The Gift of Eyes to See
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
This week’s lectionary texts are an embarrassment of riches. In the gospel reading, we sojourn for the third successive week in Matthew 13, which deals exclusively with Jesus’ kingdom parables. Two weeks ago we heard both Jesus’ well-known parable of the sower and his private explanation of it to the disciples, though the lectionary leaves out Jesus’ uncomfortable words about why he speaks in parables. Last week we heard his parable of the wheat and the weeds/tares and his subsequent private explanation to his disciples later in the chapter. This week we get all the other kingdom parables, two of which (the parable of the mustard seed and the yeast hidden in a batch of dough) are told to the crowds, while the other three (the treasure hidden in a field, the pearl of great price, and the dragnet) are told privately to the disciples.
This reminder is necessary because if we simply hear the five parables read in rapid succession this week without the surrounding context, the final question Jesus poses about whether they have understood all of this (and their affirmative answer) sounds like it’s being asked of the crowd (the only “they” identified in the gospel text for this Sunday), when in fact it’s being asked of the disciples. And the only reason they can answer “yes” is not because they have figured it all out, but because the mysteries of the kingdom have been revealed to them and not to the crowds (Matt 13:11).
Contrary to what many of us have been told, the parables serve not as quaint, earthy illustrations Jesus uses when he speaks to the common people of his day as an aid to understanding; instead, Jesus insists the parables (like the kingdom itself) are cloaked in mystery and one must be given ears to hear and eyes to see this in-breaking kingdom. Once we embrace Jesus’ uncomfortable reason for teaching in parables (rather than being embarrassed by it and leaving it out altogether), space opens up for these parables to be heard differently. Two of them speak of things hidden: the treasure, which once found is everything; and the yeast, the presence of which is largely invisible but the effect of which is not. The mustard seed also looks like nothing of account by worldly standards, yet over time it more than serves its purpose. The pearl of great price echoes the treasure parable: once we have been given eyes to see the kingdom for what it is, this becomes our greatest passion. And similarly, the dragnet parable echoes the wheat/tares parable in its warning not to be too hasty to sort out who is and isn’t part of this kingdom because things are not always what they seem by human standards or the wisdom of the world. According to Jesus, more is always going on than what human eyes can see.
This notion ties in well with the epistle reading for this week. Here in this climactic section of the first half of Romans, which the lectionary has been building toward for weeks, Paul helps us see the big picture of what God is up to, what God’s mission is in the world. Leading up to our reading for this Sunday, Paul expounds on how the whole creation is eagerly waiting for humans to be fully liberated and become who we were created to be, and until that time, the creation groans with labor pains. The Spirit is at work transfiguring the tarnished image of God into the image of Christ, but that renewal will not be completed before the resurrection of our bodies at the consummation. In this time between the times the church exists as what Paul calls the “first fruits” of the Spirit’s work, which gives us reason to wait with patient hope.
During this time we groan, the created order groans, and the Spirit groans for us and within us as the Spirit intercedes for us beyond words. Given what God has done in Christ, our hope and faith are grounded in God’s work, God’s promises, God’s trustworthy character to bring to fruition the good work God has begun in us and the rest of creation, which groans, as we do, for the final consummation of God’s work of setting all things right. But until then, empowered by the Spirit, we live with the tension of serving as imperfect signposts pointing to something of God’s present good reign as witnesses to what God desires for all of God’s creation.
It is within this overview of Paul’s vision of God’s mission that he offers this Sunday’s climactic and powerful word of hope, which may be the most powerful word of hope in all of Paul’s writings if not the whole New Testament. In piling up these rhetorical questions beginning in 8:31, and by listing all the powers at the close of the chapter that we could easily imagine might indeed be able to separate us from the love of God, Paul brings to a resounding crescendo the confident affirmation, rooted in God’s character and God’s work in Christ, that nothing in all creation can ultimately undermine the “yes” God speaks in and through Jesus Christ. In Christ God has revealed Godself to be utterly for us and so nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This Triune God creates out of love, redeems out of love, and sanctifies out of love, all because this particular God who is revealed is love.
Paul’s confident affirmation carries with it no small measure of credibility because he himself knows from experience what it is like to face hardship, distress, persecution, and peril. Indeed, he can tell the church at Corinth that the affliction he and his companions experienced in Asia left them “so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself” (2 Cor 1.8). Surely all of those gathering in congregations and parishes this week have found themselves at some point (or points) crushed and despairing of life itself. And who in our current time can be blamed for asking where God is today amid so much pain and suffering, so much anxiety and grief about the future of this planet, so much disheartening division and human cruelty, so much failure and scandal by leaders of nations and institutions-- including the church?
It’s easy to mouth pious phrases about “God being in control” as a tactic for assuring ourselves that everything will be okay. Yet the gospel of the kingdom reveals that the king of this kingdom reigns from a cross. Moreover, this king assures those who by God’s grace are willing to become flawed-but-still-useable citizens of this kingdom that they must expect to take up their own crosses. And as we do, much of what we encounter will seem (at least by our “natural” inclinations) to separate us from the love of God. But as Paul affirms earlier in Romans 6, through baptism we consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (6.11), just as the author of Colossians affirms that we have died and our life is hidden with Christ in God (Col 3.3).
So yes, there will be disappointments and setbacks, times of confusion and suffering, but God remains at work in the world and has promised not to abandon us, a promise that surely doesn’t guarantee we won’t at times feel abandoned by God, as even Jesus did on the cross. Things are never what they simply appear to be to human eyes and human wisdom.
God of grace and mercy, give us eyes to see and ears to hear.