Job opening: Seeking dynamic, skilled, hard-working, discerning, fit, clever, generous leaders.
Based on these parables: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52.
Video version available on YouTube HERE.
Language is a dynamic thing. Dynamic - the opposite of static and fixed. Each year the dictionary experts announce new words to be added, thus improving my odds for Bananagrams and Scrabble, two of my favorite games. A few interesting new words are being added to our common vocabulary. Words like:
Quaranteen- a portmanteau to describe a young person who is coming of age at this moment.
Quaranteam- another portmanteau to describe that select group of people in your bubble, perhaps your support network getting you through this time.
Doom scrolling- which means: going from news article to email update, from tweet to post, as an impending sense of doom washes over you.
Zumping- the new phenomenon of dumping your boyfriend or girlfriend on zoom. Yikes!
Like language, God is actively operating and growing and meeting new needs. God is dynamic, engaged in continuous and productive activity. In the several parables we just heard, God is about growth, discovery, creating, investing, supporting life, nourishing it. These are dynamic and active enterprises - filled with energy and action and undeniably productive.
Of the four distinct accounts of Jesus, Matthew’s Gospel favors the language of “kings” and “kingdoms.” The Jesus story opens by tracing Jesus’ ancestry through the kings of Israel and Judah. And three kings come from the East to adore this infant king. And King Herod, the violent and incompetent local earthly king, is threatened and wants to find and destroy the infant king that the three Eastern kings seek.
Matthew likes the language of kings and kingdoms, and uses the phrase “the kingdom of heaven” to express his ideas about God. Kingdom of heaven is a theological expression rather than a secular kingdom, or secular power base- which could be confusing to actual secular kings and leaders in powerful positions, especially ones as agitated, silly, and threatened as King Herod was reputed to be.
In Matthew’s worldview as an educated Jewish person who has committed his life to leading the new Jesus movement, heaven is not only a place where God dwells and people go after they die. Heaven for Matthew is a usual Jewish way to reverently refer to God without saying God’s name.
Matthew seeks to put into language what is difficult to describe - the dynamic action of God as we experience it as a part of God’s creation. The kingdom of heaven is God’s enterprise, one Jesus explains to us as an enterprise likened to a humble seed growing trees for nesting birds, or yeast leavening bread dough to feed hungry people, an enterprise of discovery- discovering treasure and selling everything to acquire it. An enterprise of discerning the value of a pearl and investing in it, an enterprise of hard back-breaking effort, casting out nets of heavy rope, then pulling them back in with all that you’ve got, and deciding which fish to keep, and which to toss back.
Jesus is explaining the God enterprise to his followers, the very people who will lead it, who have been called and who will choose to step up and lead people in the ongoing dynamic work of God to redeem a broken world and bring it to full flourishing.
This enterprise still needs leaders, and quite frankly, this enterprise needs leaders like you and me. A dynamic enterprise needs dynamic, skilled, hard-working, discerning, fit, clever, generous, leadership. Regular people who are willing to lead an extraordinary enterprise, leaders who will invest, decide, be intelligent with the work entrusted to us by Jesus, and his first leadership team, and all those who have led this enterprise since that day when Matthew put his reed pen to papyrus and wrote down these parables, which call us as Jesus’ followers to step up and lead.
Many of us are accustomed to acknowledging God’s presence, to thanking God for our food, our family and friends, and the other blessings of this life, yet we may feel unprepared to step up and lead this enterprise with God. We get the part about acknowledging God, yet we may be reticent to claim leading with God. We may be worried that we are not qualified, that we are not expert enough in the stuff of God. (Isn’t that what ordained ministers are for?) Which perhaps is why Jesus gives us a variety of ways to understand that we are all fit to lead this kingdom, we are not the kingdom itself, we are the ones sowing it, mixing it, discovering it, recognizing its value, hauling in its bounty and goodness.
Our work as leaders is to sow kingdom seeds, to plant this God enterprise all around us and trust God to give the growth.
Our work is that of a typical ancient woman making bread in her home- she has skill and experience, likely passed down to her through the generations of women who baked leavened bread before her, she has patience, understands leavening and timing and how much wood to put in her oven to get it to the right heat. That’s us- mixing, kneading, waiting, kneading some more, stoking the fire and baking it, and then sharing it, once it cools down and the hungry people arrive home.
We work like a laborer who digs in the ground for a living and one lucky, sweaty day our shovel hits a buried treasure, and we go all in to buy that field.
We are the savvy merchants, with a sharp eye to recognize beauty, value, perfection in the pearl, taking a risk to invest because we know how precious and fine this God enterprise is.
We are the fishermen working the nets of God’s enterprise, trusting that the strong net will hold, putting our own strong backs into it, bringing in an abundant catch and keeping what we want to eat or sell, and tossing back the ones that don’t meet our standards for good seafood, or need more time to grow.
As leaders our enterprise will vary- some days we are planting seeds, other days kneading in the yeast, some times digging in a field, other times scrutinizing a gem, some times pulling in the nets. The word enterprise itself points to the prize, it is rooted in words that meant to take something in your hands, to seize a prize, a goal. Most of us have some experience taking some new effort in our hands and aiming for an ambitious goal. These enterprises can be consuming, in ways that both drain us and give us life. Building a piece of furniture, starting a business, committing to an adventure, enrolling in a new program, becoming a parent, starting a foundation, all of these enterprises can be satisfying, even thrilling, and will cost us something. When you commit to such an enterprise, you step up and do what that commitment requires to the best of your abilities, seeking coaching from mentors, learning lessons along the way that you can share to coach others.
The kingdom of heaven, this activity of God in our world, is such an enterprise. It is not a static place, a destination like Disneyland or the beach - some place to which we are eager to arrive and enjoy. It is an enterprise, a thing in the making, an active re-infiltrating of God’s grace throughout Creation, a movement, a re-energizing and re-enlivening of all that is valuable, nourishing, safe, holy, and beautiful within us and around us.
This enterprise needs leaders. Leaders who are willing to plant humble seeds,
To mix in some yeast and knead the dough to feed a hungry people.
This enterprise needs leaders who will be so savvy, so clever, that when their shovel hits treasure in the field, they will gladly trade in their belongings for that property.
Leaders who will recognize the value of a fine pearl and invest in it, who are strong enough to pull in nets full of fish, leaders discerning enough to know which fish to keep, and wish to throw back into the sea.
This enterprise needs leaders like you, and like me. A dynamic kingdom of heaven enterprise needs dynamic leadership from us. You have already been chosen to lead this enterprise, with many others, with the ongoing coaching of the Holy Spirit through prayer and the development of your wisdom. You have been promoted to lead, to learn what you must learn so that you can step up and lead this enterprise into its fullness. You have been chosen to bring about, with all of your gifts of body, mind and soul, this energizing enterprise of God’s activity redeeming our lives, our families, our communities, our world. May you choose to step up, to re-commit to this enterprise to which you have been called through your baptism, and be all about God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
