The Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream and said: ‘Ask what you would like me to give you.’ Solomon replied: ‘…I am a very young man unskilled in leadership…Give your servant a heart to understand how to discern between good and evil, for who could govern this people of yours that is so great.’ It pleased the Lord that Solomon should have asked for this. 1 Kings 3: 5, 7-12
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field…The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls…The kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea that brings in a haul of all kinds…Have you understood all this? They said: ‘Yes.’ Matthew 13: 44-46
Today’s first reading has a message from which we could all benefit. After all, we have identified ourselves as disciples of Jesus, committed to his dream of bringing the reign of God into reality in our world. The kingdom/reign of God, which Jesus saw was his mission to usher into reality, was not intended to decorate the world but to transform it. Somehow, Solomon saw that the nation he was now expected to lead was as confused, divided and self-interested as all the nations around them. We all belong to a nation and a Church, both of which are contaminated by confusion, division and competition. Solomon sensed that the people, whom he had inherited from his father, King David, to lead, had been sullied by their history rather than enriched by it.
In dealing with the confusions and complexities of both our nation and our Church we can easily be seduced into boxing the people who challenge us into the categories of left, right and centre or conservative and radical. There might be benefit in pausing to reflect on our various histories at the familial, local, regional and national levels. Some of us have lived our lives on land stolen from the original inhabitants, who have been reduced to penury. The nations to which some of us belong have been built up on accumulated wealth that has accrued from practised injustice. As we look at our Church, what have we learned from the Medieval Crusades supported by the European Church to reclaim the Holy Land and from the Spanish Inquisition to rid the world of witches? In more recent decades have there not been people alienated from Church circles on account of their gender and sexual orientation? Have we learned anything from the prejudice we witnessed in action?
Surely, we have to learn to be the kind of disciples who not only point to inadequate and unjust social, political and economic structures but who attempt to find ways to challenge and change them. The paradox is that daring to be that kind of disciple will lead to our being labelled as radical, liberal or eccentric.
While today’s gospel-reading has Jesus giving his disciples three more analogies to the kingdom of heaven/the kingdom of God – it is like a treasure in a field, like a pearl of great value, like a dragnet full of many different things – it concludes with the joke of the disciples asserting that they had understood all seven parables of the kingdom that Jesus had just told them. Their false assertion linked them immediately into the ignorance of their religious leaders (scribes and Pharisees) and all those who had been deaf to Isaiah’s prophecy: “You will listen and listen again, but not understand, see and see again, but not perceive.” (Matthew 13: 14)
I suggest that Jesus had a smile on his face when he asked his disciples: “Have you understood all this?” He was probably aware that nobody could have grasped all that he had just shared. We would do well to note that, in the whole of Jesus’ sharing of what is included in chapter 13 of Matthew, there is not even a hint of moral teaching. Jesus gave no oration, said nothing about prayer and made no reference to the Law. He merely hinted that the learned religious leaders belonged to the “them” who were baffled by his parables. The picture implied in Jesus’ elaboration on “the kingdom of heaven and the reign of God” is one of a group of friends sitting around chatting and one of their number saying: “Jesus, how would you describe the kingdom of heaven?” After all, Jesus was clearly a good teller of stories, had creative flair, knew how to use his imagination and would have known what poetic licence was. Having given seven metaphors, he might well have looked at the group and exclaimed: “I bet all of that made complete sense to you!” That surely is an invitation to us to put our imaginations to work on his seven analogies of the kingdom/reign of God.
As we explore these analogies, we might discover that the kingdom of God is to be experienced in the ordinary, everyday and, even, the nuisance-value stuff of life. It can catch us by surprise and subvert us to go in an unexpected direction. It can also be a source of nourishment and shelter.
There are surprises even in the three analogies we hear Jesus using in today’s gospel-reading: “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field.” The person who finds it, buries it again and then, with great joy, sells everything he/she owns in order to buy the whole field. Have you ever met anyone who, with joy, sells up totally? And why would anyone rebury the new-found treasure and not take it and run? Perhaps, the kingdom is not like a treasure but rather like the change that finding a treasure can do to the person who finds it. He/she can generously share it, approach each day with a heart full of gratitude, be sensitive to those who are less fortunate. The kingdom of heaven is also like a dragnet that brings in a varied haul. Isn’t there something about the kingdom of heaven that suggests that there are some things that will not be at home there? However, Jesus made it clear in the analogy of the wheat and weeds sown together, that who and what will find a home in the kingdom is to be left to God to decide.
Maybe, too, each of the seven analogies gives us a pointer as to how we might respond when the kingdom of God (Jesus, God with us) becomes present to us.
This gospel-reading and the gospel-readings of the previous two Sundays invite us to imagine ourselves in a conversation with those around us about the metaphors of the kingdom of God listed in this chapter of Matthew. I also wonder what would happen if the homilist invited us to share with one another what we make of Jesus’ seven analogies of the kingdom, and even to share our ignorance of their meaning.
Ultimately, if the readings we hear each Sunday are not nudging us towards contributing to transforming ourselves and our world and Church, we are wasting our time. Maybe we need to start by making Solomon’s prayer for wisdom our prayer.