Matthew 13: 13-17, 31-33, 44-52
July 24, 2005
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
When I first laid eyes on the 1936 picture of the church’s Sunday school class hanging up on the third floor that captured Marjorie Choy, Clarence Chan, James Chuck, Stephen Yuen and others, I was impressed by the large number of students that we had—294 in attendance.
When Roger Tom was our archivist, he located the 1940 photograph of our church’s Baptist high school students, faculty, and trustees, again all lined up in front of the church building. This picture is hanging up in our Fellowship Hall. The quality of both these photographs mesmerized me because they were taken 65 years ago. Many people lined up in front of our building in full frontal view. And when you look twice at it, you would then notice that the church building and the rest of the street are distorted. Capturing the likeness of all the people was more important than the realism of the background.
Last month, on a bright and sunny day, we duplicated what our forefathers and foremothers have done decades ago. All lined up 6 rows deep, with the guidance from our own Don Fong and the professional expertise of Jon Covello, we captured 430 people on an 8 by 40 inch long portrait of the church family. All of our faces are in full frontal view but if you look twice, you would notice that our church building and the street are distorted.
As people of faith, we know that there are different ways of seeing the same thing. Jesus’ parables show us the Hebrew way of plunging below the surface of life to see God is at the heart of all things. The Hebrew way of knowing differs from the Greek way. The Greek way, which has come to dominate western culture, is the way of empirical observation and rational reflection. It comes down to the scientific method. But the Hebrew way is the way of telling a story. The Psalmist in 19:1 says, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.”
Jesus’ parables are short stories with powerful messages. They penetrate much deeper than any empirical understanding of them. When you interpret what you see with your heart instead of with only the scientific method, you see from the angle of how God sees it. Native Americans called this type of seeing as “looking twice.”
Five Parables
This morning Jesus is inviting us to use our imagination—to look twice—in order to recognize God’s presence in our lives. There is no other way for people of fact to become people of faith. Our New Testament lesson includes five parables of the kingdom of heaven.
Kingdom living is the central teaching of the gospels. Kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God does not refer to life after death. It is, instead, Jesus’ way of talking about life in the here and now, life lived in the present reality of the holy. This is life lived “as if” –as if God was already fully in charge of the world, as if sin and death and darkness were gone from the face of the earth.
We know that the world is still pretty messed up. But through the power of Pentecost, we are the resurrected Body of Christ in the world that Jesus calls us to be the “as if” people—the kingdom people—the ones living as if God’s wholeness and truth and justice are already realized.
The disciples back then had as much trouble as we in hearing and seeing what Jesus was talking about. So Jesus spoke in parables—imaging stories that invite us to look twice, to see the holy in the human, the miraculous in the mundane, the extraordinary in the ordinary. He talks about seeds and fishing nets, weeds and pearls. He takes his listeners to the kitchen and to the garden, to the wheat field and to the seashore. There in the most ordinary places of their lives, he shows them God. He invites them, and he invites us, to find buried treasure in the fields of our own living.
Maxie Dunham tells a story about William Randolph Hearst, the famous newspaper owner, viewing a painting that was just a copy. He wanted that painting and hired a detective to look for the original. When the detective returned, he had good news and bad news. The good news is that he had found the painting. The bad news is that he found it in one of Hearst’s own warehouses! Hearst had no idea that he already owned that which he desired. So often we look desperately for God, only to discover that God has always been present in the warehouses of our own experience.
Everyday Life
We seem to believe that God is found in this sanctuary. We come faithfully every week and worship God here thinking that this is where God is. But isn’t it interesting that there are very few incidents of Jesus praying and worshiping in the temple. The Psalmist says that the “heavens are telling the glory of God.”
The common theme among this series of parables is the surprise of the unexpected amidst everyday tasks. It is when we are planting a mustard seed or digging up a field or searching for pearls and fishing for fish that we discover that one seed has produced not the usually small bush but a huge tree, or the shock of a workman who knows every square inch of a field he has plowed for years but one day stumbles upon a great treasure in that familiar field. It’s when we are out shopping for that pearl at an off the beaten path jewelry store that we come across the most precious pearl of all or when we are out catching fish for dinner and come to realize that God is calling us to righteousness. When we are going about our everyday work is when we know God is with us.
Jesus is telling us that we find God not just in this historic sanctuary but the buried treasure of wholeness and goodness and truth is right in the fields of our daily living—right in the places where we keep our most valuable possessions.
Did you notice that about a week ago in the SF Chronicle, there was an article reporting of a study of more than 700 heart patients to test the medicinal power of prayer, showed that those who had people praying for them from a distance, and without their knowledge, were no less likely to suffer a major complication, end up back in the hospital or die. Basically, the study says strangers’ prayers don’t help the sick. That’s the Greek way of seeing life.
The researchers acknowledged that it was impossible to make any firm conclusions because of the difficulty of studying something like prayer. The Rev. Raymond Lawrence, director of pastoral care at New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York, disputed any suggestion that the study disproved the power of prayer.
Rev. Lawrence said, “Prayer can be and is helpful. But to think that you can research it is inconceivable to me. Prayer is presumably a way of addressing God, and there is no way to scientifically test God. God is not a subject to scientific research.” He’s talking about the Hebrew way of seeing life—looking twice at what we thought we saw.
The surprises that we see in the kingdom of heaven defy human expectations. The numbers don’t add up. The results are supernatural, and the discoveries are like winning the lottery when the odds are many million to one.
Jesus is telling us that in the everyday existence of our lives, we see surprises and successes in the face of overwhelming odds. When we live a life of faith, we see outrageous abundance every day. We see countless moments of grace that fill our lives—a new baby is born, families reuniting together, going out to lunch together. We see it whenever physical healing takes place after the medical community has declared someone’s case “hopeless.” We see it when individuals come to terms with painful realities that do not change despite fervent prayer and unwavering faith. We see it in God’s gift of Jesus Christ. Christian faith is based upon believing the impossible.
I never would have believed that someday our own daughter would finish seminary let alone to be installed as the Assistant Pastor of this church. I was surprised to hear from you that you would call a daughter to work with her father. Such extravagant decision is like the man who stumbles upon a treasure and buys the field or the merchant who sells all he had to buy that one precious pearl goes against the careful, calculating kind of living most of us have been taught to practice.
Jesus calls us to be faithful and diligent in our everyday pursuits. We are challenged to keep open our eyes, minds, and hearts, never knowing where or how or when God’s surprising grace will erupt amidst the ordinariness of life.
You left practicality and reason behind and surprised me that when it comes to looking twice at our everyday experiences, you acted “as if” the kingdom of heaven is here now. You did not automatically assume that there would be problems when a daughter works with her father in the ministry of our Lord! Jesus calls us to lives of faith and service that are shaped by the assurance of God’s glorious and abundant kingdom.
Kingdom of Heaven in All Creation
God’s kingdom is not just an individual reality but ultimately, it is the transformation of all creation into the very image and power of God. That happens only when we are willing to turn all of who we are, and all of what we have, and all of God that we possess into resources for the continuing work of creation—the work of giving birth to God’s reign in all corners and among all the creatures in the world.
This is the reason why the images of the kingdom of heaven found in the buried treasure and the pearl are intertwined with images of the mustard seed and the yeast. The kingdom is not only hidden in the ordinary stuff of life. The kingdom is also at work infiltrating and permeating and growing in many different ways. The kingdom is not only within us. It also grows through us if we trust God enough to fill us and use us.
Remember the “I Love Lucy” episode when Lucy decided that she was going to bake her own bread for dinner that night. And since she had never done so before, she found a recipe and was attempting to follow it. But at one point, she said to her friend, Ethel, “Boy, it wasn’t easy finding thirteen cakes of yeast!” Her friend Ethel replied that she thought that sounded like an awful lot of yeast for just one loaf of bread. When she looked at the recipe book, she discovered that a crumb was on the page and that the recipe didn’t call for thirteen cakes of yeast; it called just for three cakes. But Ethel and Lucy looked at each other and figured that since the cakes of yeast were rather small, that whether they used three or thirteen, it couldn’t make that much of a difference. So Lucy finished mixing up the dough and stuck it in the oven to bake. Some time later, Lucy and Ethel returned to the kitchen, and savored the smell of fresh bread coming from the oven. But then, when Lucy opened the oven door, an enormous loaf of bread started to emerge, and it kept coming and coming at her until finally Ethel had to race outside, grab a saw, and run back into the kitchen to save Lucy from being attacked by that never-ending loaf of bread.
Jesus tells of a woman who took yeast and mixed it in with flour to bake bread. This is ordinary work that we all do. But three measures of flour are huge—it’s close to ten gallons, enough to make 100 loaves of bread for a small village. It’s like Lucy’s enormous bread that kept coming and coming out of the oven.
The mustard seed is one of the tiniest seeds that we know. If you didn’t know it was a seed, you would think that it was a little speck of dirt. But the mustard seed grows and grows to become the greatest of shrubs and in fact becomes unbelievably a tree where birds can come to nest and make their home.
When we look twice at what Jesus has to say about the kingdom of heaven, it is finding surprises of joy and abundance in our everyday life. The kingdom of heaven is made known to us when we rid ourselves of the rational, scientific, and practical thinking and to trust God to help us do the unimaginable and believe that prayer does heal.
The kingdom of heaven is when everyone who is hungry can eat the abundance of bread that we have. The kingdom of heaven is when everyone, young and old, church kids and community kids, the strong and the weak, English-speaking and Chinese-speaking can all find shelter—a branch to build their nests to call home.
Seeing the kingdom of heaven is to look twice at the world and know that God is real and good. Look twice at our church family portrait and seeing the 430 people, we know that the kingdom of heaven is real at FCBC!
Let us pray.
Gracious Lord God, lead us to look twice at the world and know that the heavens are singing your glory and giving you praise. Show us that you are among us all the time by helping us trust you with the every essence of our lives. Thank you for the abundance of mercies and blessings that come from you. May we through this church, bear witness of faithfulness in the world that you have created. In Christ name, we pray. Amen.