Monday, July 25, 2011

The Kingdom of Heaven is Like...

I did something a little different on Sunday, the gospel was read during the sermon.  I wanted to start by asking people what they would compare heaven to, but I didn't want them to flip ahead in order to find the "right" answer as in what the gospel said.  So I asked my question first, got a few answer - clouds, a field of daisies, the ocean - and then I read the gospel, Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52.  


Enjoy!


What would you compare heaven to?  Is it something small like a pebble or a grain of sand?  Or is even smaller, microscopic like a cell or an atom?  Maybe you would compare heaven to something big like an elephant or a house, or even bigger like the whole earth or the universe?  Maybe heaven is like something that is priceless, the Hope Diamond or a Picasso painting.  Maybe heaven is like something ordinary, a comfortable old t-shirt or a blade of grass.  Maybe heaven is like something we completely understand like how a car operates.  Or maybe heaven is like something you don’t understand at all and just rely on, like quantum mechanics.  What would you compare heaven to? 


Jesus compares heaven to five things in our gospel today, five entirely unrelated things: a mustard seed that someone sowed, yeast that a woman mixed with flour to make bread, treasure hidden in a field, a pearl of great value and a net full of fish.  And yet none of these parables really help us truly understand heaven.  They all just give us little glimpses at what heaven is like but in no way does it tell the entire story. 

And for us modern listeners they are even harder to figure out the meaning.  Most of us have never sown a mustard seed or seen a mustard bush.  Few of us work with yeast or know what a measure of flour is (by the way a measure is about 20 pounds of flour, so the woman was making A LOT of bread).  We don’t understand why there would a treasure buried in a field.  And if we go fishing it is most likely with a pole not a net.  The only one of these examples about heaven we get is the pearl, but even then we don’t realize that in Jesus’ day pearls were sometimes more valuable than gold. 

But Jesus was speaking to his followers in the year 30 not the year 2011.  So maybe we can find a few more modern examples. 

If Jesus was speaking to us today maybe he would say that heaven is like a small netbook computer.  On its own it has some value, but when connected to the internet it is part of a powerful network that can expand mind with more knowledge than you can imagine and connect you to people throughout the world.

Or heaven is like a person who was flipping through the channels on a television and came across a movie that was so inspiring that it changed her life.

Or heaven is like a classic car collector when finding a 1961 Ferrari GT in mint condition sold all that he had in order to buy that car. 

Or heaven is like walking into an air conditioned building on a hot humid summer day. 

Whatever it is that Jesus compared to heaven, you know for us modern listeners he would not use a seed, yeast, a buried treasure, a pearl and a net.  Jesus would use the things that are familiar to us, television, computers, cell phones, air conditioners, books, artwork, planes, trains and automobiles. 

Yes Jesus was giving his listeners a glimpse into what heaven is like by comparing it to everyday objects.  Jesus was opening up new ways for the people of his day to understand the scriptures, to understand God’s word.  And scripture is still being opened to us. 

We believe in a living word, one that is not stagnate, one that is as true for us today as it was for the original hearers two thousand or more years ago.   God’s word, God’s love is constantly being transformed in our lives. 

This is why I asked you what you would compare heaven to before we heard today’s gospel, so that you have your own example, your own parable for the kingdom of heaven.  And you are able to have your own parable because scripture is constantly being made new. 

Jesus finishes these five parables that we heard today, which are actually part of series of seven parables that we have heard over the last few weeks by one last parable.  Only this last parable doesn’t compare the kingdom of heaven to something but scribes who have been trained for the kingdom of heaven.  And he says that a scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a household who takes out of his treasure what is new and what is old.

When you are showing off a collection that you have, normally people show off one of their oldest items, one that they have had the longest amount of time or one of the first items that has great meaning to them, and they also show off one of the newest items, one of the most recent additions to the collection.  So we as scribes who have been trained for the kingdom of heaven are to use both old scripture, the bible, and the new living word, what that means for us in our lives today. 

It is wonderful if you can someone all about why a mustard seed is like heaven in this parable or all the interesting facts about a woman making sixty pounds of bread at once, but if you can’t relate that to your life today, you are not talking about faith but about biblical studies.  Biblical studies along does not produce faith in others, but being able to understand and explain to others why it pertains to your life today, that builds faith both in yourself and others. 

We are surrounded by heaven, both literally and figuratively.  Heaven is in seeds, and yeast, and buried treasure and pearls and nets and heaven is in television, and computers, and cell phones, and air conditioners, and books, and artwork, and planes, trains and automobiles.  Heaven is here with people that we love, heaven is here with friends and family and fellow believers in Christ.  And all those things can be examples, parables, of how to explain heaven to others. Heaven is in finding new ways of interpreting old scriptures.  Heaven is in finding new examples, new ways, of explaining to others about faith in terms they can relate to.  

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