Ignored Parables--Kingdom Parables

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Matthew 13:31-33, 44-46
He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

You know, I’m not much of a baseball fan. I’ve said this before, and I always feel a bit guilty whenever I say it. I feel a bit un-American in admitting that I don’t really like it. The reason why is that I didn’t grow up with baseball. Nobody took me to games, and the few times I played fastball I got hit by the ball, which really hurt. I also was always more interested in faster-paced, physical sports like ice hockey, lacrosse, and football. Baseball has always too slow for me.

With that said, I’ve liked listening to baseball games on the radio, even if I don’t like watching them live.  The reason?  t’s all the little tidbits that the announcers say in-between pitches:  “The pitcher is getting the signal,… Did you know that this pitcher used to work on a crabbing boat during the summers when he was a kid? I guess that explains his weird wind-up,.. And there’s the pitch.  Strike one!”  You don’t get that kind of trivia in other sports.

Still, even though I don’t really like baseball, I do like baseball movies (golf movies, too, even though I don’t like golf much, either). My favorite baseball movies seem to be Kevin Costner baseball movies. He’s the perfect baseball movie star (and golf movie star—maybe I just like Kevin Costner movies).

When I think of our passages for this morning, I can’t help but think about the now classic film, “Field of Dreams.”I’ve always found it to be a deeply spiritual, mystical movie, even if it never mentions God. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s not hard to find. The plot is simple. Kevin Costner plays an Iowa corn farmer named Ray Kinsella. One day, while out in the cornfields, he hears a mysterious voice, whispering, “If you build it, he will come.” Ray has no idea what is going on, but he keeps hearing the voice. He yells over to his wife, sitting on their porch, “Annie, what was that?” “What was what?” she replies. He hears it again, “Certainly you hear that?” he yells. “Nope, nothing. Come on in for dinner!” she yells back.
It takes him a while, but he finally figures out that the voice is telling him to build a baseball field, complete with stands and lights. It’s such a bizarre idea, but the voice keeps telling him to do it. So he does it. His wife doesn’t understand it, but she supports him. 

After building the field, a baseball player wearing an old baseball uniform from the early 20th century appears. It’s Shoeless Joe Jackson, who died decades earlier. Other players mysteriously appear, especially players from the 1919 Chicago White Sox team that had been embroiled in a gambling scandal. These “ghostly,” but real, players begin playing baseball, and Ray is ecstatic just to watch them. As the movie continues, more and more people hear the voice, but at the same time, those who are closed off to it neither hear the voice nor see the players. They think Ray is going nuts, plowing under corn to build a worthless baseball field.

The field puts Ray close to bankruptcy. The cost of building the field, coupled with the tenuousness of growing corn, has put him in financial peril. His brother-in-law, Mark, desperately tries to convince Ray to sell the farm. Ray refuses. By now both his wife, Annie, and his daughter, Karin, also see the ballplayers. Each day they sit outside watching the baseball games between the dead-but-resurrected baseball players. People think he’s crazy, but what do you do when a mysterious voice calls out to you to do something that others don’t understand?

Watching this film, it’s hard not to think of one of our kingdom parables for this morning: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”
What seemingly crazy thing would you be willing to do if a mysterious voice called out to you? Our whole passage is Jesus telling us that there is a mysterious voice calling out to us. And it’s calling us to something better, something greater, something more,… but we have to be willing to take a risk to reach out to that greater life.

When Jesus talks about the Kingdom of Heaven, we often misunderstand what he’s talking about. What we think he’s talking about is the place we go after we die. He’s not. He’s talking about a present reality. He’s talking about God’s Kingdom that is already here!

He’s telling us that we live in the Kingdom of the World all the time, and that’s generally what we see. But there’s a deeper reality that’s also always here, and we don’t easily see it or live in it because we get so caught up in the Kingdom of the World that we lose our vision for God’s Kingdom that is always here. How can we see it if we aren’t looking for it?

It’s hard to explain the Kingdom of Heaven, and how it works, to people who don’t think about it or aren’t aware of it. All we can do is give examples of it and hope that people come to embrace it.

A great example of the Kingdom and how it works comes through something that Walt Kallestad experienced. My guess is that you don’t know who he is. He is the pastor of a Community of Joy Lutheran Church in Glendale, Arizona.
When he first came to Community of Joy, he had just graduated from seminary. He was armed with all sorts of ideas. Unfortunately, the members of the church didn’t like many of his ideas. He tried to push them to follow, but they resisted. Eventually many left, causing the church to dwindle from 200 to almost 100 members in his first year. He was so discouraged that one day he called the bishop, asking to be transferred to another church, saying,  "If I stay here another six months, I'm sure I'll be able to close the place down." The bishop encouraged Kallestad to stay, but to also spend time alone in prayer seeking what God wanted.

During that time he complained to God, saying that the people weren’t listening to him, they weren’t doing what he was telling them to do, and they weren’t being church the way they were supposed to be. What he heard shocked him. In essence, he heard God saying to him, “I never put you there to tell then what to do.” “What did you put me here to do, then?” he asked. He heard, “I want you to be faithful to your calling. I want you to really love the people in your church."

So, Kallestad changed the way he did ministry. His sermons became sermons of love. Instead of just shaking parishioners’ hands every Sunday, he embraced and hugged them. He made a concerted effort to be loving in everything he did, and it made a difference. Slowly the church began to grow again. People wanted to be in this place of love. Eventually it grew from that small church to a church today of over 15,000 members. It’s not the numbers that matter, but the love that led him to live in God’s Kingdom.

Kallestad tells another story of living in God’s Kingdom. Years later they felt called to move their church to a new place on 25 acres. They wanted to create a church that would reach out to all people in love. They prayed for God to reveal the property God had chosen for them, and soon they found a perfect spot. But would the people sell? They initially focused on one particular farm of five acres that was key to the project.
Kallestad drove up the small dirt road belonging to the owners, and found a run-down trailer.

He knocked on the door and slowly the door was opened. According to Kallestad:

“An elderly man dressed in farmers’ bib overalls stood in the doorway. I introduced myself and explained that I was the pastor of Community Church of Joy. I explained that many at the church were praying about his orchard, wondering if God would provide a way for us to buy it and build a new center for mission with a worship center, a Christian school, a senior’s center, a place for youth, and much more.
The old gentleman grabbed my arm and pulled me in. He told me his name was Scotty and asked me to follow him to the kitchen table where his wife, Ruthie, was sitting. As I entered the kitchen Scotty said, ‘Reverend, please tell my wife what you just told me.’

So I told Ruthie about our dream of purchasing the land in order to build a new center for ministry. Ruthie started to cry. I noticed Scotty was crying too, large tears running down his grizzled face.

Trying to regain composure, Scotty eagerly said, ‘Reverend, my wife Ruthie and I moved to this land forty years ago. Five acres of these orchards belong to us. Nearly every day for the last forty years we walked around our orchard holding hands and praying that one day there would be a great church built here.’
I lost my composure and joined my tears to theirs. It was one of those holy moments when you sense the mysterious moving of God’s spirit.” (from Kallestade’s book, Turn Your Church Around)

This kind of Kingdom of Heaven stuff isn’t just true for churches, it’s true for life. I was reminded of this ten or so years ago through something a woman who attended Calvin Church before moving, told me. I got her permission back then to tell this story.

She had suffered through her husband’s suicide, and felt alone and isolated. She had been coming to Calvin Church because this had been a healing place for her. We talked about the times that she thought she had experienced God. She told me that during really bad times she had sensed God’s presence by seeing feathers. They seemed to convey messages from God to her during times of crisis, saying simply, “I am with you.” For instance, one particularly bad time she wondered where God was in the midst of her struggle. Crying as she walked outside, she saw seventeen feathers sticking up out of the grass. It was as though someone had planted them there. Another time she cried about her plight, and was amazed to find a feather sitting in the middle of her living room. 

In one of our conversations she asked me a question about a book. She had met someone who had praised a book titled Illusions, by Richard Bach. It was very popular in the 1980s, and is about a man called to be the messiah, but who is reluctant. She mentioned that her friend had told her how much the book had changed his life, and she wanted to know if I thought it might help her.

I replied that the book may contain a message for her from God. I knew the book from my earlier days. Before I returned to the church at age 24, I had read the book and it had made a big difference to me. I figured that perhaps God was wanting to say something to her through the book just as God has spoken to me through it many years ago. 

A few weeks later, after one of our worship services, she took me aside, saying that she wanted to show me something. After we talked she had remembered that she already had the book, having bought it at a garage sale several years before. It had sat on her bookshelf for five years. She then pulled out her copy of Illusions, and as she did she also pulled out of the book the feather she had found on her living room floor over a year before. It was a blue feather that matched almost perfectly—in size, shape, and color—the feather on the cover of Illusions. She then said, “But that’s not the really amazing part. Look at the inscription in the book.” I opened the book and read what it said:  “Best wishes from Calvin Church.”

    Apparently some member of Calvin Church had sold it, a member who had received the copy years before that. Our best guess is that it was a book that Joe Shields, a now passed-away member, had given to a graduating senior back in the mid-1980s. at any rate, this woman had received a message from God’s kingdom, a message planted many years before.

 There’s a whole realm that we can live in even while we’re living in this realm. It’s all around us like the air, giving us life and the opportunity to live in harmony with God’s purpose for us. But we have to make the choice: will we live entirely in the world’s kingdom, or will we open up to God’s Kingdom?

Amen.