Year A
1 Kings 3:5-12
Psalm 119:129-136
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33,44-52

May the words of my mouth… O God… speak your Truth… so that anyone with ears… may hear…

Our readings today may seem a bit disconnected… you may wonder what Solomon asking God for Wisdom… has to do with mustard seeds… and yeast… you may wonder what God granting Solomon discernment… has to do with digging up a field… and oysters… you may wonder… what sighs too deep for words… have to do with a net full of fish… but I’ll come back to this in a bit…

New technologies… like augmented reality… can let you use a smartphone or tablet… to see just exactly how that new couch from Ikea would look in your living room… even before you set foot in the store… computer generated images and seamless digital effects… unimaginable not too many few years ago… have increased our expectations… so that now… when we watch old movies… like the forty-year-old version of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World… they’re laughable… compared to the new version on Peacock TV…

The fast-paced… twists and turns… of disaster… fantasy… and science fiction movies… don’t often share what the characters were thinking or feeling when they did what they did… or said what they said… they rarely reveal what inner conflicts they felt… whether they would have made another choice had they only known… 

And the fast pace… gives us few precious moments to wonder what motivated them… gives us insufficient time to wonder what we would have done if we’d been in their shoes… for us to appreciate unvarnished reality… for us to value simple stories… for us to take the time we need to reflect on our humanity…

And this gorgeous special effects eye-candy… can make it more difficult for us to be satisfied with less… to go slower… to take our time… I mean… do you remember dial-up internet… when your modem would sing robotic songs to invisible servers… attempting to make a connection… and by the time your email had been downloaded… you could have cooked and eaten a meal… I mean… who wants to go back to that…

Solomon did… because while there may be some value in faster download speeds… there is no lasting value in augmented reality… there may be some value in spending less time waiting to get the information we need… but there is no value in rushing to judgment… in jumping to conclusions… in making rash decisions… without first spending enough time reflecting on the big picture… on what’s motivating us… on what we think… and how we feel… and how what we decide… may affect not only ourselves… but sometimes our families… sometimes our communities… and sometimes… the entire globe…

The request that Solomon made… the two Hebrew words which were translated as an… understanding mind… more literally mean… to hear with the heart… to hear justice… and listening for justice takes longer… it must be sought out… like treasure… and fine pearls…

According to Holly Hearon… Professor [Emerita] of New Testament… at Christian Theological Seminary [in Indianapolis]… the mustard seeds and yeast… both draw attention to remarkable growth arising from insignificant beginnings… the treasure hidden in a field… and fine pearls… both point to discovering something of such great value… that we are willing to sell all we have to possess it… the two pairs of parables are linked through the Greek word krupto… which means to hide… in the parable of the yeast… the woman hides yeast in the flour… while in the parable that follows… the treasure is hidden in a field…

And the parable of the net which caught fish of every kind… echoes the parable we heard just last week… about the weeds growing up with the wheat… in that one… the instruction was to wait until the harvest… and then separate them from each other… today… we have separating the good fish into baskets… and throwing out the bad… discerning… separating… keeping and discarding…

In all of the Gospels… Jesus made all of the disciples… makes all of us… mustard seeds… we’re like small little seeds scattered everywhere… we are planted not only in different kinds of soils… but we are planted into the hearts of different kinds of people… and God’s Word will take root in some…

Jesus made all of the disciples… makes all of us… into yeast… that is kneaded and worked and hidden into different kinds of lives… only to be discovered later… as treasure… and the field in which these treasures are found… is God’s creation… the field is our life… and modest beginnings turn into never imagined blessings…

There may be some people… who wonder whether they’re weeds… or bad fish… that are going to be thrown out… and the text says… thrown into the furnace of fire… where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth… and I’ve gotta tell you… that in my life… there have been many mistaken thoughts… or distorted values… or selfish acts… things I have not only taken on… but have bought in to… that I have taken into my heart… things which all together… have kept me from seeing or finding treasures in fields… things that have held me back… and they have been burned out of me… and I have wept… and gnashed my teeth…

But today’s text from Romans assures us… that nothing in all creation… will be able to separate us from the love of God… and Pastor Martin Billmeier reminds us… that during this pandemic… some cycles of human activity that have been killed off by a virus… from sports to religion… we have all experienced the death of routine… the death of a way of life… the death of assuming things would just go on as they always did…

And the way of the world… the way of Empire… is about right / wrong… good / bad… yes / no… the way of God’s Kingdom… is right / right… good / good… yes / yes… and that’s because evil can’t exist in God’s Kingdom… as we move along the continuum from Empire to Kingdom… from division to unity… as we move from Paul’s already / not yet… to the Kingdom of Heaven here and now… by the time the rejected weeds… and the rejected fish… make their way into God’s Kingdom… the refiner’s fire has burned all the divisiveness away… and replaced it with the unity of love… the Way of Love… and so there is nothing we could possibly imagine thinking… or believing… or doing… that would make God love us any more… and there is nothing we could possibly imagine thinking… or believing… or doing… that would make God love us any less…

Bp. Satterlee said that his favorite line from the Gospel… is v. 51… Jesus asked… have you understood all this…  and they answered… Yes!… really… they understood all of it… good for them… because I don’t… and I don’t think that as a nation we do… because if we did… there wouldn’t be hunger… thirst… exclusion… nakedness… disease… loneliness… because we’d share our resources so everyone would have enough… as scripture instructs us to do in Matthew 25:34-40… 

And so I wonder… when we remember that God was willing to give Solomon whatever he wanted… and what Solomon wanted… was to hear with the heart… I wonder how we hear things… when we hear about a degrading insult lobbed against a newly elected congresswoman from the Bronx and Queens… when we hear about a policy decision that links funding to a full return to the classroom… when we hear about the way our country’s leaders are responding to this global pandemic… do we hear these things in a divisive partisan politics kind of way… or do we hear these things in a uniting Reign of God kind of way… do we ask those deeper questions about whether and how the decisions of our common lives reflect the Gospel as much as they possibly can… or not… and if not… do we ask questions and hold our leaders accountable… as God holds us accountable in Matthew 25:41-45… the nature of the Kingdom of God… is justice… let us too… seek to avoid the distractions that keep us on the surface of the field… and seek to dig down to the treasure… and to hear the justice… the way Solomon did…