fighting over. It is everywhere in all time, opening it's doors to us, growing and changing, providing us with mystery and awe, riches and joy and eternal union with God and one another.

Thank God that the kingdom is not a treasure buried in a field or a seed hidden in the ground but rather a free gift in the Holy Spirit all around us. Amen