Doing Something With Words

Proper 12A: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

In the remarkable little book called How to Do Things with Words, philosopher J. L. Austin makes an intriguing claim. His argument is that words don’t simply describe things; they actually make things happen. Words, that is, aren’t merely descriptive, but are evocative. They evoke, they call things into being, even create new realities.

That may seem like typical academic overstatement, hyperbole, but consider the words, “I do” in the context of a marriage ceremony. They don’t just describe the relationship the bride and groom are entering into, but actually create it. Or consider the words “You’re fired!” or “You’re guilty” or “I’m leaving.” These words don’t just tell you something, they do something. Not because they command us to do anything, but because they cause a new reality to come into existence. And we feel their power. Like when someone says “I love you” or “I hate you”—we not only hear those words but we actually feel the force they exert upon us. Words, in short, are powerful.

Not all words have the same power, of course. Some words are indeed simply informative or pragmatic—“The store you’re looking for is around the corner” or “The Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783.” Those words don’t “do” anything except communicate information. Other words, though, are specifically designed to not just inform but transform, to change how we think and then to change the world.

Poetry is one such example, good poetry anyway. Jokes are another, sometimes. But when it comes to words that create worlds, there is perhaps no better example than Jesus’ parables. Through these brief, deceptively simple stories, Jesus doesn’t just relate information to us about God or about heaven. He’s in fact doing something, evoking, calling a new reality into being. That is, these stories don’t just describe the new order God is bringing to earth, as much as they actually cause it to come to life in us, among us.

Understanding parables then is not so much a matter of trying to explain them, much less “decode” them, as it is to be moved by them, to let ourselves feel in our bones the surprise, the delight, the judgment, and the hope that comes when God gets involved in our lives and in the world.

That is why Jesus’s parables are so unsettling. They don’t just give us pleasant religious ideas to think about when we’ve got an hour or two to spare. They’re not like an attractive object at a museum that you might like to visit and look at admiringly the next time you’re in the area. They are rather like a trap, little explosive devices hidden in the familiar. You think you know what a seed is, what a vineyard is, what a shepherd is, what growth is—but after Jesus gets through with them, then suddenly the familiar world becomes strange, charged with grace, alive with God. A new world is revealed and we find ourselves exposed, challenged, and summoned to respond.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus confronts us with not one but a series of parables—a mustard seed, leaven, hidden treasure, a fine pearl, and a net full of fish. Each story brings to life a distinct element or effect of God’s kingdom. The first two—the mustard seed and leaven—evoke the surprising potency, even intrusiveness, of God’s kingdom, while the second set—hidden treasure and precious pearl—provokes the extreme surprise and delight we experience when we discover, even stumble upon, the richness of the kingdom. And the last, the net full of fish, challenges us with both the wideness of God’s embrace and his justice in sorting those who come to him.

Now, the impact of these parables may not strike us immediately, dulled as many of us are by their familiarity. For these stories to have their full effect on us, to let them have their way with us, as they were intended to do, we shall have to chew on them a bit, until they burst in our mouths like a liqueur-filled chocolate…or like a fish oil gel capsule. (If you’ve ever bit into one of those, you know how surprising and unpleasant that can be!) Delight or dismay, Jesus’ parables have been known to provoke both responses.

With that understanding, that caution, let us dig into these stories and see what they do to us.

In the first parable, Jesus compares God’s kingdom to a mustard seed that grows into a great tree. Often when we hear this, we read it as a trite proverb: “big things often have small beginnings.” But if that was all that was meant, any seed would have sufficed for that. In fact, you can think of a number of plants that would have been an even more impressive example—a towering redwood, a spreading chestnut, a big oak, even a nice fruit tree. But instead, Jesus likens the kingdom to the seed of a mustard plant, which at its biggest is little more than a shrub. There’s nothing impressive about a shrub, a bush. So, what gives? How is God’s glorious rule, his kingdom, like a shrub?

Well, in Jesus’ day, the mustard plant wasn’t a kindly little shrub, but highly invasive plant, persistent, and hard to get rid of. To put it bluntly, it was a weed, dreaded by farmers the way gardeners today dread dandelions, crabgrass, and bindweed. It starts out small, but before long it takes over your flowerbeds. And that, Jesus said, is what the Kingdom is like: like a pungent shrub with dangerous takeover properties. Like crabgrass or dandelions, God's rule is sprouting up everywhere, often where it is not wanted. And there’s nothing we can do to stop it. No amount of weed killer will work. God's just and merciful rule will take root, and will grow even in the most hostile conditions.

In the same way, Jesus’ likening the kingdom to leaven that’s been hidden in flour also suggests something small blossoming into something much grander. That is, until you learn that the leavening Jesus was referring to isn’t like those little packets you buy at the grocery store, domesticated baker’s yeast. No, the leavening Jesus is talking about is wild yeast, yeast that is found on rotting, moldy bread. To leaven bread in Jesus’ day, you’d take a piece of moldy bread and kneed it into the dough, spreading the moldy bits throughout. I know—yuck! The yeast Jesus is talking about is then not a normal baking ingredient, but a contaminant. Which is why yeast in the Bible almost always is a symbol for the corrupting nature of sin—“beware the yeast of the Pharisees,” Jesus warns.

Now, why in the world would Jesus compare the kingdom of heaven to a pernicious weed and then to a pollutant, a contaminant? I suppose it’s because both mustard and yeast have a way of spreading beyond anything you’d imagined, invading, infiltrating and taking over. God’s kingdom is like that, far more potent than we’d imagined and ready to spread to every corner of our lives and take over. And if that’s the case, we might think of our worship and witness as a way of spreading, “contaminating,” the rest of the world with God’s good and gracious rule. That what Jesus seems to be encouraging here.

If these first two parables bring out the hiddenness of the kingdom, the next two point to what happens when we discover it. Jesus allows that we might come to the Kingdom by chance, like the man who found the treasure in the field, or we might find it after a long search, as in the case of the pearl-merchant. However we come by it, though, the fact that we’ve found it changes us, such that we are willing to give up, sell everything we have in order to acquire it. In this way, these two parables challenge us, press upon us the question of what is of ultimate worth: What is so valuable that we can let go of everything else? What are we willing to sacrifice everything else for it? Jesus’ response: the kingdom of heaven.

Lastly, you have the net full of fish. Now, in the first four parables, the stories are told in such a way that we typically see ourselves as the actor. We are the farmer who plants the mustard seed of the kingdom, we kneed the leaven in the dough, we buy the field or the pearl. This fifth parable flips that dynamic on its head. With the image of a great dragnet cast into the sea, Jesus suggests that our primary experience of the kingdom is not that of acting, making things happen, but of being acted upon, being grasped by an outside force. The dragnet scoops up whatever was in its path. To be caught or not is not a decision for any of the fish to make. In fact, the word "fish" does not occur in the verse, but rather "all kinds of things,” “good things and rotten things.” God scoops it all up, drawing everyone, all kinds of peoples, to himself. Only later, at the end of the age, does he make any discrimination, separating the wicked from the righteous.

With God implied as the fisher here, the active party in this story, that calls into question how we read the first four parables. Perhaps, contrary to our assumptions, we are not in fact the protagonists, the ones doing the action, in these stories either. Perhaps we should read them as Jesus, not us, being the weed spreader, Jesus as the mad baker, Jesus as the joyful treasure-finder, and Jesus as the one who gave up everything, sacrificed everything he had, even his very life, for the pearl of great price, his lost but beloved people.

This reading makes as much sense as the one where we are doing everything and God is somewhere in the background. Here, rather, God takes the initiative, acting when we cannot, searching for us when we are lost, making sacrifices redeem us. If we have any role in this account, it is as the ones who are acted upon. We are the field where the mustard seed is planted, the flour into which the leaven is hidden, we are the treasure that is found and the priceless pearl that is purchased.

To be sure, this is not the only way to read these parables. But looking at the parables from this new, Jesus-centered angle wakes us up to the power and freshness of these stories, stories we thought we had figured out but which still have the ability to surprise and inspire us.

Reflecting on all this, we may well ask what is the point of these parables? What, to harken back Austin’s theory, is Jesus doing with his words here? Well, it’s possible that these parables in fact do – and therefore mean – several things.

Perhaps to some, they may function as something of a warning: “Be careful. People who have been infected by the gospel have been led to do some rather shocking and radical things, things like sharing their possessions with others, standing up against public opinion and government tyranny, looking out for the underprivileged, and sharing their faith with the people around them.”

To others, however, these parables may serve as a much-needed word of encouragement: “Hang in there! God’s new reality is closer than you think, already seeping into your life even though you can’t always feel it.”

To others still, these parables might come as a profound promise: “No matter what it may look like, God’s kingdom will prevail. And so in the face of conflict, we await God’s peace. When confronted with illness, we look to God’s eternal healing. When faced with hostility, we practice forgiveness. Why? Because the kingdom is coming and before you know it, it will transform everything.”

But whatever Jesus intends to do with his parables, whatever they mean, fact is, Jesus’ disciples don’t understand them any more than we do. They say they do, but they don’t, at least not at first. But then again, I don’t know that “understanding” his parables, getting them right in our head, is really what Jesus is after. Rather, the point is to hear the words, feel the power they exert upon us, let the stories touch our hearts and capture our imagination. That is to say, it’s not really about us “getting” Jesus’ parables, but about Jesus’ vision of the kingdom “getting” us, our being seized with the beauty and goodness of what God is doing, such that we want to be a part of it, have to be part of it.

For, the Kingdom of heaven is already becoming a reality in small and hidden ways, sprouting up like weeds, leavening everything like yeast, whether we do anything or not. We have only to recognize it, point it out and celebrate it when we see it—a person coming to faith, a sinner forgiven, a person’s dignity restored, an injustice righted. These things may not be showy or dramatic, but it is through such as these that God works—quiet, small, slow, and humble, and yet of greater worth than anything else we can imagine.

This is what God is doing, what he is making with his words. May his words do the same in us and through us. Thanks be to God.