Matthew
13:47-52 June
13, 2015
Like a hopeful teacher, Jesus finishes
weaving a tangle of parables and then eagerly asks his students, “Have you understood
all this?” Dutifully, with heads nodding and eyes bulging, they gulp as one: “Yes.”
How often during your studies over these
past two years did you offer such a “yes” to your teacher or to yourself, just to
be able to move on? Just to sweep the complex jumble of new ideas back under
the carpet, safely out of view?
Of course
the disciples in today’s Gospel didn’t understand. Of course we don’t understand, either, if by “understanding” we mean
that we can neatly compress together between sweaty palms the mysteries of God
and the meaning of our lives. St. Augustine knew better: “If you think that you
understand, it is not God you’re talking about,” he warned.[1]
After two years of theological study and reflection, you know that you don’t
really “understand.” But what, then, is the point? Why study at all, if
understanding escapes us?
Some of us just like the challenge of an
unanswerable puzzle. As a teenager, I
discarded science for theology because I felt like the process of scientific
inquiry was too tedious. Why log the humdrum results of experiment after precise
experiment, when I could let my imagination soar wildly into the heavens on a
quest for the Ultimate Answer? What freedom! What challenge! Once you get the
taste for it, the search for God is a thirst that will never be quenched—a thirst
that can push one onward through many a desert landscape, eyes transfixed on
the sky above.
While there’s nothing wrong with an intellectual
or spiritual adventure, I’m pretty sure that’s not why you all gave up a big
portion of your time and energy to study in the School of Ministry. You came in
preparation: to prepare yourselves for lives of service to God, to the world,
and to the Church. You came as scribes who were ready be trained for the Kingdom
of Heaven, for the reign of God on earth. In your studies, you have been,
according to Jesus himself in our Gospel, “like the master of a household who
brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”
In the Bible, it is wisdom that is often
described as treasure. Both are sought after, searched for, and found only
after great effort. You don’t leave either one lying around in the open. And
you can’t produce either one at will on a whim. When I hear Jesus’ words, I
imagine a collector showing off a beloved collection for a guest. I remember my
mother opening up the old mahogany sideboard on dull summer days to entertain
me with the stories behind each piece of family china carefully stacked and
wrapped within. I remember an elderly parishioner lovingly taking little
Limoges statues off of her mantle to lay them, one by one, in my hands. I
remember the professor proudly showing me his favorite books from the hundreds
that filled the shelves on all four walls of his library. Some of these treasures
were antiques, and some were new acquisitions, but all were beloved and valued
by their owners. Together, they formed the owners’ abundance. All grew in value
in my eyes, as they were shared with me.
In theological studies, it is the
treasure of wisdom that we find. While understanding demands graspable patterns
and explanations, things to be comprehended from a distance, wisdom (writes
Rowan Williams) is only seen “in the full range of the world’s variety.”[2] It
requires the sharing of multiple insights and experiences as they are pulled
out of a dark cupboard strand by strand and held up to the light of day, so
that others may examine them with us. Wisdom is found in holding up the new and
the old, the beautiful and the ugly, the logical and the absurd, the joy and the
suffering, and finding the kernel of transforming grace within them all.
Williams explains that our study is supposed to make us more uncomfortable with
the world. It is supposed to stir up questions, not lead us to unshakable
answers. When we refuse to use our minds to reflect on things, we can look at
the world, shrug our shoulders, and turn on the TV. But the more training we
have in reflecting on what we see and do, the more it disturbs us to see what
an illogical mess surrounds us in the world, and the more we are goaded to find
solutions and to get involved. Wisdom unsettles us. It makes us look toward the
future and yearn for change.[3]
Such change heralds the dawn of the Kingdom of God.
Take, for example, young Emily and her
parents. Emily’s parents, a Lutheran clergy couple, started taking their
daughter to Ash Wednesday services from the time that she was a baby. “You are dust,
and to dust you shall return,” she heard, as the pastor marked her tiny
forehead with a cross of ash, year after year. Her parents tried to explain the rite
to her as she grew older, using their own theological training as best they
could. After church each year, Emily would return to preschool marked with ashes, and she would notice many, but not all, of her friends bearing
the same mark. With the partial understanding of an intelligent child, the
wheels of her brain began to turn. One day during Lent, she applied her reason
to her experience and piped up from her car seat with a question: “Mom, do only
the Christian children die?”
Emily’s understanding, you see, was not
quite complete. As a matter of fact, she was wrong in her hypothesis. Yet, she was wise. Her family’s Christian practice on Ash
Wednesday had opened her young eyes to life in its totality, even encompassing
death. Their patient teaching had set the wheels of questioning exploration turning in her mind. Their love had taught her that it is good to ask questions.
Little Emily is now grown up and in seminary, still bringing forth treasures to
build up God’s Kingdom, still asking questions, still being unsettled and
transformed.[4]
Jesus’ disciples claim to understand his
difficult teaching, but we all know that no one in scripture is as clueless as
they are! Missing the point constantly, asking irrelevant questions, doubting
what they see and hear, sleeping instead of watching… They don’t understand,
but what they witness as followers and students of the Lord transforms them and
prepares them for their pivotal roles in God’s Kingdom. Doubting Thomas takes
the Gospel to foreign lands. Traitor Peter builds up the Church in Jerusalem.
Foot-in-the-mouth Phillip gives his life as a martyr, just to name a few. Where
will God’s transforming and disturbing wisdom lead you?
Open wide the doors of your treasure,
the treasure that these past two years have given you. Go in the wisdom of
knowing, and in the wisdom of not-knowing. Go into the new and into the old. Go
in strength and in the strength of weakness. Go in the bonds of the friendships
that you have formed. Go in the joy which overcomes sorrow, and in the love which
casts out fear. Go—and the blessing of God go with you. Amen.[5]
[1]
Quoted by John D. Hall, “Against Religion,” in The Christian Century (January 11, 2011), 31.
[2]
Rowan Williams, A Ray of Darkness (Cambridge,
MA: Cowley Publications, 1995), 201.
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
Adapted from a true story told by Emily’s mother, the Rev. Susan Briehl.
[5]
Adapted from a blessing found in a Virginia Theological Seminary publication
years ago. Origin unknown.
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