Genesis 29.15-28 or
1 Kings 3.5-12
Romans 8.26-end
Matthew 13.31-33, 44-52
At the heart of the Jewish scriptures are the five books of the Pentateuch.
It is no coincidence that Matthew presents the ministry of Jesus in five
blocks; in each case, a narrative is followed by teaching.
Mark had launched the teaching of Jesus with the parables of Mark 4. Mark’s
Jesus gives a strange explanation of their use. They form a riddling mystery
from which many are excluded – and which bemuses even the disciples. Matthew’s
Jesus, by contrast, is first found preaching to his disciples in the forthright
Sermon on the Mount. The parables are made into the third and central section
of his teaching. Mark’s point has been abandoned; the emphasis now is on the
disciples’ genuine sight and understanding.
In this week’s parables, Jesus speaks in hyperbole. Mustard plants can grow
up to ten feet tall, and in a single season; but they are hardly trees. A great
tree was well-known as an image for a kingdom. King Nebuchadnezzar had dreamt
of such a tree, and “the beasts of the field found shade under it, and the
birds of the air dwelt in its branches” (Daniel 4.12). This tree, Daniel told
the king, was his kingdom, which like the tree in the dream was about to be
hewn down. Matthew – and even Jesus himself – may well have seen in the birds
the gentiles who will take shelter in the kingdom of God.
Matthew’s Jesus tells seven parables in Matthew 13. First we hear of two
farmers who sow the seed: in the Parables of the Sower (Matthew 13.3-9) and of
the Tares (Matthew 13.24-30). Both stories look forward to harvest. Then Jesus
tells of the mustard seed and its spectacular growth. Next comes the parable of
the leaven (Mathew 13.33). Once more Jesus thinks on a vast scale. Three s?ta
or measures of flour weighed about 50 lbs, and would make bread for 100 people.
A scene from ordinary life has become the preparation for a banquet.
Now Matthew’s Jesus, in the presence of the disciples alone, reverts to the
Parable of the Tares, to explain it (13.36-43); for Matthew is ready to round
off these stories of growth and harvest. He is about to turn his attention to
his own listeners and the demands that such parables make of them. So we hear
of the treasure hidden in a field and of the pearl of great price (13.44-46).
The discovery of the kingdom overturns all other priorities. Jesus’s
audience will have been shocked by the man who finds treasure in another’s
field. The discovery must have been underhand; and the purchase of the field is
within a whisker of theft. The man is not deterred; for nothing matters, by
comparison with the treasure he has found.
The merchant of pearls is rash in a different way. (Pearls were as highly
valued then as diamonds are today; in the gnostic Hymn of the Pearl the pearl
guarded by the serpent represents the most precious thing of all: the
soul entrapped by Satan.) The merchant invests in a single pearl which, it
seems, he loves too much to sell. The kingdom is enough, in these wild stories
of Jesus, to make a person bad or mad.
So Mathew’s Jesus brings us back to the end of the age and the ingathering
of good fish and of bad (13.47-50). He is ready to conclude this whole section
of his gospel. Jesus asks his disciples, “Have you understood all this?” They
reply, “Yes.” “Because of this,” says Jesus, “every scribe who has been made a
disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who draws out from his
treasure things new and old” (Matthew 13.51-52). Our evangelist himself was
surely such a scribe: a member of a school of scribes in a synagogue many of
whose members acknowledged Jesus.
Mathew stood in a grand tradition. Moses himself was regarded by many as the
archetypal scribe. Several apocalypses were said to have been written by
scribes: such as Enoch, Ezra and Baruch. Their texts – like Matthew’s – include
accounts, warnings and promises about the end of the age. It is tempting to
ask, just how much is our evangelist revealing here about himself? His Jesus
speaks of everyone who has been made a disciple – math?t?s – of the kingdom.
Perhaps we should simply look, to see a model math?t?s, at Mattthaios.