How does the kingdom of God look like?
A new vicar in a small town in Gloucester spent the first four days making personal visits to each of the members of his Congregation, inviting them to come to his first service.
The following Sunday, the church was all but empty. Accordingly, the vicar placed a notice in the local newspapers, stating that because the church was dead, it is everyone’s duty to give it a decent Christian burial. The funeral would be held the following Sunday afternoon, the notice stated.
Morbidly curious, a large crowd turned out for the “funeral.” In front of the pulpit, they saw a closed coffin, smothered with flowers. After the vicar delivered the eulogy, he opened the coffin and invited his congregation to come forward and pay their final respects to their dead church.
Filled with curiosity as to what would represent the corpse of a “dead church”, all the people lined up to look into the coffin. Each “mourner” peeped into the coffin then quickly turned away with a guilty, sheepish look.
In the coffin, tilted at the correct angle, was a large mirror!
Why does Jesus speak in parables?
From a teaching point of view, it doesn’t make any sense. We heard a parable that wasn’t even understood by his own disciples. They actually come to him in puzzlement and ask him: “Why do you speak to them in parables?” In other words, they are asking: “Why would someone speak in a way that is unintelligible to his audience?” It sounds rather confusing and amazingly contradictory. Can you imagine a teacher who would teach maths in the most possible cryptic way in order to confuse his students instead of leading them to a better comprehension of it. His main task would be to make simple what it is complicated, not the other way around. It sounds rather ridiculous to our ears and very much against the common sense.
Now what if, as a scientist would do, I’m trying to explain the origin of the entire universe but don’t have the vocabulary for it. Stephen Hawking, for instance, is a very good example of that. The theory of the black holes was something he had in mind, his original intuition. Unfortunately nobody thought of it before, so that he had to make up concepts and images to explain something new, something that no one never thought of before. He had to make up words and invent a new vocabulary for it in order to make sense to other people of something extraordinary new. What He was trying to say would actually represent what in science they may call a paradigm shift, and we may call a revolutionary change -in more simple words.
Why then Jesus speaks in parables? Because what he proclaims is the kingdom of God. How does the kingdom of God look like? That’s his question. He knows that the kingdom of God He announces is more than good teaching or a set of wise advices about how to be a good person. It contains a new ethos, but it actually overcomes all that has been said before about it. The truth Jesus wants us to receive is hugely bigger that our human understanding and capacity of comprehension. And this is perhaps why he uses parables. Through parables he gives us a hint into what and how the kingdom of God looks like. It’s God’s visions what Jesus longs to transmit to us, but he feels that lack of vocabulary for it, not just to describe it, but to communicate it as a whole. Just think, for example, of the series of short parables and images that Jesus uses to give us glimpses of the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. The kingdom of God is like a yeast, or like a treasure hidden in a field, like a merchant in search of fine pearls, like a net thrown into the sea ad caught fish of every kind. They are amazing parables and imagines of the kingdom of God, but never quite define it completely.
The kingdom of God is like…
Today we heard the parable of sower, a powerful parable. Jesus seems to look at the world as a limitless field and tells us God’s sowing of his word would impact and transform our lives according to our responses to it.
If the kingdom of God is a revolutionary change brought to our lives, then it is transformative change that would be very much about a new way of living our lives. It would include a vision of the world as well as an ethos that would change our way of being a community and reshape our lives. It would a way of finding meaning and a place in this world, and essentially of learning how to be the family of God and brothers and sisters to each other. This is perhaps the revolutionary change Jesus talks about through the parable of the sower. Jesus brings to us a new sense of brotherhood.
Now where do I get that from this parable? For each thing Jesus says it always good to look at the context in which his parables happen to be said. Just a few verses before Jesus tells us this parable, something happened. His mother and his brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to him. And when someone, tells him about them, he replies quite harshly: “Here are my mother and brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother”. Is is actually rejecting his mother, or refusing to recognize his own family? No, He takes advantage of the situation to give us a glimpse of how the kingdom of God looks like, and tells us the parable of the sower.
Interestingly this parable challenges its audience on a life/death level. It doesn’t seem to be a middle ground for the sowing of God’s word: it rather bears fruit or dies. Also, we realise how provocative was Jesus’ way of proclaiming the gospel. The gospel actually ends up with: “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” The parable of the sower challenges us on a very deep level: “Do we preach and witness a gospel of good manners and good behavior as the highest values of our community or we provocatively live according to Jesus’ revolutionary message of love for the enemy, forgiveness and solidarity towards the poor and the needy?” When we look at our Church and Congregation, and Local community do we see a coffin with a dead church in it or a sign of the kingdom of God in living worship and action? In our life’s blueprint -as Martin Luther King would call it- do we wager our lives on money, power success or have a solid commitment to beauty, love and justice?
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