TotD: Parables of the Kingdom

 It's been quite some time since I've written a blog post, 2018 I think was the last one. Honestly, I forgot how to do sign in to this, turns out it's easy and you can just click into it from the Google Chrome home pack... typical.

Anyway, as it's been some time I want to begin with a reminder of what my TotD (Thought of the Day) series is... It's not statements of fact, it's not statements of belief, it's thoughts, the current thing I'm thinking about a particular topic that I want to commit to writing to help me process it and share to see if anyone else is processing it at the same time.

With that said, welcome to this Thought of the Day.

I was recently listening to one of Chuck Smith's C3000 series on Matthew 13. This is a section of the Gospel of Matthew where a number of Jesus' parables are collected together, and Matthew 13 has some that are specifically about the Kingdom of God, or the Church. The reason I mention that I was listening to Chuck is that he has an interesting, and probably more accurate, interpretation of these parables than the traditional interpretation.

Let's look at the first of these parables.

The First Parable: The Mustard Seed.

He put another parable before them, saying,
“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.

It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
- Matthew 13:31–32 ESV.

You've probably heard of this parable. You were probably taught it in Sunday School. And you probably have heard of it taught in a particular way. In this parable, we are told the Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of a mustard seed that was planted. In the previous parable, the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9), we are told that the seed is the Word of God being planted. This is what grows in the hearts and minds of people. I. Howard writes that the parable "suggests the growth of the kingdom of God from tiny beginnings to worldwide size." That's how it's often interpreted, this little mustard seed, one of the tiniest of the seeds, becomes this huge plant  and the birds come and nest in it's branches. It's like a place of refuge the church is for the wildness and unpredictability of this world.

   

But is that what Jesus meant? One of the key rules about interpreting Scripture is that we use Scripture to interpret Scripture. When we come across symbolism and allegory and metaphor, to understand it we need to look to other parts of Scripture to help shed light on it.

    So, does this parable really celebrate the amazing growth of the Church in the world, providing a place of shelter and protection from the insanity of the worldliness of life?

   

It's been pointed out that a mustard seed grows into a bush, not a tree. Jesus, if He was referring to normal growth, could have used an example of an actual tree, which also starts as a small seed. The fact that a bush would grow into a tree is unusual, it's not meant to be. Birds didn't nest in a mustard bush. So, if the mustard bush grows too much, into a tree instead of a bush, and the Church on earth is like that... what does that mean? It means the Church has artificial growth. How much can we see that throughout the history of Christianity?

    When the Emperor Constantine became a Christian he conquered in the sign of the Cross of Christ and promised to Christianize Rome if he would win the throne. He won, and so he began a process of outlawing the traditional Roman Empire religions and making Christianity the only recognised Roman religion, the State Religion. This caused abnormal growth in the church. The mustard bush became a tree.

    This pattern continued into the Medieval period when Christendom was established and when the Roman Church established its authority and appointed Kings and Emperors. People had to be Christians or they would be killed. The mustard bush of the church became a tree.

    In the age of Exploration (or maybe Exploitation, Colonization), Europeans went off on a mission to explore, and Christianize, the world. They forced people to convert to Christianity or die. The mustard bush became a tree.

    In the twentieth century in the USA, the Moral Majority began exerting political influence. A huge movement of conservatives mobilised in order to defeat the sitting, Evangelical, president, Jimmy Carter, and have Ronald Reagan elected. Culture wars, propaganda, and fear mongering were utilised to unseat an Evangelical Christian from the highest office in the land by mobilising Evangelicals against him. The church grew abnormally as people engaged in these wars. The mustard bush became a tree.

    And, in the twenty-first century, Donald Trump did the same thing. The mustard bush became a tree once more.

We see this pattern of abnormal growth in the church throughout Christian history. Perhaps Jesus was warning us against the artificial growth of the church? But is there any supporting evidence for that theory? This is where using Scripture to interpret Scripture comes into this equation. There is another element, beyond the unusual growth of the mustard seed to a tree. The birds. How do we understand what Jesus meant by saying: "the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches." What does Jesus mean by the birds?

Here, we turn back to the previous parable, the Parable of the Sower. In Matthew 13:3-4, Jesus says: "And he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them" (Matthew 13:3–4 ESV). Then, when the disciples ask Jesus to explain the parable, He gives them this explanation: "When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path" (Matthew 13:19ESV). So, in the parable Jesus said the birds come and eat the seed when it falls along the path, and explaining this parable He told the disciples that the seed that is sown along the path means the evil one, the devil and his demons, come and snatch away the sown seed, the Word of God.

    In other words, in the parable right before this one, Jesus tells us the birds are the evil one coming, the demons coming, and then in this parable he says that the birds come and "make nests in its branches." What does this mean for the church? The church grows in abnormal ways, and the result isn't that people find refuge from the weirdness of the world in it, but the evil one and his demons come and make their home in it. I think this can have big implications for the way we see the place of the church in the world.

The Second Parable: The Leaven.

He told them another parable.

“The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”

- Matthew 13:33 ESV

It would be mad to draw the above conclusions from one parable, so let's look at the next one, the parable of the leaven. Again, you will often hear this taught as just like if some yeast, some leaven, gets into some bread it will spread through the whole batch of dough and cause the whole bread to rise and grow, so too, the leaven that is the Word of God will permeate the Church and cause it to grow in power, influence, size, authority, importance, etc. in the world.

When you consider how leaven is used in the Bible it's hard to understand why we have come to think this is the best interpretation of that passage. Even just consider Passover, and Unleavened Bread. The Jewish people were to remove leaven from their homes in the run up to Passover, and all the bread made of it couldn't have yeast/leaven in it. Why was that?

    In Exodus 12 and 13, the Jewish people are told to remove anything leavened and anything that could leaven, from their homes and from the whole nation of Israel for the seven days around the Passover. To fail to do this would result in being cut off fro Israel. This is because the leaven was a picture of sin. In the same way that yeast gets into a bit of dough and causes the whole thing to rise, sin can infect a part of our lives and spreads to all of it.

    This idea is carried into the New Testament by both Jesus and Paul. In Matthew 16:6, Jesus warns the disciples to "Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees". At first, the disciples think Jesus is reprimanding them because they forgot to bring bread with them on their sailing across the Sea of Galilee. Matthew's recounting of this continues:

"But Jesus, aware of this, said, 

“O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread?

Do you not yet perceive?

Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered?

Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered?

How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread?

Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread,

but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees."

- Matthew 16:8–12 ESV

And Paul says:

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened.

For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil,

but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

- 1 Corinthians 5:6–8 ESV

Leaven is never positive in the Bible. If Jesus meant the growth of the Church would be a phenomenal and good thing, He could have used a better illustration for this. He didn't, He used leaven. So, in other words, bad teaching and sin would infect the church and grow in it, until it could be totally spoiled by sin and bad teaching.

Implications for the Church Today:

The Church often sees itself as a refuge in the world, a place for birds to come and nest, a place of influence and importance. It sees history as being ideally on a trajectory of church growth in the world, and growing church influence in the world. Christians will celebrate things they see as victories, but lament the state of the world and say it's all going to hell in a hand basket when some previous law that regulated Christian morality for the general populace, is over turned.

    I think these parables highlight for us the flaw in this thinking. The way of Christ is not the way of power, political influence, or enforcing laws. It is the way of the sacrificial Lamb. And, seeing these parables using Scripture to interpret Scripture we see a totally different picture of the church. Not this stalwart guardian of morality, but a place where abnormal growth can occur, where Satan can hide, where bad teaching can spread, and where sin can permeate.

    The implications of these parables is not to call us to a us, we Christians, versus them, the unbelieving world, mentality. It's a call to humility, to self-reflection, to seeing the Church as it is, a flawed, broken place, susceptible to mistakes, sin, and inflicting itself on others instead of drawing people to Christ by sharing the Good news of His love and grace for us displayed in His death on the cross.

I believe if we had a better understanding of these parables, it would give us a better theology of the church, and orthodoxy leads to orthopraxy. Or, in other words, right understanding would lead to right practice. Instead of thinking of it as us against the world, we would be more inclined to be reflective and realise we are not perfect either. It could help make the church more like a hospital for the broken, than a private club for the chosen.

Writing Prompts: Messenger

 Recently on Instagram I did a Q&A thing, and one of the questions that was asked was about my writing. I haven't written anything in a while. So I decided I would download a writing prompt book to my Kindle to help me get back into the flow of writing stories. This is the first of these prompts. Feel free to write your own version of this prompt and share it with me so I can read it too :)

Prompt:

Before the existence of post offices and telephone lines, letters and news of importance were entrusted to Messengers. Write a story about a Messenger who bears news of an enemy invasion and his desperate run to the nation's capital and King/Queen.

My Story: Orion's Belt.

It was a dark and cloudless night. Orion had been 'gifted', as the other guards put it, with night watch duty. They knew Orion hated the night watch, and it wasn't fair he had been assigned to it for an entire week, because he hadn't been present last Wednesday when this rotations assignments were being decided.

Orion sighed as he stared into the darkness beyond Cosaint, the giant wall that his nation had built to protect them. Night watch duty was the strangest of the jobs when you were assigned to the group at Cosaint. It was a weird mixture of quiet and peaceful, dull you might say, but the need to be on high alert at all times, looking past the wall into the forest beyond for any signs of light, listening intently, focusing outward and attempting to ignore the sounds behind, for any hint of movement. The environment around you, the darkness, the silence, they all attempted to lull you into a peaceful, relaxed, even sleepful state of being... but the job itself entailed eight hours of total alert attention. The dichotomy hurt Orion's head.

As usual, tonight was another peaceful night. Nothing was happening beyond the wall, and the cloudless night drew Orion's attention skyward as he stared at the stars, attempting to see the patterns, people, animals, that his mother had once adored.

Orion, as you might have guessed from his name, was named after a constellation. It had been his mother's favourite, and she hadn't made it through his birth. Orion himself was lucky that he had. He sighed again. The name Orion was as much a blessing as it was a burden. The link to the mother he never knew gave him comfort, but the reaction of his father to the name in the years since had caused nothing but pain. And then there were the taunts from those he served with. "Star Boy", they would taunt as they pretended to look for Astrology readings, something Orion knew nothing about.

Movement in the forest caught Orion's attention, he looked down and scanned the treeline, looking for any hint of light and listening intently. After about two minutes, but it felt to Orion like two lifetimes, he left out the breath he was holding in. It was nothing, maybe an animal or something. No one was out there.

Orion sat again, looking beyond the forest now and into the land of Otther, and, I guess, a little into the past as well. His nation, the nation of Uzz, had once been a group of smaller tribes, as recently as his grandfather's time. It was when his own parents were babes that the tribes of Uzz came together, uniting over what bonded them instead of warring over their differences. And largely, what bonded them, was the threat of foreign, overseas, larger armies coming in and plundering our wealth and our people. But not every tribe wanted to be part of Uzz. Some of the tribes on our island could not see past their differences with us and they opted to remain outside the nation of Uzz, we call them Otther now. There are pockets of them all over the island. But in treaties they defined their land and the nation of Uzz build walls like the very one Orion now sat, to keep them out and stop Uzz having to deal with raids from the Otthers when we had bigger problems lurking beyond the waves. Our tribal people were a raiding people ourselves, and the death of the practice has been slow in Otther. They occasionally attempt raids again; thus the need for Cosaint.

More movement brought Orion back to the present. But it was followed by a screech and a squeak and Orion noted the owl catching it's prey as it flew back into the trees.

"I hate night watch" he muttered to himself and he pulled his cloak tighter around himself to ward off the ever increasing cold as the night dragged on. Orion had another job among the company at Cosaint. He was the Messenger. He had taken back ownership of the star boy name in this way. The Orion in the night sky famously has a belt, Orion's belt. Orion also had a belt, and in it he put letters from the troops at the front line, the wall of Cosaint, to their loved ones back in the capital, and he also brought their letters and messages back to the wall. This meant Orion's belt was loved among his fellows. Even if they still asked him to read the star's for them on occasion, Orion's belt, which is what everyone called it, was their favourite thing in the world, because it brought news of home.

It was while Orion had last been on a run, delivering letters, that the assignments for this week had been divvied up. That's how he landed with night watch all week. So, as much as the other's loved Orion's belt and the news it brought them, they didn't care too much for Orion himself; who had to go straight from a run back from the capital and handing out letters at the wall, to night duty, no sleep for this star soldier.

The twinkling of the stars, and the silence of the night, drew Orion's eyes skyward again. He searched the sky for his namesake. Even though he knew Orion was up there, he was never any good at identifying the supposed patterns people had long ago laid down in the star maps. He lay back, studying the sky, trying to remember which part was Orion.

A sound ripped through the darkness, piercing through Orion's reverie. He opened his eyes swiftly and saw the sky above him. He bolted upright, hoping he had not fallen asleep. The sound echoed through the night again. It was a scream, and it was coming from beyond the wall. There was another sound, a large whoosh, followed by a partial scream and a thud. Orion's eyes were wide now. He was piecing together a likely scenario based on what he was hearing.

Cosaint was not the only defence Uzz had against an attack from Otther. In the surrounding woods they had placed traps, so that if anyone attempted to come upon the wall from an unmarked route, well Orion didn't want to think about what the person who screamed was going through over those traps. It sounded like someone, and the scream was definitely human, and male, had gotten caught in a trap. The other noises, those were less obvious, but Orion was certain the person trapped had been killed by those traveling with him in order to silence his screams. And they weren't far away. Orion scanned the forest in the direction the scream had come from, but he could see no light and no other movement.

He stood.

The scream and the other sounds were reason enough rouse more guards. He walked to a small rope that was positioned to his left and pulled. A bell rang, not loud enough to wake everyone in this fortress just behind Cosaint, but enough to wake the guards in their stations just below the walls.

As Orion looked behind him, watching as his colleagues emerged from their on duty house, he heard another sound from outside the wall. Turning, he saw a bright ball of fire heading directly for him. His heart raced and his eyes widened, he said a prayer to the Uzzian god of protection, after whom this wall was named, and knew this was the end of his life.

But he had miscalculated. The fireball was not headed for him, instead it soared over his head and smashed into the bell tower with a loud clang and an even louder crash. The sound jolted Orion and he ran along the wall, toward one of the staircases down into the fortress as the bell tower came crashing down where he had stood only moments before.

Orion looked over the wall again. He could now see a growing number of little flames at the tree line some two or three kilometres away from the wall. The Otthers had clearly given up on their sneak attack tactic that caused them to end the life of one of their own when they heard the bell ring out. Now it was an all out assault on the wall he was seeing preparations for. And he was the only guard on the wall, and he was also Orion, of Orion's belt, the guy who was meant to run at the first sign of trouble to alert the capital and mobilise the army to provide back up as swiftly as possible. Orion's duel duties contended in his mind. He reached the stairs down into the fortress and ran past them. He had to be a guard until there were more guards on this wall. Then he could be Orion's Belt again. He ran up to one of the turrets scattered along the length of Cosaint. He used his own torch to light the large cannon positioned there, always at the ready, just in case. He aimed it at the largest concentration of lights he could see, and fired.

The cannonball flew through the air and hit exactly where he wanted it to. A number of mini flames were now extinguished and a larger flame began to spread in its place. Orion was already on the move to the next cannon to repeat the process when a cannonball from the Otthers hit the wall. It shook, but Cosaint was built to withstand much more fire power than this, and hopefully more than the Otthers could muster. Orion fired his second shot. This time he hit closer to the edge of their group, there were still flames here, but a lesser concentration of them. Still, even one less enemy on the side of the Otthers was one less enemy for Uzz to be concerned about.

Orion heard another noise. He turned to see a number of the guardians of Cosaint running up the various staircases to come to the defence of the town. The captain nodded to Orion as he ran past him.

"Shoot for the stars Orion", he said, shaking Orion awake again. It was time, time for him to run.

He took the steps down two at a time, passing ascending comrades as he went. They patted him on the back and the shoulder and mumbled godspeed and other words of encouragement as he went.

Orion was exhausted, it was less than twenty-fours hours before he arrived back at Cosaint. Now he had to run back the way he had come, again.

The earth shook as Orion ran. Explosions sounded behind him. The full power of Cosaint was being unleashed on the Otthers, and they were fighting back with the same amount of ferocious determination. Orion couldn't stop to look. He had to keep running. Cosaint was surrounded on both sides by forest, but on this side there was a large, straight road. It led right through the woods.

Orion ran like he had never run before. But he was also aware of the exhaustion in every fibre of his being. He had no sleep. And he was tense over what had happened that day. Who wouldn't? He cleared the forest in what felt like the shortest amount of time he had ever run it, but also the longest as he muscles screamed. He thought of the old lady who lived in a small farm house on this side of the woods. Sometimes he would stop in to her with supplies and news of the nation. And in turn she would allow him some time to rest and some food. Her home cooked rabbit stew was one of the best he had ever tasted. He looked in the direction he knew her house was, only about a kilometre away. How he longed to go there now, to rest, to have some stew. But he knew he couldn't, and he knew that dear old woman would be asleep still. Dawn was creeping in, but had yet to make itself fully known.

No, Orion couldn't go to rest. He had a message, the most important message ever to find it's way 'into', figuratively speaking, there was no physical message, Orion's belt. He had to press on. He ran past the turn to the elderly woman's home, cursing himself with every step he took.

Not too far out of the woods, Orion came to his next obstacle, his next choice to take the easy road, this time literally. Left brought you to the capital, directly, but it was almost all uphill until you could see the capital from above. Then it was downhill until you ascended Capital Hill itself. But there was also a road to the right. It didn't go to the capital, but in about ten kilometres there was a fork, and turning left on that fork did bring you to the capital. This route went around the mountain, so much less climbing, so much easier to run it. However, this route added about fifteen kilometres to the journey. Even with the benefit of flat land, this would make the journey too long; especially at this crucial moment. So, left it was... That's the choice Orion needed to make. His muscles could take a break later. The capital was the goal. And he needed to get to it as fast as he could.

He started towards the left and the earth shook again. This time it was much more violent than previous. Two loud sounds were heard coming across the trees. The first was victory cries, and Orion allowed himself a moment to breathe a shy of relief. But then the second was heard, there was a second bell at Cosaint, further back from the wall, louder, deeper, crisper, than the one Orion had to ring earlier.

The wall has been breached, Orion realised on hearing the bell. He looked ahead of him, up the hill, all the fatigue that had been coursing through his body instantly gone, and he ran on.