Lectionary: Matthew 13 | July 26, 2026

Well, good morning.

We are truly blessed this morning to have the Reverend Doctor, the Reverend Canon Doctor, Mary Hayes.

How about Mary?

Just Mary is also with us this morning to be preaching for us.

Many of you know Mary from just being around here, or from Turo, or from one of the other countless number of Anglican churches that Mary has served at over the years.

But um if you haven't met Mary, I would encourage you after the service to introduce yourself.

Mary is such a lovely person and has been such a blessing to us here at Trinity.

Mary will be preaching for us this morning.

Just wanted to introduce her for the um for the newer folk who have been coming around over the past couple weeks.

Again, such a blessing to have Mary here.

So I'll hand it over to you.

Thank you, Mary.

And I didn't even pay him to say all that.

Thanks a lot.

I'm glad to be here.

As always, I'm glad to be here.

And I know a lot of you and would love to meet the others.

This morning begins Mark's part three of three sermons on the parables, parables of the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus is teaching the crowds, and you'll remember his disciples in separate uh gatherings, what life is meant to look like.

What it looks like to live, as Dallas Willard puts it, within the range of God's effective will, the kingdom of God.

Any place where what God wants done is actually done.

The kingdom is an active present reality where God reigns supreme, that followers can experience and participate in right now.

And Jesus tells us some surprising, counterintuitive things about this kingdom and this realm in the parables we've been hearing.

You'll remember two weeks ago the parable of the sower, right?

Where seed goes out everywhere, and those who receive the seed of God's word and let it sink down deep into their hearts have they might begin with insignificant small lives, but they become hugely fruitful.

30, 60, 100fold fruitful.

And then last week, the parable, the weeds, the weeds and the tares, or um yeah, uh wheat and weeds, wheat and tears, sorry, um, describes good and bad growing up together.

And the disciples want to know, do we shall we pull up the bad?

And Jesus says, no, you'll remember.

Because in the beginning, wheat and tares, good and bad look the same.

And so you might pull up something really good by mistake, like that jerk over there that drives you crazy, that you kind of like to be rid of, might end up being God's big person for to do a mighty things.

So then today we finish up this long discourse of parables with five parables.

Now, don't worry, they're short.

Um, I'm not gonna preach five times longer.

Now, two of these parables are addressed to the crowd and three of them to the disciples.

These ones who are pushing in to grasp exactly what it looks like to be a part of God's big plan.

So let's pray and dig in.

Lord Jesus, we thank you that you've opened your kingdom, your ways, your will to us, and that we get to experience and live within it.

Would you make that a deeper reality for us this morning as we look at these parables you told to the crowds and to your beloved disciples?

May we be like them, eager to learn from you.

In Christ's name.

Amen.

A number of years ago, a good friend of mine went to the Holy Land to visit her husband who'd been studying for many months near Jerusalem.

She went in the spring because she wanted to see the Judean desert blossom.

I couldn't wait to hear how the trip went.

So many people I knew had gone to the Holy Land.

I hadn't gone yet, and they would come back changed, right?

They just had some, you know, earth-shattering experience of the reality of Jesus.

So I wanted to hear what had happened to her.

Well, this trip changed her too, but in an unexpected way.

Not in the way I thought would happen.

She told me her faith was really challenged.

She wondered even if she still believed.

And this is a woman who'd been a deeply devoted disciple for many, many years, really a mentor of some sort for me.

I just have trouble believing that the creator's huge big plan was centered there, she told me.

It was so nondescript, so desolate, so small, it just doesn't make sense.

Like Podunk and God of the Universe, it doesn't go together.

Now, I'm sure Jesus wasn't at all surprised by her reaction.

Right?

He'd heard it before.

Some of you remember that.

Remember Nathaniel, one of Jesus' disciples?

Philip, his friend, comes to him and says, We found the Messiah.

He's from Nazareth.

You remember what Nathaniel's response was?

Nazareth.

Can anything good come from Nazareth?

So, like, Nathaniel was like my friend.

What?

Can anything good?

Jesus wants to know in these parables that God's kingdom doesn't fit our normal expectations of what greatness looks like.

He could be speaking to my friend with the first two parables in our passage today.

First, Jesus tells the crowd to consider the mustard seed.

Remember?

It's so small, forgettable.

You know, like a little tiny jar of spice jar could fill bunches of them, right?

It's not really worth anything until it's planted.

And then it grows up, not to a tree really, but to a big bush, higher than a tall man, you know, big and bushy, enough to shelter birds' nests.

I love how Eugene Peterson translates it into a picture that's more common for us.

He compares it, he says, the kingdom of heaven is like an acorn, right?

An acorn that grows into a huge tree.

Now, our house in Winchester is surrounded by oak trees.

We have two great tall oak trees that hold a swing set between them.

Another two tall, big, straight oak trees hold a hammock.

And all around, our house is shady.

You know, sometimes it's hard to grow things, but it's shady, right?

And we will never run out of firewood, just saying.

But think too of what an oak tree does.

You know, build bureaus, tables, chairs, floors, all come from that huge oak tree that starts.

Like those acorns that you stomp on in the fall.

That's what the kingdom is like.

Something tiny, insignificant, becomes huge, not just huge, but full of purpose, right?

Then he gives another, the crowd, another example.

He often does this, right?

Speaks in parallels.

And this one, a woman takes leaven and works it into three measures of flour until the whole thing is leavened.

Now, in those days, leaven didn't come in a little package, right, that you poured into lukewarm water with the right amount of sugar and whatever.

I'm not, I used to bake bread, but that's long gone.

In those days, leaven was a lump of unused dough.

So, like gray, globby, ugly.

You wouldn't think it was worth anything except to be thrown out.

But she takes that little ugly lump and works it in into enough flour to bake bread for hundreds of people, to nourish hundreds of people with that ugly little glop.

That's us guys.

You know, individually and corporately, our piddly, maybe ugly, gloppy little lives.

When the kingdom comes, we become huge and life-giving, giving life to many more people than imaginable.

Life-giving treasures out of a little glob.

Jesus hopes that these stories will wet the appetite of the crowds who are eager to hear him because he's this great speaker, but will they have their appetites wetted, their thirst wetted so that they want more?

They'll catch a glimpse.

Will they catch a glimpse of God's kingdom?

Will they long for their own little lives to grow into something big and nourishing?

Do those stories do that for you?

The scene changes then for the next three parables.

Now Jesus is alone with his disciples, with those who are following him, pursuing life in God's kingdom.

Jesus wants them to understand what they are getting themselves into, right?

So as they, if they connect their lives to his, this is what's going to happen, living within God's kingdom.

So he says, the kingdom of God is like finding treasure in a field.

And the kingdom of God is finding that one pearl worth more than anything the merchant has seen before.

First a man finds hidden treasure.

He finds treasure in a field, covers it up, and races in his joy, goes, sells everything he has to buy the field.

I think it would be something today like finding farmland and discovering, and you're about to buy it, but you discover then that it's hiding underneath it rare earth metals.

Right?

And you can't wait to sell it.

You're so excited.

You want to do it fast before anyone else buys it up, right?

You jump and do whatever it takes, sell off your portfolio, whatever.

Because why?

Because you know you're gonna have so much more than whatever it costs.

No matter how you know scary it was to sell everything, you're gonna be better off.

I think so many times, when we hear that the kingdom of God costs everything, we go, oh no.

I don't know, maybe that's just me, right?

I think, what is God gonna make me give up?

How am I gonna do that?

All right, I'll grit my teeth.

I know it's good for me, like bad tasting medicine.

But that's not what happens here.

Did you notice?

In his joy, he can't wait to sell everything.

He is eager to sell everything, he knows it's gonna be worth it.

And just in case the disciples don't get the point, which frankly they usually don't, he tells another parable.

A merchant is looking for fine pearls.

And finally, he finds that one that is beyond compare.

He sells all his littler pearls to get this one amazing gem.

Again, he gives up a lot.

It's scary, maybe, jumping in a pool when you're not sure you can swim.

But there's no sense that the man begrudges having to sell it.

He can't wait to get the treasure of that one perfect pearl.

The kingdom of heaven is like that, Jesus is saying.

It costs a lot.

It actually costs everything, but it's totally worth the price.

And if we grasp it instead of being afraid and holding on tight, we will race to give everything away, whatever is demanded of us by God, because we know that what we receive back from God will be far better, far richer than we can imagine.

Finally, one last story.

Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, and the net pulls in every kind of fish.

And once the net is drawn to the shore, they'll be sorted out.

The good, notice the good of all kinds, all shapes, all sizes, the ugly ones, the not so ugly ones, they'll be put into a container and the bad trashed.

In other words, God's people, the one God, the gospel draws in.

We should expect to see odd-looking, unexpected characters, right?

Some people that you and I might not choose to be a part of this big plan of God's.

Some of them, now of course, some of them really aren't on God's team, but God will take care of that.

You know, in the end, all things will be made right, Jesus says.

Those of us who follow Jesus shouldn't be afraid to welcome surprising folks.

People we might leave out or consider ineligible.

We don't know.

So we are looking at, we're a part of that big net.

And we want to make sure everyone who belongs is dragged in and put in the container.

And one last thing.

Once the disciples have heard all these things, all these parables, including the one we heard last week about the wheat and the weeds, and the one we heard the week before about the sower.

Once the disciples have heard it all, Jesus finishes up with a question.

I want to ask it a few.

Do you understand all this?

You're laughing.

Because you know what the disciples say?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, Rabbi, we understand.

They're looking for that A, right?

But frankly, you laughed because you probably agree with me.

They probably didn't.

You know, they didn't.

They got some of it.

That doesn't mean they didn't get anything, but they didn't really get it, at least if you read on in the Gospels and then on even into Acts, you see, well, they had a lot to learn.

So do we, right?

Doesn't mean we're not included.

But if they do, like if they dig down deep and seek to put these parables into action, seek to see their lives and lives of people around them as maybe insignificant now, but being grown by God into something big and nourishing, to see that it's so worthwhile to be a part of God's ways, God's realm, it's worth giving up anything to get it because it'll be so much better.

If they get that, they'll be like householders who bring out old and new treasures.

Or I love how Eugene Peterson puts it.

Then you see how every student well trained in God's kingdom is like the owner of a general store who can put his hands on anything you need, old or new, exactly when you need it.

Wouldn't you like to be that kind of person for God?

You know, able to put your hand on whatever's needed to offer to others who are hungry for God, or even aren't hungry yet, but will be.

Having access to all of God's treasures so that others can be blessed through you.

These parables draw us in.

They encourage us.

You know, small, insignificant, our small and insignificant lives, that doesn't mean they are small and insignificant, right?

Doesn't mean they don't have godly significance.

We're a small little church.

It doesn't mean that we can't be used by God for great things.

Right?

In God's hands, we become big even if we don't end up seeing the end of it.

And the kingdom is so good, so valuable, so wonderful to be a part of God's ways.

It's worth everything we can give it.

Everything.

Even if it seems hard or outlandish what we're being asked to do.

Jesus wants us to be householders, able to bring treasures old and new for the benefit of others.

To those inside and outside of God's kingdom right now, depending on what's needed.

You know, I needed these parables.

Like sometimes I think that God has me preach on particular Sundays, not for your good, but for mine.

You know, you get to the end of your life.

Most of you aren't so old, so you wouldn't understand this, but I look at my life and I think, like, it's so piddly.

Like I've sought many, many years to be God's person in a lot of different contexts.

So piddly.

Like, you know what?

And then I read this parable and I say, well, yeah, you might not see it.

But God's able to use, you know, my little my little tries, my little actions to bring benefit to lots more people than I might be able to see.

And every once in a while, I will admit, every once in a while, God gives me a pat on the back, but I meet someone, do you remember me?

No.

And then they talk about how something I said off-handedly changed their lives.

Like that's what God does with us, right?

And that's what God's inviting us into.

Like if we connect our lives with His, that's what we can be like individually and all together.

What would that be like if we really got that?

If we really live that way.

So I'm I'm turning over a new leaf, right?

And like when I feel insignificant.

Okay, God, you're in charge.

Do something big.

And I have to say, you know, I haven't sacrificed like my friend Bishop Ben Kwashi, Archbishop Ben Kwashi, whose like his wife was almost murdered because they were looking to murder him and whose family compound has been invaded by Boko Haram more than once.

I'm like, I haven't sacrificed like that, but I have sacrificed some.

Like I've given up time with my family, I've given up, well, I won't go through the list, but I've given up some things.

But you know what?

As I look back, every single one of those sacrifices has been totally worth it.

Like I've gotten so much more.

You may have had that experience too, right?

And and if you haven't, if you feel like you've sacrificed them, what good was that?

Like, remember you haven't seen the end yet.

You haven't seen what God is working in you and those around you by those sacrifices.

And then God's welcome of those peculiar people.

I'm learning.

Those people like who?

You know, I I those people that we call EGRs.

Extra grace required.

Okay, you you know what I'm talking about, huh?

Okay.

I was once sitting on my front porch with a friend of mine.

I said, I'm just so bad at EGRs.

She said, You are not.

She starts listing all these people.

I said, Oh, she's just like that.

Oh, I love that about her.

Oh, she he not really.

And then we just laughed because these were all people that were on her EGR list, right?

But they all belonged in that big net, right?

And I'm asking God for eyes to see that, with his eyes to see the people around me, whether or not they're comfortable for me, right, to throw my life into, right?

These parables teach us that it's worth it to dig in, to dig into God's ways, that insignificance versus God's kingdom power, costly versus God's benefits, and worth it to seek God so that we can be those who give treasure to others.

Let's stand and pray together.

Like as we begin, will you take a minute silently and ask God to show you one thing he wants you to remember from what we've talked about today.

One thing he wants you to know, to feel, or to do.

Better than we can understand or imagine.

Help them to take root in our lives deeply so that we can be used by you to benefit others, to bless others the way you do.

Let us know your kingdom power, your kingdom value in all that we do.

Individually, but also together as a church.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.