The kingdom of God is....weird, Matthew 13:44-52

Matthew 13:44-52 (NRSV)

44 "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 

45 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; 46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. 

47 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; 48 when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. 49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

51 "Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes." 52 And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."

It seems to me sometimes that the teachings of the Bible have been discussed, debated, preached, and learned so often that we tend to forget that some of them are really just quite weird!  The string of sayings by Jesus here in Matthew 13: 44-52 are some pretty good examples.  Jesus uses the literary form of simile (this is like that) to describe and teach what the Kingdom of God is all about.  The problem is, the teaching leaves me feeling at least as confounded as when he began, and I imagine that the disciples were probably equally confused.

I suppose it might just be that Jesus was on an "off" day in his teaching - maybe there was a lot going on for him, he might not have slept, might have had to go rescue lost sheep, or might have been obsessing about those strange magi and shepherds whose image he can't get out of his mind.  So, perhaps Jesus just didn't have his second cup of coffee.

On the other hand, perhaps he is actually trying to confound us.  These images of the Kingdom of God are of course, images that seem nothing like the kingdoms of the world, and we know that Jesus was a messiah like no other.  He was no military revolutionary or benevolent monarch who would rule Palestine with justice and mercy.

Beyond the newness and strangeness of Jesus as Messiah, these sayings are just weird.  A man hears about a field with treasure and buys it "with joy."  A merchant sells all that he has for one pearl.  And fishermen catch a big haul of fish, bring them to the shore and sort out the good from the bad.

Flannery O'Connor once wrote, "you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you strange."  I believe that Jesus is painting some strange and abstract images for his disciples and for us.  The kingdom of God is weird, and it makes us strange.  To delve into our faith and to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest scripture we begin to see that Jesus is staking a radical claim for a new kind of living, and is staking a claim for a truly abundant, and strangely wonderful, life.

So, I hope that we all might experience the Kingdom of God today, in all its weird and wonderful qualities.

~The Rev. Peter M. Carey

Easter's Challenge to Empire (by N.T. Wright)

Monday, March 24, 2008

Easter's Challenge to Empire (by N.T. Wright)

Jesus came with a job to do, to complete the work to which Israel was called. This work, from the call of Abraham onwards, was to put the human race to rights, and so to put the whole creation to rights. As the gospel writers tell the story, this task was to be accomplished by Jesus bringing about the sovereign healing rule of the creator God. Jesus was addressing the question, "What might it look like if God was running this show?" And answering, "This is what it looks like: just watch." And then, "just listen." In what he did, and in the stories he told, Jesus was announcing and inaugurating what he referred to as "the kingdom of God," the long-awaited hope that the creator God would run the whole show, on earth as in heaven.

But the problem was, and is, that other people are still running the show. Other kingdoms, other power structures, have usurped the rule of the world's wise creator, and the forces of evil are exceedingly powerful and destructive. Jesus' task of inaugurating God's kingdom therefore necessarily led him to meet those forces in direct combat, to draw upon himself their full, dark fury so as to exhaust their power and make a way through to launch the creator's project of new creation despite them. That is one clue at least to the meaning of Jesus' crucifixion...

Read the rest HERE at the God's Politics Blog.

Dr. N.T. Wright is a New Testament theologian and the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England. He is the author of many books, including Surprised by Hope, and Evil and the Justice of God. This post is adapted from his lecture "Where is God in ‘The War on Terror?'".