Sunday, July 30, 2017

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 13:44-42
Does this gospel confuse you? Or do you just nod your head and agree with what Jesus is saying? It seems as though the people who were listening had no problem. Jesus said, “Do you understand?” and they answered, yes. And then Jesus makes the most confusing statement of all: “Then every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings forth from his storeroom both the new and the old.”
So lets start with that scribe. When we hear about scribes in the gospels, we kind of rank them with Pharisees, not very good people. But actually the role of the scribe was very important. They had three duties: first, to learn the law. That meant memorization and studying what other authorities had said about it. This tradition continues among Jews, who have an enormous collection of literature commenting on every word of what we call the Old Testament. The second duty was to teach the law. Scribes were expected to have disciples, and were to diligently hand on what they knew. And the third was to “make a fence” around the law, which was to dictate how the law was to be obeyed. That's why many Jews use separate dishes for dairy products and meat. There is a statement in Leviticus that you are not to boil a kid in it's mother's milk.
So Jesus is in a sense affirming the duty of someone learned in the law to continue handing on what he or she has learned. It is an admonition to us, especially those of us who are parents and grandparents. Joan and I take trips with our grandchildren and they all know that they are going to have fun spending our money, but also that they will accompany us to daily mass and recite the rosary with us every day we are away. Even knowing that, though, they still seem to want to go with us.
We Christians believe the Bible is God's word. We also have a lot of commentary on the Bible, but it is different in that we read the Bible through the lens of Jesus Christ. He after all is the Word, the Last Word God speaks to us. And because we read the bible through Jesus Christ, we see that there is a trajectory, beginning with the very beginning of time, and culminating in God breaking in to the world he created, so that we can become one with him.
So that's the old. That's the part that every Christian can access; and even though there are thousands of Christian denominations, most of us Christians agree on most of what we believe.
But then there is the new. And Jesus has just finished giving us several images of the kingdom of God. It's like seed scattered around; it's like a mustard seed, or yeast, it's like wheat and weeds growing together, and today, it's like a treasure in a field and a pearl of great price and a net that catches fish indiscriminately, which will be sorted out later into good and bad.
And maybe that's what the new is all about. The parables of the kingdom of heaven do hang together. The sewer who throws the seed everywhere, even onto places it won't grow; the tiny mustard seed that holds within itself the becoming of a large bush; the bit of yeast that causes a very large amount of bread to rise; and the guarantee that, even though weeds try to choke it off, the kingdom will triumph in the end. And today, perhaps, it comes closer to home.
Jesus speaks about a guy who finds a treasure in a field, and a merchant who finds a pearl of great price. And they both sell all they have to get them. They are single-minded in their pursuit; they both, in a way, have defined their lives by the treasure they have been seeking.
We all have a self-image. We carry around a mental picture of who we are. It's not very accurate. We can tell it isn't because when someone treats us in a way that contrasts with our self-image, we feel hurt, disrespected, or at least uneasy. I once suggested to a young scientist I worked with that he should focus on one or two projects rather than the many he was pursuing. I know I injured his self image because he didn't talk to me for about a week.
But if we really want to know who we are, we need to simply look at what we do with our time and money. Because that shows us what we really love. If I think I'm a great parent but I use my spare time to get away from the kids, maybe I should rethink my self image. If I think I am generous but never contribute time or money to a worthy cause, I may be wrong about myself. But Jesus is saying in these two parables that if you single-mindedly pursue the kingdom of heaven, you can't go wrong. And he said it more plainly elsewhere, when he said, “First seek the kingdom of heaven and all else will be given to you.” The man in the field and the pearl merchant were willing to give up everything for what they saw as worth even more than all they had. And on an earthly level, they both knew that once they possessed the treasure, they could have everything they had before and much more.
So Jesus is telling us that a scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven can bring out the old, but also the new – and the new is that we are passionate about the kingdom of heaven; that we align our love, defined by our time and treasure, with the pursuit of the kingdom. The old is what we know; the new is what we do about it. The kingdom of heaven is like a teenager who mows the lawn for his elderly neighbor. The kingdom of heaven is like a bunch of parishioners who work together to feed shut-ins and people who are bereaved. The kingdom of heaven is like the couple who uses their surplus wealth to promote catholic education. The kingdom of heaven is like a man who spends his spare time letting desperate women know that there are alternatives to abortion. You get the idea.
And those fish. They were all swimming around minding their own business; did they have any idea of whether they were good or bad? Probably in some fishy way they all thought that they were good fish. But the ones who made the cut were the ones who in the end met the fisherman's idea of what a fish was for. None of those fish knew what the fisherman wanted. You and I do.