Speaker 1: Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 2: But if you are here for the first time, then really great to meet you. And, of course, if you're joining us online this morning, we really appreciate that and welcome you here. It means a lot that you continue to journey with us in all of these different ways through this season. But we are now in the last week of a series called The World As It Could Be. And this was our first series of our eighth season together as Commons.
And I think it's been a good way to start the fall. I know that I have found myself struggling a little bit this fall. Everything feels like it's one step forward and then two steps back, and I found it difficult to keep my energy and focus up a lot this year. And I'm sure I'm not alone in that. So coming back to Jesus parables to begin the year and grounding myself in this incredibly hopeful imagination for what could be, I think that's been a really good exercise for me that's been helpful in grounding me and maybe hopefully for you as well.
But in this series, we have looked at Jesus' parables of the kingdom. A set of stories that come to us as a package in Matthew 13. And and I think that's actually really important to keep in mind as we read these. That each of these stories that we're looking at in this series, they come together as a package. They build on each other.
That's part of what Jesus is doing here as he expands our imagination. So, Jesus starts with a parable about seeds and soil. And he talks about how sometimes we are like hard packed soil that seeds can't grow in. Sometimes we're too shallow and that doesn't provide much depth for our roots. Sometimes we are soil full of weeds and that chokes out the things that we really want in our lives.
And then sometimes we are good soil. Or good things can take root and grow and flourish into something more than we imagined. And on the surface, I think that's a really good call to consider what kind of soil we are with our lives. To think about what we're invested in and what type of things we're giving the best version of ourselves to, and that's a good important lesson one that we should take to heart. But I think at the same time, once we remember that Jesus focus here is really on the kingdom of God, we realize that perhaps this first parable is less about us and more about the farmer.
A farmer who would scatter seed on any soil, who would take a chance anywhere. A farmer who would forego the efficiency to make sure that every square lynch of land that he can find gets given the chance to grow into something remarkable. So, this is a story about the fact that you are never not worth God's investment. It's not so much on whether you are the right kind of soil as much as the fact that God is always investing in you. But perhaps, then we wonder about those who don't embrace all of that gracious opportunity.
And what if we stay hard soil, we might ask, what do we do about those people? And so Jesus tells us another story. This time it's about a field that is full of weeds and wheat. And the workers come to the owner and they say, okay, we know you cast good soil, but this field is a mess. I mean, what do you want us to do?
Do you want us to start digging up the weeds for you? And he says, no. You can actually do a lot of damage that way. Let everything grow together until the harvest. And again, on the surface, pretty simple story here.
It's not our job to judge, we leave that to God. But, in the context of the ancient world, this story again has a deeper meaning to it. Because the very specific plants that Jesus references here had a long and storied history together. In fact, it was only that once they matured and reached the end of their life cycle that they could reliably be told apart from each other. In fact, in rabbinic literature from the time of Jesus, they were considered the exact same plant until they matured and sprouted.
And so Jesus seems to be saying, not only are there weeds in the world, and not only are they my problem, not yours. But sometimes what looks like a weed to you will end up being exactly what I want in my kingdom. So, don't write someone off just because you think they're a lost cause. Their story isn't finished yet. And your job is to simply tend the field and care for everyone.
And so we say, okay, that's a little frustrating. I'd love to know who's who right now. But I guess I can live with that as long as I know that in the end someday everyone will get what they deserve. And so next, Jesus tells a story about mustard seeds. A tiny seed that grows into this enormous shrub and Jesus says that the kingdom starts in the smallest gesture of love and peace you can possibly imagine, but if you let it, that simple grace will grow beyond your wildest expectations.
Beautiful. Right? But again, Jesus has layered this with a lot of meaning here. Because he says that a mustard seed when it grows will grow into a massive tree so that the birds of the air will come and perch in its branches finding shelter and food. And that is a very intentional subversion of a very familiar Jewish idea.
See the Hebrew scriptures often imagine Israel as this giant cedar where the birds of the air representing all the nations of the earth would come and find safety and shelter. And Jesus says, yeah, that's right. It's true. But you've got the wrong image in your head. Because God's kingdom may not look like this grand imposing beautiful symbol of strength that you want it to.
It's actually going to be more like this scrubby, scruffy, scraggly mustard bush that's notorious for showing up in the places you don't want it. And actually, even after all of your hard work, gardening and cultivating and keeping all the pests away, the birds that you tried to scare away, well they will still find their way here and that's what makes the picture so beautiful. And to sort of get this, try to imagine Jesus talking about the American empire, but swapping out an eagle and talking about a seagull instead. It's a way of talking about our ideals, but stripping away all of the pride and the arrogance that we tend to build into them. And it's if as if Jesus wants to say, you may know You may want to know who will be left on the outside of the kingdom.
But maybe the point of your story is actually to make room for everyone, even the ones you think you want to scare away. Then last week, Bobby had looked at two parables. On the surface, they say pretty similar things. But I think they're actually meant to complement and even contrast each other. The kingdom is like a treasure buried in a field says Jesus.
Treasure that you can just stumble across in the course of your day. The divine is everywhere around you waiting to be uncovered. And then Jesus says that the kingdom is like a merchant looking for treasure who finds a pearl of great value. And together, I love these two images because Jesus says that the kingdom is out there waiting to be discovered by you. And it says the kingdom is out there searching for you in the same breath.
The kingdom is worth everything to find. The kingdom would give everything to find you. And that's the culmination of this thread that Jesus has been building all along. However, he's not quite done yet because we have one and a half more parables to explore before we wrap up at this series. So, let's pray.
And then today, it is the parable of the net. God of invitation, who invites us to find our eyes and our ears today. He calls us to continue to search and explore. Who beckons us come and dig deeper into your imagination for the world. Would we find the courage to be creative and imaginative to look for new possibilities, treasures all around us.
Also that we might begin to glimpse the scope and beauty of your kingdom. How it reaches ahead of us. And it gathers us up from behind. How it protects and shelters even as it calls us to leave our safe preconceptions behind to love each other. Would you be present as we read today?
But better yet, would you help us to notice that you are present to each of us always, all the time. May we recognize you with us and in us and through us. May your creativity and spirit help us as we engage your creation that surrounds us. And as we begin to grasp your kingdom, even in glimpses of the hope that surrounds us, might your spirit be present in our actions here on earth as it is in heaven. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Amen. Okay. One final parable today. And we'll pick up right where we left off last week as we've been doing in the series in verse 47 of Matthew 13. But today we're gonna talk about overconfidence, always learning, types of nets, the missing fish, and the final sorting.
Jesus says, once again the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. And they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets but threw the bad away. This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the blazing furnace.
There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Have you understood all these things? Jesus asked. Yes, they replied. A moment here, let's be honest.
Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous than Jesus' disciples saying, yes, we have understood everything you have said. I mean, bless their hearts. Right? I think this is just pretty clear that they in fact did not understand everything that Jesus said. In fact, think it's been abundantly clear for about two thousand years now that none of us have understood all of these things.
I do appreciate their confidence though. We'll give them that. However, as we laugh at these disciples here, I think this is a helpful moment, a good reminder to always hold all of our imaginations, all of our interpretations always as provisional. Every new life experience opens us up to new ways of thinking. And every time we meet someone new, it opens us up to new ways of hearing.
And all of that, all of that evolution and change and growth that you experience in your life, all of that is holy. But it will change your experience of the divine as you go. So, it amuses me to hear the overconfidence here. Because it reminds me of the eight year old who lives in my house who has developed the habit of offering very confident and very wrong explanations for all kinds of things lately. But strangely, I also find this moment comforting to know that Jesus simply smiled at his friends and continued to work with them regardless.
Because maybe that's the best that any of us can hope for, a gracious God that welcomes our best efforts and our misplaced confidence. Regardless, Jesus does have one more thing to add in response to this reply. He says, you get it? Great. Then one more thing to keep in mind, verse 52, every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out new treasures as well as old.
And that's how he leaves this section. Now, that's a really interesting way to end a set of parables with one more sort of parable. And notice here, this parable is not really about the kingdom of God, it's about those who find ourselves fascinated by the kingdom of God. So, this final one is a story about someone who thought themselves a teacher, who now discovers that they're actually a student, and who realizes that no matter how much they know, there's always something new for them to find. And I think this is just a very Jesus y, very kind way of addressing his disciples over confidence.
They say we get it. He doesn't scold them. He doesn't say, are you kidding me? You guys are clueless. He essentially says, look, I love your commitment but sometimes getting it actually means realizing how much you still have to learn.
Because here in this kingdom, teachers become students and we keep learning new things. And just when we think we've got it all figured out, we realize there's something new to be amazed by. And I just I really like that moment and the way Jesus addresses his friends here. However, let's go back and let's focus on the net parable that we wanna talk about today because that's our focus. And let's be honest here, this is a tough one.
The kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. Couple things are important here. First, this is a very specific type of net that Jesus is talking about. Now fishing and nets are all through the New Testament. So there's nothing surprising about this metaphor or this reference.
Farming and fishing were two of the primary food sources and major employment industries of the ancient world. So, to see Jesus using both of them as points of contact makes sense. People would have understood these images. And yet, what is surprising is that this right here is actually the only time this specific word for this specific type of net is used anywhere in the bible. So, we call a hapax legomena.
It's when a word appears only once in the entire bible, and scholars tend to get really excited about these. First, because if you don't have a context to help you translate or compare against, it gets hard to decipher. Which means we need scholars to help us and that justifies all the time that we spend studying all these things, so that's nice. And also because when a person uses a word that they've never used before, that's not part of their normal vocabulary, they're usually doing that to make some kind of specific emphasis. And in this case, this unusual word is an indication that the specific nature of this type of net is important to the parable.
And the word here is sageine. And it means specifically a drag net. So, there's different kinds of nets that were used in the ancient world. There would have been sort of small nets that fishermen would use to scoop up a fish that was caught on their boat and bring it inside. There would have been what we know as these throw nets where they're cast over a school of fish and they weight down and you grab them up and you scoop them up and bring in as many of those fish as possible.
And then there was what's called a or a drag net. And this kind of net was lowered into the water with heavy weights along the side. And what you would do is you would walk alongside it, dragging it along the bottom of the lake and it would churn everything up and everything that would get caught in its way would get gathered up in the net. And so that kind of net would then be dragged up onto the beach, not into your boat. And all kinds of things that were caught in there would need to be sorted out.
So Jesus interestingly says exactly that. All kinds of things are caught in the net. He doesn't actually say fish here like we read in English. What he says is that it catches all kinds. And that's true.
So the kingdom of God is not like a net that's used to scoop up a particular fish that you caught. Or like a throw net that you cast over a specific school of fish to get them. The kingdom of God is like a drag net that scoops up absolutely everything in its way. And I think that's important. Because in this kind of net, some of what's caught is going to be good naturally, and some of what's caught is going to be not.
But the default posture of God's kingdom is to gather up absolutely everything it touches. Interesting. Part of what I get from this parable is a sense that the kingdom of God will be far more a mixed bag than I sometimes imagine it to be. I mean it scoops up everything after all. And I wonder now if we have spent most of our lives cultivating conversations with people who are a lot like us.
Who think like us and share our values or our politics, our economic strata. I wonder if we're going to find this kingdom a little bit disconcerting. Now, all apologies to any avid fishers in the room, but as for our cape on says, God is not interested only in speckled trout and hand tied flies. We are scooping up everyone here. That's great you might be saying.
What about that fire on the beach? And what about the sorting that's to come? I mean, I get that everyone is caught up in the net, but what about the bad fish? What happens to them in the end? And isn't that really the crux of the parable?
And I would say sort of. You see, a net like this would have scooped up all kinds of fish that people would have wanted to eat or fish that you could sell at a market for some cash. There were in fact about 20 fish, different species that were found in the Lake Of Galilee as the story was told. Most of those were eaten by people pretty regularly. At the same time though, in a net like this, you'd also get sick fish or dying fish.
You'd also get species that weren't eaten at all. You'd get things like eels or shellfish that weren't even allowed to be eaten within the Jewish dietary restrictions. And so, a necessary part of using any kind of net like this would be that you would drag the net up on the beach and the catch would then need to be unfurled and sorted. From that, you might set aside something for lunch, and you might set aside what you plan to take home to eat with the family, and the rest would be prepared for sale. Or if it was garbage, tossed aside.
Now we know that Jewish fishermen, like the disciples, would not eat an eel. Very common in this lake. But we also know that they would gladly sell those at the market because they were considered good food by the Roman sitter. So, it's not surprising to see a story about a dragnet that ends with a sorting. Fishermen gathered on the shore separating the good from the bad.
That that's simply part of how you use this kind of net. What's interesting though, is that in a net like this, when you are sorting, you would be going through more than just fish on the beach because you would get all kinds of things caught in it. Right? Things like seaweed. Things like old boots and bottles and beer cans and bottles discarded or lost in the lake.
You get things like socks and sandals and sacks and shoes all slipped off and lost in the water. There'd be all kinds of flotsam and jetsam caught up in a dragnet like this. And for me, this is part of the really fascinating thing that's going on in this image here. Because it isn't about just fish. In fact, there are no fish anywhere in the story.
Not once does Jesus ever mention a fish here. Now it's clear that he's fishing. And so the English translators are within their rights to try to clarify things for us. But when the net is lowered in the water, Jesus simply says it catches all kinds of things. And then when he talks about dividing the spoils, he simply says the good goes in the basket and the bad is tossed aside.
Now it could be that Jesus knows we're talking about fishing so he just doesn't feel the need to be more specific and yet I can't help but wonder if perhaps Jesus means to say exactly what he says here. No ancient fisherman is ever throwing aside any fish. Even the ones he won't eat, someone will. They can be sold at the market. What he's tossing aside here is all the garbage that's caught in the net.
And what that says to me is that the kingdom of God is about more than just fish. I mean, it's fish alright, you and I. Jesus told the disciples that they would be fishers of men after all. But the kingdom of God is also about seaweed and refuse and crabs and stones that get kicked up in the commotion. It's buried treasure and abandoned garbage and all the things we forgot at the beach the last time we were there.
It's everything that God can get God's hands on because all of it needs to be gathered up and sorted. That's what the story is about. The story is about more than fish. The kingdom of God is about more than our souls. It's really about the reordering, the sorting of everything that God can get a hold of.
And I think that changes everything about the ending of the story. Jesus says, this is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the burning fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And that's a scary image. I think it's meant to be.
It recalls the Valley Of Hinnon or Gehenna. Sometimes translated hell in the New Testament. But this was a real place. It was a site of several bloody battles in the Hebrew scriptures. A testament to violence and suffering and one that remained in the Jewish consciousness just outside of the gates of Jerusalem.
But here, when Jesus explains the parable, when everything is scooped up into the kingdom and all of it gets sorted, we read that this is where the wicked will go. The Greek word here is or evil. Righteous is the word which also mean justice. But immediately, I think we tend to jump to imagining that this means some of us are going to the good place and some of us are going to the bad place. There's good fish and there's bad fish and that's what's being sorted, but that's not what the story says.
In the parable, the catch all kinds are separated from the garbage. And here at the end, there is actually no them that are thrown into the fire. That's an unfortunate translation of a third plural neutral pronoun in Greek. A better way to say it might be that what is evil is separated from what is righteous, and all of that is thrown in the fire. Just like the garbage that's caught in the net with the catch.
See, the story says to me, particularly given everything that Jesus has already been telling us in all of these parables through all of Matthew 13. He's like God is sweeping through the world. Gathering up everything in this kingdom net whether we asked to be or not. And when the world is finally dragged up on the beach kicking and screaming to be sorted at the end of the age, everything that is good will be saved. And all that is wicked will inevitably be burned up.
And that is a heavy image, but it's exactly what Jesus wants us to hear. I tend to agree with Robert Farrar Cape on here when he writes that the force of a phrase like the kingdom of God says to me that the bible is concerned with the perfecting or the healing of everything that God has made, not with the trashing of it. With the resurrection of all the native harmony and order God always intended for God's creation. And if that's the case, then this parable is a very stern even scary warning about what we choose to cultivate in our lives, with our lives. But it is not a story about God giving up on anyone ever.
It's a story about God's unrelenting commitment to the good. And it says to me that when I am finally scooped up and dragged onto God's beach, there are some things that will come with me in that net that I will need to let go of. Maybe it's the selfishness and the ego that lives inside of me. Or the chronic pain that you suffer with. Maybe it's all of these different intersecting realities that keep people from flourishing in the world.
Systems, the press, or debt that you've accumulated. Maybe it's humiliation that you experienced somewhere along the way and that narrative of unworthiness that you've adopted is part of you as a result. But one day, all of that, everything that pushes back against God's kingdom, all of it will need to be sorted out and some of it discarded. And as difficult as it is for to me to imagine that someone could intentionally continually reject all that is good in the universe forever. What I hear Jesus saying, is it everything that comes with me that rejects the divine will one day meet its end.
Because this is Jesus' imagination for what could be. The divine hope that indiscriminately sweeps of the world gathering up everything in its path so that all that is good can be saved and preserved. And all that tears down and hurts and damages the world, all of that can finally find itself dissolved. See Jesus has carried this expansive imagination for what could be because for Jesus the net is already in the water right now. And whether you know it or not, it is moving towards you and circling around you.
It's ready to catch you and drag you up on the beach even if you're not ready for it. But when it does, even if that frightens us a bit, it is only the goodness of God that awaits us there. But Jesus' goal is not to scare you here. It's to prepare you here for the inevitability of God's kingdom. For everything that is broken within you will be burned up.
And the grace of God welcomes us without limit. So, as we end the series, may you find yourself caught somewhere in the net. And drawn toward the beach and sorted so that everything you don't need anymore can be dissolved in God's grace today. And when the time comes, you can be welcomed in love toward everything that you could be. Let's pray.
God of invitation. Even in these images that are meant to shock us and scare us a bit, to warn us about everything that we choose to cultivate within ourselves. What we see in the midst of that your grace and your welcome. At the same time though, might we also hear the warning about how scary, how painful it might be to have some of the things that come with us ripped away. And so as we have opportunity now to allow your imagination of what could be to filter through us and take root in us, to become the eyes through which we see the world.
Might we begin to cultivate everything that is holy and true and good. The treasure that you are looking for in us, might we find that, might we see it by your spirit, and then might we give our energy, our focus, our creativity, all of it to that. Might we find your way, bit by bit in the world. And every time we place one foot in front of another towards you, might your spirit reach in and encourage us. Guide us to continue.
Give us confidence not in the fact that we found everything we need, but that we are moving in the direction you imagine for us. God, continue to lead us. Continue to refine us. Continue to burn away the things that need to be let go. Continue to cultivate all that is good that you have planted here in me.
And in that, may we continue to see you and your world more clearly. In the strong name, the risen Christ we pray. Amen.