The Kingdom and Choices

The scriptures referred to are 1 Kings 3:5-12, Romans 8:26-39 and Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52.

One of my favorite movies is Mr. Holland's Opus. Richard Dreyfuss plays a musician who goes into teaching to support his family while he composes, his real passion. But the demands of his profession and the education of his deaf son keep getting in the way. Throughout his life he is faced with tough decisions, such as whether to send his son to a special school that would cost more money and thus force him to take on more jobs. At one point, frustrated at the limitations of his home situation and his job, he meets a beautiful and talented student. As they rehearse the school musical, the two are attracted to one another. He names a composition after her. Finally, she tells him that after the final performance she is leaving on a bus to pursue a musical career. She asks him to join her. He goes to the bus stop...and tells her he cannot go with her. She puckers for a kiss. He kisses her on the cheek instead. Then he goes back to his cramped, frustrating life and tells his wife that he loves her.

All of today's readings are about choice. Solomon has ascended to the throne of his father David. Israel is at peace. God appears to Solomon and asks him what does he want God to give him. Solomon could have asked for fame, for the most beautiful queen in the world, for a long life, to see his enemies groveling at his feet, or for a booming economy that will bolster his popularity. (Many a politician has been willing to sell his soul to the devil for that one.) But Solomon doesn't ask for any of those things. Conscious of the great responsibility that God has given him—he would not normally have been first in line for the throne—he asks for the wisdom to rule God's people wisely. He chooses what his people need over what he would desire.

All too often leaders confuse themselves with their office. They feel that if they want something, then their office demands it. In response to a petition that was being passed around in Cuba that requested a referendum on basic freedoms, Fidel Castor circulated his own petition stating that Communist socialism in Cuba is “eternal.” Despite the failure of that system, Castor could not admit he had devoted his life to a lost cause. He chose to put his emotional needs and self-esteem over the continuing welfare of his people. Nixon did much the same thing, confusing his political enemies with the enemies of this country. Jesus said, “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant.” (Matthew 20:26) A leader should be the servant of his people. Once he forgets that, he becomes a tyrant. Solomon chose servanthood.

In today's gospel we encounter a series of short parables about the kingdom of God. Before we look at them, let's remember what the kingdom of God is. It is not a place; it is not the church. It is not simply heaven, though that is where you would find its most perfect expression. Part of the problem is that where the other gospels use the phrase “kingdom of God,” Matthew uses “kingdom of heaven.” Matthew appears to be writing to a largely Jewish audience and so he substitutes “heaven” for the word “God' in deference to the Jewish reluctance to use God's name. Even today in Orthodox Jewish writings you will see it written “G-d.” So Matthew is not talking about the afterlife; he is adapting the gospel to communicate with his audience.

The real problem is with the word “kingdom.” The word not only makes us think of royalty and majesty but also geography. After all, the nation we think of as Britain or England calls itself the United Kingdom. When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, however, he wasn't thinking of a political or physical location. The Greek word basileia means means “reign” or “rule.” The kingdom of God is wherever God reigns.

In the prayer Jesus taught us we say, “They kingdom come; they will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This is a typical example of Hebrew parallelism. In their poetry, such as in the Psalms, Jewish writers would say something one way and then express the same thought using different words. The kingdom is wherever God's will is done. It is wherever people are living in harmony with God. So the kingdom of God is the state of living in accordance with his loving will for us.

So we could paraphrase what Jesus is saying in verse 31 of our gospel passage as “Living in harmony with God's will is like a mustard seed. It starts out as such a small thing and then it blossoms into something huge, a home for restless souls, tired of being blown about on the winds of fortune.” The mustard seed isn't literally the smallest of seeds but rabbis used it to mean the tiniest bit you could think of. And while it wasn't literally the tallest shrub it could reach 10 feet in height and provide nesting places for birds. Also “birds of the air' was sometimes used as a metaphor for Gentiles, so Jesus is picturing the expansion of the kingdom of God to include those outside the nation of Israel.

Then we can see Jesus' next parable as saying “Living in accordance with God's will is like yeast. It's practically invisible but if you put a tiny bit of it into a lot of dough, it will begin to bubble and expand until there's enough to nourish a large number of people.” However, rabbis often used yeast as an illustration of the corruption of evil. Before the Passover, observant Jews are supposed to scour their homes to remove all traces of yeast. Mothers often make it a game, hiding the last bit of yeast and letting the kids search for it so they can throw it out. Jesus is being subversive by suggesting that evil is not the only thing that can infiltrate and influence society. Though persecuted, the early Christians did not flee cities in time of plague but took care of the sick at the risk of their own lives. This made the Romans rethink Christianity. Let a few people start obeying the God who is love and society will not be safe from all the good they will get up to.

Next Jesus essentially says, “Living in sync with God's will is like a treasure buried in a field. Someone discovers it, reburies it, and then joyfully sells everything he owns in order to buy the field.” This may sound odd but in ancient Palestine the average person didn't have a local bank and an ATM in the grocery store. The safest thing to do if you had something valuable that you wanted to hide from robbers, or an invading army or to protect if you were going on a trip, was to bury it. And according to rabbinic law, if you bought a piece of land and a forgotten treasure was buried there, it was yours by right. Finders keepers. But the point Jesus was making did not have to do with whether we think that's fair but with the fact that the man gladly sold all that he had in order to buy the field. He doesn't regard it as a sacrifice because he knows he will get far more back than he ever had.

Obeying God's will is often made to sound like a narrow way to live, like that of a fanatic or a puritan. But Jesus is saying that, just like the field in the parable, there's more to it than meets the eye. Below that rocky soil, there's treasure, if you are willing to commit your whole life to it and get your hands dirty looking for it. When you look back, you'll realize that what you gave up wasn't really that much of a sacrifice after all.

Next we learn “Obeying God's will is like a merchant searching for fine pearls; when he finds one truly perfect pearl, he's willing to sell all he has to possess it.” Here the discovery in not accidental. Pearls were prized more than gold in Jesus' time. Here is a jewel you didn't have to cut or shape. It's a perfect sphere, crafted by God himself, so to speak. When you are doing God's will, you will discover it's more beautiful than you imagined. You will let go of all the other inferior things in this world just to enjoy it.

Finally, we see that “Following the good and loving will of God is like a net that draws in all kinds of fish, good and bad.” Some may be disturbed by the part about the angels separating the good and the wicked at the last judgment. But that misses the point. We don't do the judging; we're the net. Our job is to draw in everyone, not pronounce judgment on them. This shows that Jesus knew there would be scoundrels in the church. “Don't worry,” he is saying, “I'll sort them out later. You concentrate on inviting all and sundry into God's kingdom.”

Each of these parables is about choosing. Because you have to choose to live in harmony with God's will. The farmer chooses to sow the mustard seed. The cook chooses to use the yeast. The buyer chooses to sell all in order to buy the field or pursue the best pearl. The fisherman chooses to throw the net. We can choose to live within God's will or outside it.

Gavin De Becker is the nation's premier security expert. His company has been a consultant to stars harassed by stalkers, companies worried about vengeful ex-employees, and even the Secret Service evaluating possible assassins. His firm quantifies the risk factors involved in potentially dangerous situations. Their research allows them to weigh whether the crank who wrote the threatening letter is just blowing off steam or is really capable of violence. This research, for De Becker, began when he was just a child.

His mother was a heroin addict. He remembers the night she shot his stepfather and then fussed and cooed over her victim while awaiting the ambulance...and the cops. He says when he tells his story to inmates, they say that their childhoods were the same as his. Then they wonder how he ended up so successful while they are incarcerated.

The answer, he says, is choice. De Becker learned to read his mother's moods to better protect himself and his little sister. They hid that night before their mother's actions escalated. Then he chose to use the skills he picked up in his nightmarish childhood to spare others from facing violence. Instead of punishing the world for the traumas he received, he chose to turn what was bad in his life into something that benefited others.

David Kaczynski was in his youth almost as eccentric as his brother. David lived in a hole he had dug rather than in an isolated one room cabin as his older sibling had. But David abandoned that life, married and became a social worker. When newspapers published the Unibomber's manifesto, David read it with growing dread. The rantings sounded very much like those of his brother, Ted. In what must have been one of the most wrenching moral choices ever thrust on anyone, David contacted the FBI and drew their attention to his soon-to-be-infamous brother. Not only did David not turn out to be like his brother, he instead became a man capable of the rarest form of moral courage.

There is one last type of choice in today's readings. In our passage from Romans the apostle Paul says that God has chosen us. I'm not going to get into the whole question of predestination here except to say that when one looks back on one's life, things look predestined. If I hadn't accepted an offer from a radio station in the Keys and moved here, and the church I attended wasn't sharing their priest with a church on another island, and if that priest hadn't let those leading Morning Prayer on the Sundays she wasn't there preach their own sermons, and if that priest hadn't encouraged me to become a lay preacher, and if, after announcing she was leaving, a founding member of our parish hadn't asked about me replacing her, and if that priest hadn't remembered the unusual path to priesthood provided for in Canon 9 of the church...well, I wouldn't be where I am today. Think of the chain of seeming happenstances that led you into your profession, or to meeting your spouse, or a best friend, or to discover a great talent. It almost seems as if someone caused these things to work out just so, doesn't it?

“All things work together for the good of those who love God,” says Paul. Even the bad things? Yes. Many people are safe thanks indirectly to Gavin De Becker's unstable mother. So does God engineer the bad things in our lives? No. But even our bad choices and those of people around us cannot derail his loving will. He will use whatever materials we provide to save us, just as he used our execution of his son to redeem us.

God's will is not to damn us but to vindicate us. His will is to restore us to the loving image we see in his son, Jesus. To that end he gives us his Spirit to pray for us, the divine in us connecting to the divine above us. And he sent his son, who by rights should condemn us for the way we have misused God's gifts and especially how we treated him, but who instead intercedes with his Father on our behalf.

Our choice is whether to conform to God's loving will for us or to reject it, to cooperate in reconciling the world to him or to destroy it, to buy the pearl of great price or let that opportunity for joy slip through our fingers. The choice is ours. Choose wisely.

Originally preached on July 28, 2002. It has been revised and updated.