The Scripture reading for this Sunday is Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52.
Where kingdoms were once flashy, powerful, and political they are now vestiges of what they once were. They are still in the news, they are still celebrated as symbols of political might and power, they still capture the attention of the world but their power and clout has withered away to the point where they are only figureheads in the political system. Many young people today have their view of a kingdom shaped more by Disney than current world events. A Disney kingdom is a romantic view of a people under the care and tutelage of a king painted in happy pastel colours with a stream running through the town and a protective wall around the outside. It’s magical and beautiful.
However, the real life Roman kingdom of Jesus’ day wasn’t romantic or beautiful or peaceful. It was powerful, mighty, and cared less about the people within her boundaries than fighting off barbarians. The coming kingdom of heaven would surely have to look like the Roman kingdom in order to establish itself, many of Jesus hearers would have thought, but Jesus paints a much different picture.
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, some leaven, a treasure hidden in a field, a pearl of great price. All of the images that Jesus uses to describe the kingdom of heaven are hidden, even unnoticeable. Compared even to the vestiges of the kingdoms in the world today, the kingdom of heaven looks completely insignificant. It doesn’t show itself through crowns, royal galas, endless paparazzi trying to get the next tabloid picture, or wealth beyond compare. The kingdom of heaven, rather, is like a tiny mustard seed that the naked eye can barely see, it’s like a small amount of yeast worked through a large amount of dough, it’s like a finding a treasure hidden in a field or a pearl of great price and selling all that we have to purchase it. The kingdom of heaven is like that. It’s hidden. It’s surprising. It’s breaking in all around us – not in the power of armies and through the glitz of glamour or riches, but through the incarnation of Jesus who works in and through us to bring his kingdom.
The kingdom is here, Jesus proclaims, but it is modest and hidden. To the rest of the world, it may seem completely insignificant and worthless. But, like a treasure hidden in a field that not even the owner knows about, once we find it, it is worth so much that we will go out and sell everything that we have in order to buy that field.
The kingdom is here. It’s around us. We are witnesses to it, which means there are implications for us. Scott Hoezee writes:
And so, as bearers of God’s kingdom, we keep plugging away at activities which may look silly or meaningless to the world by which we believe contain the very seed of the new creation. We keep coming to church and singing our old hymns, reciting our old formulas and creeds… we keep cracking open an ancient book called the Bible, looking to find within it truths that are anything-but ancient. We keep gathering at sick beds and death beds and whisper our prayers for the Spirit of the resurrection to be with us in life and in death. We keep drizzling water onto squirming infants and popping cubes of white bread into our mouths in the earnest faith that through the Spirit baptism and communion don’t just mean something, they mean everything.
And we keep working for Jesus in this mixed up, backward world of ours. We quietly carry out our jobs and raise our kids and tend our marriages in the belief that God has designs for all those things and it’s our job to follow them. We keep pointing people to an old rugged cross, having the boldness to suggest that the man who died on that cross is now the Lord of the galaxies.”
The kingdom, although it is hidden, is here. It can change hearts. It can change the world. It has changed the world.