Proper 11A, 30 July 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

• Genesis 29:15-28. When morning came, it was Leah!
• Romans 8:26-39.  We do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.
• Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52. Have you understood all this? They answered, “Yes.”

O God of mercy, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Whenever the story of Jacob’s procurement of Leah and Rachel gets told in our appointed lessons, I’m tempted to preach about the biblical model of marriage illustrated in the book of Genesis, just so we’re all clear what “Biblical marriage” is. It’s especially true this year in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the bigoted-website case. Instead, I’m going to trust that the Spirit is interceding with sighs too deep for words.

Instead, I want to talk about the Gospel of Matthew’s parable slam, which we are in the middle of in our Gospel portion today. We’ve heard the parables of the sower and the parable of the wheat mixed in with the weeds. The explanation of the parable of the weeds, which we heard last week, is what is in the missing verses from our appointed Gospel reading today. as much as I want you to remember it, I decided to spare you from hearing it again. It is the land version of the parable of the fishnet that gathers both the good and bad fish. (Note: Jesus is not talking about fish which misbehave here, just fish that are not good to eat.)

The parable of the weeds is found only in the Gospel of Matthew. That’s also true for the explanation of the parable of the weeds and the parables of the buried treasure, the pearl of great value, and the net thrown into the sea, which gathered fish of every kind, good and bad. The writer of Matthew surrounded the more familiar parables of the mustard seed and the leavening hidden (not mixed) in sixty pounds of flour. He apparently didn’t think the message was strong enough with just those two illustrations of the kingdom of heaven, otherwise known as the realm of God or the rule of Love. Matthew depicts Jesus going to great lengths to help his listeners to see, hear, smell, and touch, or be touched by, the realm of heaven or the rule of Love, which has come so near that it is all around them. 

In these scenes from Matthew, one day Jesus went from sitting near the shore to teach the crowds, to getting into a boat, and continuing to teach the crowds; and then  heading “back to the house,” he continued to teach his closest followers. From here to there, from there to here, Jesus was rattling off a confusing array of provocative and funny parables of the realm of God. As a group, Jesus’ parables announced a realm of the Divine that one of my colleagues calls “subversive, unstoppable, invasive, a nuisance, urgent, shocking, and abundant.” [1] I’d add surprising, disruptive, extravagant, inconvenient, chaotic, and mind-boggling. 

Folks Jesus was talking to expected the kingdom of heaven to be compared with the majestic cedars of Lebanon, not an aggressive weed; like the purity of unleavened bread, not the corruption of mold (no matter how delicious); like a prudent amount of flour to make daily bread, not a wasteful amount that could never be consumed before it went bad; like something legitimately acquired, not stumbled upon in someone else’s field and then immorally procured; etc.. According to New Testament scholar Eugene Boring, “The disposition of buried treasure found on someone else’s property was widely discussed in Roman legal discourse.” [2] There were rules to be followed.

The rule of Love defies common sense, calls for full commitment, and inspires extreme behavior. The realm of God rides into town on a donkey rather than a war horse, and the people of the realm serve a crucified Lord rather than Caesar. The good and bad are all mixed together, kind of a mess; and it’s not the role of Jesus’ disciples to separate the bad from the good. Rather, the angels of God will sort it all out. In Jesus’ teaching, it’s not the grim reaper who does the sorting, it’s the angelic reapers!

Depending on one’s perspective the stories are hilarious or disturbing;  and they’re disruptive no matter where one stands.  Jesus ends this portion of his teaching with the question, “Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” (That part always makes me laugh, because I imagine more than a few of them were scratching their heads. I imagine that at least one person started to say, “No,” but got elbowed by his neighbor who didn’t want to further delay dinner.)

The thing is, Jesus is actually offering comfort and 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 righteous 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 comfort and encouragement to those who don’t own property, who can’t manage to keep track of and observe religious customs, who break the law, 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, or for whom the good and the bad are all mixed up. 

Now this can be anxiety-producing stuff for good girls like me, a religious doer of measured good deeds, who owns property, a sensible person who could pass a criminal background check with flying colors. I imagine a few of you fit this same description. So what about us? Is there anything for us? Here’s the good news that I could 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, the laws, customs, agreements, and understandings that oppress people, which 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, to keep at it. This is a strong challenge to examine the ways in which we collude with and benefit from systems of oppression and to re-affirm our solidarity with people who suffer from injustice and inequality.

But what about the weeping and gnashing of teeth, Matthew’s oft-repeated description of the outer darkness or the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth? Matthew employs this phrase six times. The writer of Luke uses it twice:  once in Luke and once in Acts. Other than that, it doesn’t appear in the New (or Second) Testament.  I had generally understood it as something that someone does when they’re in the hell of great pain or regret. Maybe everyone else already knows this, but I just learned that the term gnashing of teeth refers to violent rage. And it’s not about pain (at least not directly); but it’s a sign of great disrespect, associated with profane, mocking fury. And what causes the fierce wrath? Clues come from the five times it’s mentioned in the First Testament: three mentions in the Book of Psalms, one in Lamentations, and one in Job (none in the Torah or the Prophets). The fullest description is in Psalm 112:10.

They have distributed freely, they have given to the poor. Their beneficence lasts forever. Their strength is exalted in honor. The wicked see it and are angry. They gnash their teeth; and melt away. The desire of the wicked comes to nothing.

They gnash their terrible teeth, and roar their terrible roars, but love and mercy melt their wicked desires away; and in the end, it amounts to nothing. That is what Matthew is alluding to.

It  is the mercy of God, the mercy of Love, that violently enrages, that provokes the gnashing teeth of our unloving, of all the causes of sin. That makes our collect for the day all the more poignant and perhaps dangerous. At the beginning of this service, we prayed that God increase and multiply upon us God’s mercy. That is likely to provoke a furious response, mocking jeering, sneering response (inside and out). There are always parts of us that disdain and distrust loving kindness and extravagant, undeserved mercy for others and sometimes even for ourselves, especially for those things that seem unforgivable. This is where A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh comes to my mind: [1]

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. 

You know, the last part of our Gospel reading about the scribe with the old and the new is really better translated as casting out, not bringing out. [3]

Every scribe who has been trained for the rule of Love is like the head of the household who casts out or divests or unloads what is new and what is old, in order to embrace the teachings of Jesus.  

Jesus is teaching about thinking of the realm of heaven, or the rule of Love, and adjusting our hearts, minds, and lives accordingly, because the only thing that can separate us from the Love of God is our own unwillingness to accept it for ourselves and for others.

1. Thanks to my seminary classmate Laurel Dykstra for this great list.
2.  Eugene Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VIII (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 313.
3.  Peter Phillips, “Casting out the treasure: A new reading of Matthew 13:52,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 2008.