The Kingdom of God is like...

Proper12A, Sullivan Park Care Center, July 27, 2014 by Sr Annette Fricke, OP.

            The kingdom of God is like a child who becomes a drug addict.  The child imitates the behavior of her mother, a mother who is a role model and supplier of drugs.  The child has no known will as a child separate from her mother, because she has not lived outside the confines of her childhood.  She then adopts the lifestyle of her parents and not only abuses drugs, but abuses herself by her behavior.  She becomes depressed, begins cutting, binging and purging and simply not eating.  She brings into the circle many male friends.  The male friends are not so much an object of desire, but a way of coping with her parents’ physical and verbal abuse. She begins stealing and sneaking out at night.  Stealing becomes a way to obtain more drugs.  She knows nothing else because she imitates her parents to a ‘T’.

            The kingdom of God is like an atheist who clings so tenaciously to the idea that God does not exist that an entire defense of his behavior is built around this belief.  There is nothing else.  It’s just us.  We choose our own destiny.  People who believe in God are simply ignorant.  They haven’t figured it out yet.  Science has proven that there is nobody out there.  Space is just one dark void after another.  There are no rules to life, because we are our own masters.  It’s all up to us.  That stuff in the Bible is just fiction.  Jesus never existed.  Nobody ever found his bones.  There is no such thing as resurrection. That part is fiction, too.

            The kingdom of God is like a young, just graduated nursing assistant who is asked to take a blood pressure on a woman.  The woman has not had a stroke or a mastectomy.  She properly assesses the patient who has very thin arms, so uses a small blood pressure cuff.  She places the stethoscope in the correct position at the inside of the bend to the elbow; but she hears nothing.  She sees the needle bouncing all right, but no sound comes forth.  She proceeds to easily find the pulse in the wrist of the same arm, but still wonders why it is she can’t hear the blood pressure.  She tries the other arm with the same results.  She tries again and again, and then finally discovers a blood vessel in the right arm that surfaces near the skin a couple of inches below the bend in the elbow.  She becomes elated when she hears the blood pressure. She is no longer an embarrassment to the charge nurse or her co-workers.

            The kingdom of God is like an experienced nurses’ aide who was asked to get a blood pressure and pulse on a woman.  The woman tells the aide where to take the pulse.  The woman reasons with the aide that she is a nurse and knows her own body.  Against her own sensibilities yet figuring if there is anyone she can trust, it’s a nurse.  The aide puts her fingers where the nurse, who is also the patient, directs: halfway up the right arm where two blood vessels appear to intertwine.  She is surprised that she can get a pulse at that location.

            The kingdom of God is like an older woman who looks like a cleaning lady.  She is shabbily dressed and wears no make-up.  She gets up to sing and the immediate impression of the judges is that it is some sort of joke.  How could this woman possibly sing for an actual contest?  They do a quick interview as with every other candidate, still doubtful.  When she mentions that she wishes to sing like a well-known British recording artist, the panel snickers and look at each other.  They ask, “And what are you going to sing for us tonight?”  She replies that she will sing a piece from “Les Miserables.”  As her mouth opens and she sings her finest, the crowd and the judges are overwhelmingly amazed.  Their attitude is transformed from outright judgmental disrespect for her appearance to an enormous admiration for a woman who has a fabulous voice, far superior to their imagination.

            The kingdom of God is like a young male singer, who at the behest of his girlfriend, auditions because of his unique voice.  She has been urging him to do this for the last couple of years.  The moment has finally arrived when he comes out on stage to perform in front of a live audience and a panel of critics.  The preliminary introductions past and the audience is silent in anticipation.  He sings in falsetto, not sounding like a man singing falsetto, but like a female opera singer.  He is so convincingly singing like a woman that one of the judges sincerely asks him if he swallowed Jackie Evancho, a popular young girl who also has an older mature woman quality to her singing voice.

            You also may have your own parable of what the kingdom of God is like.  It could be almost anything in particular, yet descriptive of God’s kingdom.  It is like a drug addict, because the addict seeks to find what he or she values and follows what role model is laid before her.  It is like an atheist whose world is void of light, has no real sense of a basis for morality, yet seeking the truth and has an air of certainty that it is all up to us to make choices.  It is like a nursing assistant who is delegated the task of obtaining blood pressures and pulses that goes by the book, yet discovers that going by the book does not always give the answers.  It is like a singer who appears to be entirely different from what comes out of his or her mouth.

            The kingdom of God is like a treasure that someone dug up in someone else’s field, buried the treasure he found back into the field again, sold all he had, and then bought the entire field.  Why would he do that when the treasure was all that was essential?   What could this possible mean? Our clue is at the end of the gospel reading, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

            If we look more intently at the I Kings lesson about Solomon, we realize the value of wisdom that was present even way back in Old Testament times during the reign of King Solomon.  God blesses Solomon’s request, “Because you have asked this…for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word.  Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind…”  Could it be for Jesus’ day that the treasure chest and its contents is the wisdom of the Old Testament and the field that holds it and surrounds it is the New Testament?  Could it be for our own day that the treasure chest is the faith and traditions of Christianity handed down to us through generations and the field is the world in which we share the rich treasure of Jesus?

            All of the parables are told for a specific reason: they point us to God.  They do not tell us in an exact fashion---that will be revealed in time.  Our faith in Jesus is the most important treasure we have and we will discover that time and again every day in our faith journeys.  God has many surprises in store for us.