+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Every time I read that passage from Matthew’s Gospel I wonder if the disciples’ response—“Yes, we understood all that!”—was actually true or not. My hunch is that they were lying, because they were lost but too proud to admit it, though maybe that’s just my projection. They must have eventually come to understand, though, because they did even more than “sell all they had” for the pearl of great price; all but John literally died for the Gospel, and he was exiled for it.
But they can be forgiven if they were incapable of understanding, if not for lying about it, because there is an awful lot going on in these quickfire parables. Unlike the Gospel lessons from last week and the week before, Jesus does not explain them to the disciples later. A lot of modern biblical scholars will suggest that here Matthew is acting as a redactor, following the more fully fleshed out parables with other sayings of Jesus which he didn’t know where to place as a sort of addendum. I have a suspicion, though, that Jesus was intentionally using rhetorical parallelism to bring his first period of teaching to a close, to punctuate it. The time is growing short, and he takes the opportunity to slip in some critical instruction the point of which the disciples would only later come to grasp. We do get more parables later in Matthew’s Gospel, but there is a shift in the narrative here at the end of chapter 13. The story moves to Herod killing John the Baptist and Jesus performing miracles, a decisive shift in his ministry which brings him ever closer to Calvary.
So, enough about rhetoric and narrative structure. What is the point he’s making? Well, I think it’s actually at least two points.
First: the Kingdom is a valuable treasure. Notice what the real estate speculator and the pearl merchant do. They don’t take out a bank loan at a favorable interest rate. They don’t leverage some of their investments. They sell everything that they have. What if it’s a fake pearl or fools’ gold? This is not a wise investment! But they have faith, and they will have the Kingdom. The apostles were tortured and killed, and for what? To the world it looked like folly. They were killed all the day long, regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. But Paul assures us in today’s Epistle, that they were more than conquerors, because nothing could separate them (nothing can separate us) from God’s love.
The second point, which I think the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven highlight, is that a small and unassuming faith not only leads to big things, but to life sustaining gifts, not just for the one with that little bit of faith, but for all whom we share this pilgrim journey. The birds of the air find their home in the great shrub grown from the tiny seed. And whether or not you like mustard (I love it!) it was important and valuable in the ancient world. It’s wasn’t limited to a little French’s yellow on your hot dog or some Grey Poupon in your vinaigrette. Mustard shows up in twelve-thousand year old seed cakes in Syria and in Egyptian tombs. It was easier to get than salt or pepper, and it masked the taste of meat that had gone a little off (which was most meat in the ancient world).
Most striking to me, though, was something I found in one of my research rabbit holes this week. The Talmud, the collection of Jewish Oral History finalized in the Late Classical and Early Medieval periods contains material stretching back to before Jesus’ time. In that tradition’s version of Abraham’s hospitality (depicted in that icon), guess what he and Sarah served the three angels… tongue in mustard sauce. It’s uncertain whether this particular story predates Jesus, that he would have heard it, but it’s possible, and perhaps part of the point is that the blessing of the Kingdom are so abundant that we should be ready at all times to share that bounty with others.
As for the bread-maker, don’t imagine a packet of Fleischmann’s yeast. She would have used a little lump of old, nasty fermented bread (like an ancient sourdough starter, but not as high-flown as the stuff used by hipster artisan bakers). And she’s mixing it into three measures of flour. That’s about 40 liters in volume or fifty pounds in weight. Once the leaven has done its work, the amount of bread would fill your bathtub three quarters of the way full. Too much bread for the woman. Might as well share.
So, the Kingdom is worth everything and it has the capacity to grow exponentially. Are we treating it that way. Are we refusing to invest all that we have (physically, spiritually, materially) and seeing what great things God can do? Well, we all are, myself included. I know I need to step out in faith more, put my trust in God more, place those things I hold most dear (my reputation, my comfort, my time, my treasure) on the line more readily than I do.
The good news is that every time I take a little step (in prayer, in action, in giving) the results are gratuitously generous in blessing. I promise this is not a prosperity Gospel, Joel Osteen style sermon. Those who fleece the sheep should go to prison for a while, and frequently they do. What I’m trying to say is that anything we dedicate to God in terms of time, talent, and treasure, through whatever means (via the church or on one’s own) is an act of faith. Only a mustard seed is required, but the more we dedicate our lives to Christ, the richer are the blessings of happiness and contentment in this life as we await the final reward which we’ll all share when the Kingdom comes in its fullness.
It is in that Kingdom where the hidden treasure will truly be found, where the pearl will be obtained, where we may dwell with the birds upon the branches of divine teaching, where we may eat the bread which will always satisfy. But even now, we may at times enjoy that life in spirit and in truth so long as our hope is set where it belongs. Having been instructed in the way of faith we are as scribes trained for the kingdom of heaven, being made wiser in householding than even Solomon himself. And we have been given even greater treasures. For, as Origen of Alexandria wrote:
One who is truly such a householder is both free and rich. He is rich because from the office of the scribe he has been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven, in every word of the Old Testament and in all knowledge concerning the new teaching of Christ Jesus. He has these riches laid up in his own treasure house—in heaven, in which he stores his treasure as one who has been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven. There neither moth consumes nor thieves break through and steal. For the one who has such treasures laid up in heaven, not one moth of inordinate passions can touch his spiritual and heavenly possessions.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.