The descriptions of the kingdom of heaven – or the rule of love – are coming rapidly now in the Gospel of Matthew.  Vivid pictures -- a mustard seed….yeast in flour…a treasure…a pearl…a successful fishing trip.  The parable of the mustard seed sounds like a sweet Sunday School kind of lesson about how wonderful (and powerful) small things can be – small people, small efforts, small ministries with big results.  It evokes images of trees with birds, nests with eggs or baby birds in them.  The parable of the yeast in the flour evokes the smell and taste of delicious crusty bread, warm out of the oven, made with love by a woman just like my mom.  Then there’s the joy of discovered treasure, of a beautiful pearl, of a net full of fish.  Small is good.  Bread is good.  Treasure is good.  Pearls are good.  Fish are good (well some fish are anyway). Life is good.

      But remember that part about parables being surprising and disturbing?  Remember that idea about parables as subversive speech – designed to provoke, raise questions, and pose dilemmas to get Jesus’ hearers to notice the oppressive realities of their lives and to challenge the boundaries of their fragmented world.  So what’s disturbing about these five realm of heaven sayings?  Okay.  Brace yourselves. 

      First, according to Pliny the Elder, first century natural historian, “mustard…with its pungent taste and fiery effect …grows entirely wild…but…when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free from it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once.” 1 The Mishnah, an ancient middle-eastern almanac of sorts, points out that it was unlawful to plant mustard in a garden and it was dangerous to plant it in a field.  What’s more, attracting all the birds of the air to a place where one is growing food is exactly the opposite of what would be prudent.  Perhaps this is a clue that Jesus’ hearers don’t have their own fields.  Jesus is saying that the realm of heaven is like a seed that grows into a big scrubby brush, which takes over where it is not wanted, that quickly gets out of control and that it attracts undesirables who will make a big mess.  Jesus is saying that the realm of heaven has blatant disregard for order or common sense, or for the expectations of law-abiding people.  The realm of heaven, the rule of love, is scandalous.  Forget the crazy extravagant abundance of two weeks ago, here we have just plain crazy!

      Next?  The yeast.  It’s actually not yeast as we know it in the neat little packets.  It’s leaven – a putrid and decaying lump of dough.  It’s gross.  Metaphorically, leaven in the Bible and other ancient literature is a symbol of corruption, of rot.  Then it gets worse.  A woman hides the leaven.  It is well-established that women in Mediterranean antiquity were ritually impure.  So for a woman to hide something that will corrupt enough flour to feed a small army is doubly outrageous.  Jesus is saying that the realm of heaven, the rule of love, is like one rotten apple spoiling not just the whole barrel, but enough barrels to feed more than one-hundred people.2  Jesus is saying that the realm of heaven is hidden and unpredictable – and that it works under the guise of the contaminated.

      Then we have the treasure.  In Jesus’ time, hiding valuables by burying them was the only way to keep them safe in case of danger or distress.  Think of it as the ancient equivalent of a safe deposit box.  And there were rules that protected the owner about what one had to do if one happened to find a buried treasure.  It was not “finders keepers, losers weepers.”  The finder had to attempt to find the owner – to proclaim the find  -- post notice – and if no-one claimed it, only then could the finder legally keep it.  So, if the treasure legally belonged to the finder (because a legitimate attempt had been made to find the rightful owner), buying the field was unnecessary.  If not, buying the field was cheating.  Besides, having sold everything to buy the field, the finder is impoverished and can’t dig up the treasure without risking losing it.  So here Jesus is saying the realm of heaven, the rule of love, is something that isn’t rightfully owned by anyone.

      Need more?  The writer of Matthew thought we did.  The realm of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls.  Note well, it’s not that the realm of heaven is like a pearl.  It’s like a merchant in search of pearls – who sells everything to buy one pearl of great value – but, ironically, this merchant isn’t worrying about what to eat or what to wear tomorrow or the next day.  So the realm of heaven is actually quite foolish!

     And last – the realm of heaven is like a net that hauls in every kind of fish. It’s the fisher-people who spend their time and energy sorting out what they think is good and bad – the desirable and the undesirable.  The realm of heaven doesn’t discriminate, Jesus says – it’s a net that hauls in everything in its path.  Jesus ends this portion of his teaching with the question, “have you understood all this?”  They answered, “Yes.”  (Although I imagine more than a few of them were scratching their heads.  In fact, that part always makes me laugh.)

      The thing is, Jesus is actually offering encouragement here.  Oh right, you think, for whom?  And that’s exactly the right question to be asking.  For whom is this good news?  Not the field owners or the farmers, not the religiously observant, not the law-abiding citizens or the good-deed-doers, nor the sensible merchants, not the fish sorters who truly wish the nets only hauled in the kind of fish they wanted.  I think Jesus is offering encouragement to those who don’t own property, who can’t manage to observe religious customs, or who break the law, or who make foolish decisions, who never thought the realm of heaven could possibly include them – who have been living without a net to catch them.  In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus announces a realm of heaven that is “subversive, unstoppable, invasive, a nuisance, urgent, shocking, abundant. It requires action and commitment and inspires extreme behavior.”3

      Now this can be pretty scary stuff for good girls like me – a religious doer of measured good deeds, who owns property, a sensible person who can pass a criminal background check with flying colors.  I imagine a few of you fit that same description.  So what about us?  Is there anything for us?  Here’s the good news that I can find for us.  I think the writer of Matthew is inviting us to notice the oppressive realities of our own lives and to challenge the boundaries – the social, religious, political, and economic boundaries – laws, customs, agreements and understandings that oppress people  – that we assume cannot be changed.  This is both a strong affirmation of the kind of parish Emmanuel Church has been since its founding in 1860 and a strong challenge to us to keep moving.

      In his book of subversive activities for education, Jeffrey Schrank’s epigraph is from one of my favorite stories – A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh:  “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head….It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.”  The writer of Matthew is inviting us to stop bumping our heads for a moment and think of it.  Think of the realm of heaven and adjust our hearts and minds and lives accordingly.

      I’m going to finish with a four-fold Franciscan blessing. I’m hoping that after each fold – that is, after each of the four sentences, you feel brave enough and willing enough to say a resounding amen. Let’s try it.

      “May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, that we may live deep within our hearts. [Amen.] May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that we may work for justice, freedom and peace. [Amen.] May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and turn their pain into joy. [Amen.] May God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done. [Amen.]”