July 26, 2026 Sermon -- Pastor Becky Piper [Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52]

The Holy Gospel according to Matthew, the thirteenth chapter.

Jesus put before the crowds another parable.

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field.

It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown, it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.

He told them another parable.

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and re-buried, then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Again the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls.

On finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

Again the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind.

When it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets, and threw out the bad.

So it will be at the end of the age.

The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into the furnace of fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Have you understood all this?

They answered, Yes.

And he said to them, Therefore, every scribe who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.

This is the gospel of our Lord.

You may be seated.

From the one who was, is, and is to come.

Amen.

I always wonder when Jesus asks that question, do you understand this?

If they would say, No, we don't, if maybe then he would go deeper into what he means when he talks in these parables and in these stories.

Because there are times that he does explain them to a certain group of people, and other times he's left them to the listeners to figure out what their meaning might be or why he's telling those stories.

Well, I often think about small things that become overlooked.

Maybe it's a small person, small in age, a young person who thinks, you know what, why do adults overlook me?

I have things that I know, I have ideas and I'm creative.

And sometimes young people feel like adults overlook them.

In the same way, there might be somebody who says, Well, you know what?

When you get older, sometimes people overlook you too.

If you ever talk to somebody who's later in life and applying for a new job, you know the nervousness that happens because they wonder, will they think, well, we're looking for somebody younger.

They too may feel like they're overlooked.

Other times it's being physically smaller in stature.

When somebody's thinking, well, I know I'm not even five feet tall, but I'm an adult, and it feels like people are patting me on the head and thinking that I can't do anything, and yet here I am, strong and mighty in what I do.

There are times that those who are overlooked or things that are small, they can have deep meaning and be very surprising.

Just like Jesus's parables.

These parables that come at us almost in rapid fire.

It's almost as if this grouping of parables is made for our generation that may have a shorter attention span.

You don't have to worry about a plot line or character development.

Jesus will tell one example and then another and go back and forth, rapid fire through them.

And yet, there are things within these parables that Jesus tells that are unexpected and surprising, and there's some oddities in the midst of them.

I know if I were to write something like this back in creative writing for my high school English teacher, she would give it back to me and say, Too much.

Pick one theme and draw it out.

It feels like you don't know what you're talking about, so you're going from one to the other, to the other, to the other.

So maybe if I said, Well, this is what Jesus said, maybe she'd be like, okay, then let me change that.

Well, we'll give you an A then.

But we look through these oddities of these parables that Jesus tells.

And if you spend a moment with them and think through them, it's not that we may become all the answers to it and figure them all out because there's always some mystery behind what Jesus has to say.

This mustard seed, that tiny little symbol of who God can be in our world, that we are told becomes a giant shrub, a giant tree where the birds of the air nest in it.

But the mustard seed, the mustard shrub was a weed that farmers wanted to get out of their fields.

And so it seems like this wonderful story of something small being something mighty.

And then it's thinking, what are you talking about, Jesus, when you compare the kingdom of God to a mustard seed?

The kingdom of God is like that woman whose hands are in the dough and she's making all that leavened bread.

And yet leavened bread is not religious bread.

It's not unleavened bread.

And it's not the lovely little jar of yeast that she goes to to leaven the bread.

No, it's spoiled chunks of bread that have been set aside that she would bring in to leaven the rest of the bread.

The kingdom of heaven is like that.

I wonder what Jesus is really getting at.

The kingdom of heaven is like the man who goes and finds a treasure in a field and then he reburies it?

And then he goes and he sells everything and he buys the field.

So whose field was he digging in that he found the treasure in?

That's one I've never thought about before.

Like, what is he doing?

And how is the kingdom of heaven like that?

The kingdom of heaven is like that pearl merchant who finds that one and sells everything else so they can get that one.

Well, to me, that sounds a bit like letting go of all the other sheep and going to find the one because that one matters.

The kingdom of heaven is like the net that's being thrown out, and you catch all the great fill, but then it's the good and also all the other stuff that's in there, and you have to sort it out and figure it out.

All of these parables, these stories about what the kingdom of heaven are like, if I dig into them, I feel like I have more questions than I have answers to these parables that Jesus tells.

Someone has said that this section in Matthew is like a mountain of metaphors, one stacked on top of the other with all these different layers that if you are to pull them apart, you may not know everything that's happening.

There's a bit of ambiguity within these stories, but maybe that is part of Jesus' point.

And maybe though the ones who are listening who are asked, do you understand this?

and they say yes, maybe they're not being honest with their response.

Or maybe it's just me who doesn't know what in the world Jesus is talking about.

That could be it too.

Jesus uses these short stories in these parables specifically because they have so many layers and meanings to them.

There is ambiguity and mystery because there's some mystery as to how God works in this world.

The parables do not always completely explain the things we may want them to explain, and yet what they do is open our eyes to the world that is filled with good and with bad, to a world that is filled with ambiguity and sometimes with answers, to a world that is filled with ordinary common things that sometimes can do extraordinary things, just like the kingdom of heaven.

Maybe Jesus telling these stories about God being compared to common things is that reminder that God shows up in the ordinariness of life, that Jesus is drawing our attention to that.

It doesn't always have to be some large spectacular event, that sometimes it's those small, unexpected things that surprise us and remind us that God is here and we are not alone.

Because when you are overlooked in this world and in your day-to-day life, you draw a lot of meaning from knowing that God knows who you are and calls you a beloved one.

When others may look at something and consider it not very great, and yet that small thing can bring great change.

How much hope fills us up knowing that God is at work even in the small and everyday things.

You see, the kingdom of God is like a lot of things because the kingdom of God is all around us.

It's in the extraordinary moments and it's in those ordinary tedious moments.

It's in the times where we're filled with ambiguity and not being sure if what we're doing is the right thing or the wrong thing, and yet we move forward because we know that God shows up all around us because we live in the kingdom of God.

And in this kingdom of God, we meet the human and we meet the divine.

Think about the gift of Christ given to us.

The gift of Christ, the human and the divine brought together to live among us and to lead the way.

We are called Christ's beloved, we are marked with the cross of Christ to go about the common and the everyday and the extraordinary moments of our day.

And God is showing us the way.

And when we feel lost or overcome, the Spirit intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words.

The Spirit intercedes for us.

And when we think that we are alone and God is far away, we are reminded that the Word of God is very near to our hearts and close to us.

All of that within the Word of God, within Scripture, given to us as a gift and a guide to move us along the way.

The kingdom of God is like a lot of things.

You are part of the kingdom of God.

So the kingdom of God is a lot like each and every one of you.

And you are called to go out and to share that kingdom news with those who desperately need to know that God is near to them.

Amen.