In our Gospel reading this morning, we hear five of the parables that are contained in what Biblical scholars call “Matthew’s Third Discourse,” which comprises all of Chapter 13 of the Gospel of Matthew and includes seven parables about the Kingdom of heaven.  If we think back to two weeks ago—just to refresh our memory—the Gospel dealt with the parable of good seeds producing different yields, depending upon where they are planted.  Last Sunday, we heard the parable of the field in which weeds were sown among good seed.  While none of us present this morning is a Biblical scholar, I thought it might be interesting for us to take a closer look at what a parable is, and then consider what Jesus might be telling when He likens the Kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed.

In preparing for today’s sermon, I was struck by the thought of what a tremendous gift the Bible is.  If the writers had not written it, we would have no record of God’s actions and Jesus’ teachings.  Writing things down is very important, which reminds me of the story about an elderly couple in their 90s who were having trouble remembering things.  They went to their doctor for a check-up, and the doctor told them that they were physically okay, but that they might want to start writing things down to help them remember.  That night, while watching TV, the husband gets up from his chair.  His wife asks, “Where are you going,?” to which her husband replies, “to the kitchen.”   “Will you get me a bowl of ice cream?”  “Sure,” he says.   She then says, “Don’t you think you should write it down so you can remember it?”  “No, of course not.”  “Well,” she says, “I’d like some strawberries on top, too.  You’d better write it down because you know you’ll forget it.”  He says, “I can remember that!  You want a bowl of ice cream with strawberries.”  She then says, “I’d also like whipped cream.  I know you’ll forget that, so you’d better write it down.”  By now he was irritated.  He says, “I don’t need to write it down.  I can remember it.  Leave me alone!  You want ice cream with strawberries and whipped cream—I got it, for goodness sake!”  Then he grumbles off to the kitchen.  After about 20 minutes the husband returns from the kitchen and hands his wife a plate of bacon and eggs.  She stares at the plate for a moment, then says, “Where’s my toast?” Write it down.  Write it down!  Thank God for the people who wrote down the parables of Jesus!

So… what is a parable?  Simply put, a parable is a word-picture that compares something familiar with something unfamiliar in order to bring home a truth.  A parable creates an understanding of the unknown by using the known.  The writer, Lane Denson, describes a parable as “a small story with a large point.”  He goes on to say, “Like jokes and jazz, if you’ve got to have a parable explained, don’t bother.  Parables are not to be explained, they are to be understood, and like most of the important things in life, they are understood only by opening ourselves to them and listening with wonder and imagination, and, in a way, participating in them.”

Over a third of the Synoptic Gospels—that is, Matthew, Mark, and Luke—contain parables told by Jesus.  In fact, this was Jesus’ most common way of teaching, and he was a master of the parable.  His parables featured images from daily life in ancient Palestine, such as mustard seeds and fig trees, wineskins and oil lamps, money and treasure, stewards, workers, judges, housewives, and wedding parties, to name but a few.  It seems to me that Jesus loved to use parables to reach the hearts of his listeners through their imaginations.  Like a skillful artist, Jesus painted evocative pictures with short and simple words and images.  It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and I sometimes marvel at the way that Jesus, through his parables, was able to create picture after picture of what God, and God’s Kingdom, is like.  He used the ordinary to point to another reality, hidden and intangible, yet visible and comprehensible to those who had “eyes to see” and “ears to hear.”

How is it that ordinary, everyday images such as the ones we hear in today’s Gospel—a tiny mustard seed, yeast in flour, hidden treasure, a pearl of great value, and a fishing net—can capture and convey timeless and extraordinary truths?  Or put in another way, how is it that, on July 27, 2008, we can hear this Gospel and learn something about the Kingdom of God?  I think that the answer can be found in what parables do, which is capture our imagination and entice us, as it were, to find the meaning in them for us, at this moment in history and at this point in the evolution of God’s Kingdom.  In that sense, parables become verbal bridges that we can use to cross from the world of material reality into the life-giving realm of the Father.  And in that crossing over, we come to see that the Kingdom of God is the Real World, distinct from the “real world” proclaimed by those who live not by faith but by sight.

The parable of the mustard seed is a sometimes called a preacher’s dream because, if you take it literally, it seems to summarize the whole Christian enterprise.  From that one-sentence parable have sprung countless sermons, with themes that include the following: From small beginnings you can change the world.  A handful of disciples becomes a global movement.  Your faith may be weak, but it can grow strong enough to move mountains.  It starts with a little seed, but just watch it and it will grow into a tree.  The parable of the mustard seed has built impressive churches, conquered new lands and converted the heathen.  All from one little seed that would take a thousand of them to fill a thimble!

The problem with mustard, however, is that it’s a weed!!  Would anybody in their right mind plant weeds?  If weeds invade our gardens, or our lawns, we want them taken out.  Weeds are not popular; you won’t find them for sale in the garden department at Home Depot.  And it was the same in ancient Palestine.  Mustard seeds were banned from planted gardens.  Contained in the Jewish Mishna—a compilation of instructions for carrying out the laws of the Torah—is a prohibition against planting mustard seeds because they are annoying, useless weeds. 

So how can Jesus be telling us, “the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field”?  No one plants weeds unless, of course, unless the gardener is God.  It seems that, in this parable, Jesus is casting aside conventional wisdom and telling us a truth about weeds, keeping in mind, of course, that the real focus of the stories and parables that Jesus told is about us:  weeds have the same God-given potential for growth as good seed.  If we really look at a weed, not through the mindset that weeds are the bane of a good garden, but through the eyes of God, we see that they have their own beauty, their own strength, their own dignity.  And that, like good seed, they have worth.

So…who are the “weeds” of today’s world?  Among them might be the homeless, the aged, the HIV patient, the addict, or the scraggly man sitting at the end of an I-75 exit ramp with a handmade sign that says he will work for food.  Our culture might call them losers, but they are precisely the kind of people who Jesus would have us reach out to, just as He reaches out to us in our brokenness, our “lostness,” our pride, our spiritual poverty.  Through us, He can be a healing presence to the to the teenager flunking out of school, to the couple going through a bitter divorce, to the debt-ridden single mom who just had to declare bankruptcy, to the failed professional taking the first steps toward recovery after hitting bottom.  It is to these that Jesus would have us minister.

In a way, all of us are mustard seeds, cast into the field of faith, where the poor are rich, where those who mourn are comforted, where those who hunger and thirst for justice are satisfied, where all of God’s children, every one of them, gather and know that they are infinitely loved, and where the birds of the air and you and I find a home where no one is a stranger.  That is what the kingdom of heaven is like.