The Work You Have Given Us To Do : a sermon for Year A, Proper 12

Preached on Sunday, July 24, 2011 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church, Manhattan. The Bible readings this sermon is based on can be found here.


In our reading from the Gospel of Matthew this morning, Jesus comes at us a bit like a street tough or a Borscht Belt comic... “ You wanna know what the Kingdom of Heaven is like, I’ll tell you what the Kingdom of Heaven is like!”  In rapid fire parabolic examples, we hear that the kingdom of heaven is a seed, yeast, treasure, a pearl and a net. Sounds like the answer on Final Jeopardy Bible Edition, doesn’t it? With the right answer being, “What is the Kingdom of Heaven according to Matthew, chapter 13?”


Matthew has collated and some parables and examples that some of the other gospels treat separately and usually more at length. So what does Matthew’s treatment of these examples, these metaphors for God’s kingdom tell us? What does Matthew’s use of these sayings of Jesus, crammed together and given a staccato rhythm have to show us that we might not otherwise see?


The mustard seed is a familiar example, one that appears elsewhere in the Gospels. And it’s another of those sayings of Jesus that tell us a lot about him and his audience. This was a rural world, a people close to the land in a time when one lived very close to the source of one’s food.

I used to help my Mama Collins plant her garden each Spring, and I can tell you, mustard seeds are very, very small. I always wanted to put more in the furrows before covering them over with the moist, brown dirt, they were so tiny they just didn’t seem like they could amount to much. But Mama Collins would scold me and tell me not to plant too many at a time, just two or three, because she knew as did Jesus’s audience, that though small, mustard seeds produce big leafy plants full of tart green leaves.


Now mustard plants do not grow into trees, in Jesus’s time or in our own. Jesus is exaggerating a bit to make his point – and his point is this, great, great outcomes can come from very small beginnings. Jesus’s culture was an agrarian culture mostly, his listeners knew what he was trying to say.


But according to Matthew, he goes on to say it in yet another way. And again, he uses a food based example, one that would be familiar to those who live close to the hearth. Every woman hearing Jesus teach on this day would understand his yeast example. And they would know that three measures of flour leavened with yeast would produce a great, great deal of bread. A small beginnings yielding a great outcome.
 

 

And yet another example comes, one that perhaps the men listening to Jesus would find more resonant than recipe-based metaphor just given. A working man, probably a plowman hired to do his day’s labor in the landlord’s field, comes across a buried treasure. He quickly finds the means to make the field and its treasure his own. Now this may sound like a morally dubious metaphor here, and it is. The treasure belongs to the landlord, fair and square, and Jewish and Roman law would have supported this understanding of property. The plowman engages in what might be called a little insider trading to make the treasure his own. But Jesus’s theme is borne out. It was yet another day of hard, sweaty labor in the field for the plowman, but from that small beginning, just another day at work, a great outcome is made manifest.

Again another example comes, but this time, it’s more related to the world of business and trade. An example for the more worldly in Jesus’s audience. Those who travel and trade around the Levant. A pearl merchant comes across a nearly perfect pearl – seemingly a rare event. He sells everything he has to own such a fine example of what his training and trading have taught him to value. I suppose it’s a bit like a jeweler in the back rooms of Tiffany’s coming across a particularly fine raw gemstone or pearl which, though he can’t afford it on his craftsman’s salary, he goes and sells all that he has just to own something of such beauty and perfection – snapping it up before the Gingriches get their hands on it with their boundless line of Tiffany’s credit.

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Laid along side each other we see some things in common in these examples that Jesus gives in our gospel reading today. Yes, these are metaphors of great bounty from small sources, great outcomes from small beginnings. But we notice the diligence in the people in Jesus’s stories, don’t we? The baker, the plowman and the pearl merchant are not at all like other people Jesus has taught us about.


These are not the prodigal son, are they? Seeking to leave their duties to find their fortunes in the world. These people are simple folk, who set about the tasks a rather average life brings them. They stay close to earth and hearth, mostly or else they are simple tradesfolk, doing what they have been trained to do.Even the mustard seed just does what a mustard seed is supposed to do.


We see something else that contributes to their success. They’re smart. They know their stuff. They’re paying attention to what’s going on around them. They’re shrewd. They take advantage of what comes their way in the course of a day. The baker knows just what yeast can do and how much to use. The plowman isn’t mindlessly tilling the field but he’s watching what he does, doing his job with care, so that when he comes across something of great value he recognizes it, and he finds a way to make it his. So it goes with the pearl merchant. Training and practice, have given him a good eye. He’s able to make a bold move when he comes across something worth making bold moves for.


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Our final metaphor is that of the fishing net, and through it we are taught that some things are good, some not so good, some pursuits worthwhile, some not so worthwhile.


Pay attention says out teacher. Use your training. Find out what you need to know and know it well. Do the work God gives you to do with diligence. Doesn’t matter if you’re just a housewife or a plowman. God’s bountiful grace is available to all of us, no matter our life’s work, no matter our station or calling.


Do the needful and be on the lookout for God’s kingdom to spring up like a mustard seed. Watch for the dough to rise, for the plow to uncover buried treasure. Look for the one perfect pearl among all the dross. Pray not for the riches or God’s favor, but rather pray as did Solomon for the wisdom to know what is right and wrong, to know what is of great value and what is not worth your time.


For as Saint Paul tells us in our reading from Romans, God has a plan for us. God wants us to know his mercy and to share in his glory through his son Jesus Christ. Paul tells us that all things work together for our own good, whether those things are baking over a hot stove or guiding a plough through a field. All things will work for our good if we align our efforts with what we know God calls us to do.


Great bounty, hidden treasure, perfection, these are what awaits us in the kingdom of heaven if we can heed God’s call, and discern what would be God’s will for us, for our lives. For whether we toil in the sun for our living or trade fine pearls, God is with us, and the kingdom of heaven awaits us. Nothing along the way is going to change that ultimate reality, that promise.


Not all the hard work in the world, not all the hard times, the hurt, the disappointment we may come to know. Nothing will separate us from God and the bounteous kingdom that God holds in readiness for us, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor the troubles of the present time, nor the troubles to come. No power, high or low, nor the powerful that may seem to guide our lives and our world, nothing created can come between us and our creator and the love that creator bears for us.


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So pay attention, do the work God has given you to do with joy and with expectation. From the small efforts you and I can undertake, the small differences we might try to make in the lives God gives us to lead, from such as these great outcomes are manifest. For through God’s mercy, and through our belief in that mercy and through the actions borne out of that belief, we will gain nothing less than the kingdom of heaven and God’s glory.  +Amen.

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins