Ordinary and Extraordinary

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday July 27, 2008, the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time.

Genesis 29:15-28
Psalm 128
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

In 1991, a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode named “Darmok”[1] introduced a new and different language structure to Trekkies[2] everywhere. The crew of the Enterprise meets a species of humanoids named the Tamarians. While everyone speaks English well enough to understand the words, the syntax of the Tamarian language is just so much gibberish to the crew of the Enterprise, and vice versa. Great dialogue like, “Darmok, and Jalad at Tanagra!” “Shaka, when the walls fell,” and “Darmok, and Jalad on the ocean!” stupefied our heroes.

What was just a little too dumbed-down for my taste is that it took a crew of rocket scientists over half an episode to figure out what I did as soon as the first Tamarian opened his mouth—and you figured out as soon as I said “Darmok, and Jalad at Tanagra”— these people spoke in figures of speech. Metaphors and parables are the basics of their language and culture; idioms which have absolutely no meaning to us.

So when the crew finally figures out how the Tamarians are trying to communicate, they realize that they have no idea what they are trying to say, even though they understand all of the words. This demonstrates the inherent difficulty with parable, metaphor, and allegory; without common reference, the message is lost.

Shoot, if you have any question at all about this conclusion, you don’t have to go any further than my illustration. Unless I gave you enough background information to make the connection or you know the lore of Star Trek, then I’ve just made my own point by giving you a useless illustration.

This reading from Matthew introduces us to five more images of the Kingdom of Heaven to go with last week’s. These images are given to us as parables, similes, forms of speech which open the mind in different ways. These forms of speech take ordinary words and twist them and recast them into extraordinary images.

Our reading uses five images common in the day Jesus told them to illustrate the kingdom of heaven; the so-called parables of mustard seed, leaven, treasure, pearl, and fish. All of these were a part of ordinary life when these parables were spoken. But in the hands of the almighty, they become extraordinary things.

Our reading begins with two images of the kingdom of heaven Jesus shares with the crowd. The tiny seed, the mustard seed, becomes a plant big enough to support life. A pinch of yeast is folded into three measures, that’s seventy pounds[3] to you and me, where it works until the entire batch is leavened. Commentaries say these are tales of growth, teaching stories[4] which tell us how the kingdom of Heaven will encompass all that ever has been, all that ever will be.

These are also stories of faith. These stories do not teach us what to do or how to be the people of God. These are stories of the nature of God and creation. These are stories of how the kingdom of heaven is like the natural way of life. The mustard seed is planted, and it grows. Just a bit of leaven is added to a huge amount of flour and it all rises. This doesn’t happen because of anything we do. It is a matter of the way things happen in God’s good creation.

But these parables have a strangeness in them. After all, the mustard seed wasn’t the smallest known seed. Even in Jesus’ time the orchid seed was known to be smaller than the mustard. And as an annual, one that had to be planted every growing season, it isn’t even a tree. Even stranger, the use of leavened bread in holy sacrifice was absolutely prohibited.

What we have come to accept as symbols of growth would have been dramatic puzzles in the time when they were told. A mustard seed can’t produce a tree, how can it be like the kingdom of heaven? Leavened bread cannot be holy, how can it be like the kingdom of heaven? These questions don’t occur to us because we have heard these parables over and over again for two thousand years, but in their day, they were scandalous.

These parables weren’t written to encourage the church to be all it could be. These stories were told to the people assembled at the lake shore to shake up their image of kingdom of heaven. Reminding them the growth of the kingdom of heaven is the Lord’s work, not theirs.

Still the Lord calls us to pay attention to our vocation. A farmer plants the seed. A woman kneads the dough which the leaven permeates the flour. Yes, we are called to participate in the work of the kingdom of Heaven, but the work of growth itself is the Lord’s.

Our reading then shifts to Jesus alone with his apostles. The parables of the treasure, the pearl, and the fish teach the disciples more lessons. Traditionally, these parables are decoded as human response to the kingdom of Heaven, but I am not so sure.

The apostles are told that the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure found in a field, and when discovered, the finder sells everything to purchase the field. The traditional interpretation is that humanity is the finder and treasure alone is the kingdom. This is pretty straight forward. But what if, instead of just one element of the parable, the treasure, is like the kingdom; we look at the whole phrase as being like the kingdom of heaven.

“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.” What happens when we plug into the code that God the Father is the one who finds the treasure and pays the great price to redeem it? Instead of teaching our response to the kingdom, we learn of God’s faithful actions toward the treasure of creation. We have been redeemed; we have been purchased for a great price.

Likewise, when we talk of the pearl of great price, traditional interpretation breaks this down so that it seems to reiterate the parable of the treasure in the field, noting our faithful response to the gospel. But a closer look reveals that this parable is not about the pearl, it is about the merchant.

In this parable, the kingdom is not like the pearl, “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls.” So it does reiterate the words of the prior parable, but it reiterates that we have been redeemed and purchased for a great price.

We have been paid for with the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, and what greater sacrifice could be made by the Father than the life of his Son? Instead of these parables showing our faithful response to the gospel, I believe it might be showing us God’s faithful response to creation.

These parables, when interpreted as the work of God’s saving grace toward the creation, reinforce the glory of the sovereignty of God through Matthew’s parables. The kingdom of heaven is not in our hands, it is in the hands of the Almighty, the finder, the merchant. We are the created and God is God.

God is in control. And like we read last week in the parable of the wheat and the tares, the work of grace and salvation is God’s. It is our call, our vocation to respond to God’s grace through faith. It is our call to be redeemed by the Lord who came before us and purchased us with his life. It is our call live as the kingdom people of the triune God, and the reason follows in the final parable of this chapter.

The parable of the net which drags in every kind of fish reminds us of how the parable of the wheat and tares ends, with judgment and weeping and gnashing of teeth. Both of these parables show us an image of the sorting of good creation at the end of the age. Last week we read how the weeds are separated and the grain is brought into the barn. This week we read how the net scoops every fish from the sea, but when the good fish are separated from the bad, the good are put in baskets and the bad thrown out.

The only difference between this parable and the parable of the wheat and the tares is that where last week the parable was heard by the crowd, this week, the parable of the dragnet and the fish is shared with the apostles alone.

So Jesus asks the apostles, “Have you understood all this?” and they answered, “Yes.” Do they understand; can we ever really understand? No, we can’t really completely understand, not on this side of the sorting, certainly. To paraphrase Saint Augustine, when I say that I understand God, what I understand is not God.[5] God is more wonderful than we will ever know or imagine.

The Lord continues to reveal the Almighty presence in our lives everyday, from the history of God’s sovereignty found in scripture to revelation of God incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ to the continuing work of God on earth in the person of the Holy Spirit, God’s work is around us, finding us and redeeming us.

And Jesus said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

In the church universal, and Presbyterian Church in particular, there is great debate about how to interpret scripture, how to bring out the treasure if you will. One way to frame this question is how the history of the people of Israel is still valid for us today. I believe the history of Israel is still important for us today, without the Old Testament, our witness is incomplete.

As important as history is in the revelation of God, no less important is what God continues to do. Jesus teaches the scribes, those trained for the kingdom of heaven are not just called to teach history, but to teach living history too. We are called not to simply regurgitate the ancient words, but to discern the word fresh for us today. And we are called not just to speak to today; we are called to listen to yesterday.

By the end of the Star Trek episode, the Captain of the Enterprise was on the planet El-Adrel IV with the captain of the Tamarian vessel, trying to communicate while fighting against a dangerous monster. By the end of the episode, Captain Picard of the Enterprise understands the story of Darmok, and Jalad at Tanagra, and Tamarian Captain Dathon hears Picard tell a similar earth story, the epic of Gilgamesh and Enkidu at Uruk. Together the civilizations leave with a new shared history, the story of “Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel.”

Listen to the history. Listen to the words of the Old Testament as it teaches us the story of Jacob, the man the Lord renames Israel. Listen to the words of the apostle Paul as he teaches us how the Holy Spirit of God continues to intercede on our behalf. Listen to the words of the Lord as he teaches us to use not just the old but the new.

The things which are ordinary become extraordinary in service of the Lord. What makes no earthly sense to us is perfectly logical in the redeemed presence of God. What we understand, we can only understand by God’s perfect grace; accepted and exercised in our imperfect faith. This much, we understand.

[1] “Darmok,” http://www.memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Darmok_%28episode%29, retrieved July 26, 2008.
[2] Yes, yes, I know the great Trekkie/Trekker debate, I prefer Trekker but I am going with the more common Trekkie for the sake of the congregation who don’t know the difference. And it goes with Rodenberry’s take on the controversy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekkie#Trekkie_v._Trekker retrieved July 27, 2008.
[3] About 32 kilos
[4] Hare, Douglas R. A., “Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Matthew.” James L. Mays, Ed. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993, page 156.
[5] Augustine wrote, “We are talking about God. Which wonder do you think you understand? If you understand, it is not God.” I wish I could find the citation.