St. John’s United Church of Christ
July 27, 2008
A Sermon by the Rev. John Krueger
The Kingdom of Heaven Is Like… Matthew 13:31-33
I have heard the rumor that in 2 weeks the school bells will ring. Imagine, August 11, and first teachers and then students will report for duty in this enterprise called education.
Many of us remember when the school year started after Labor Day and usually was finished by Memorial Day. In those days the school year was influenced by the rhythm of farming. The long summer vacation enabled farm kids to spend three months doing the outdoor field work, gathering in hay and corn and wheat for the winter.
I also remember that by starting after Labor Day and finishing before Memorial Day , we had very, very few vacation days - a couple of days at Thanksgiving, two weeks for Christmas and maybe a day or half day for Good Friday, and that was all. Soon it will be back to preparing our young people for their future lives as adults, earning a living and being a responsible and participating citizen.
Jesus was a master teacher, without the benefit of a license. His method was simple – tell short stories about God. Tailor the message to the audience, to what they knew best, and always leave them with a new insight into God’s ways.
There are as many as 32 parables that have been preserved in the Gospels accounts of his life and ministry. My guess is that there were many others Jesus used, now lost to us, and not remembered as the others have been.
Many begin with the phrase, “Now the Kingdom of heaven is like,” and then he used some agricultural or household image, like a good shepherd, like a man who sowed seeds, like lost sheep, or coin, or son, like a man with two sons, like a wedding banquet, or like workers in a vineyard. If God were completely in charge, what would it be like? That would be the lesson of these short stories.
The two parables for this morning are mere snippets of stories, about a small mustard seed that grows into a large bush and a bit of yeast that transforms flour into bread. Even so, from them we see into the heart of God’s intentions for us.
Peter Drucker, the now deceased business consultant who helped turn around many corporations, usually had a simple methodology that focused on just two questions. “What Is Your Business?” and “How’s Business?” He would ask people from the factory workers to the executives to tell him what they thought the company was trying to accomplish. What is your product? What are you making and selling? That sounds pretty basic, yet he found that many times we lose sight of what we want to do, why we are in this enterprise at all. The second question was one of evaluation – are we accomplishing what we said we wanted to do?
I think the parables of Jesus are intended to illustrate what our lives would be like if they were fully attuned to God and God’s purposes. What Is Our Business as followers of Jesus Christ? I would maintain that our business is transformation, transformation of ourselves as God’s children and the transformation of the world about us.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed” that becomes a tree. “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast” that leavens the flour. In both cases, something small in transformed into something much greater, even something very different.
As Christians we are in the change business, reshaping ourselves and our world to reflect more faithfully the presence and purposes of God. Paul says it well in Romans, chapter 12: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Something very serious has happened to us as Christians, and to the Church of Jesus Christ. We began as a minority group, outcasts in many ways, seeking to be a distinctive people committed to furthering the work of Jesus Christ. We began by seeking ways to transform the world through love and mercy and forgiveness, traits of Jesus’ ministry.
Over time we changed from a minority community, often ridiculed for our peculiar ways, to the majority community with influence and prestige and vested interests. This happened first in Rome under Constantine, 313 A.D. It continued in Europe through the Holy Roman Empire and the heavy influence of the Orthodox Church. In many ways the same is true here in the United States.
The casualty was losing our transformative passion. Instead of being agents for change and transformation, we often became the protectors of the status quo, a set of realities we favored as our advantage.
That is still the case, as I see it. We enjoy some special privileges such as tax exemption. We usually can be counted on to support the status quo, not often calling into question common wisdom or usual community practices.
We have become comfortable with the perks of the establishment and rarely stand out in ways that would be distinctive. Rarely do we comment on the materialism that has become so entrenched in our society, the consumerism that consumes us. Rarely do we talk about how violent a society we have become, our obscene murder rate, and the many incidents of inhumanity. Rarely do we challenge the high percent of people in prison, the malnutrition of children in a wealthy nation, the absence of affordable health care for some, governmental expenditures that reflect our values and priorities, the effect of our decisions concerning the environment, a legacy we will pass on to our children and grandchildren.
If the parables of Jesus concerning the kingdom of heaven are rooted in transformation and change, we would rather not be bothered as long as we seem to be getting along quite nicely. If the teachings of Jesus are focused on love for the neighbor, we would like to narrow down the definition of neighbor to be people we already like, those like us. If the business of the church is transformation, we would prefer to point out others who need to be changed so we do not need to look in the mirror at ourselves.
A small seed that someone planted in the ground that became a tree offering safe haven for the birds. A bit of yeast that a woman worked into the flour that transformed the flour into bread for our world. What Is Our Business? How’s Business?
Think about these things as we gather about the table of grace, meeting the Risen Christ in the breaking of the bread. Think about what needs to be transformed in your life as you seek to reflect the kingdom of heaven.