Proper 12 A

Genesis 29.15-28, Romans 8.26-39, Matthew 13.31-33, 44-52. I learned a lesson early in my ministry. There are plenty people out there who want to be part of a church community. The trick is to take down the barriers that keep them out. The readings we have for Proper 12 A are all about overcoming obstacles. Jacob wants Rachel, and works seven long hard years for her hand, only to come up against the principle that you can’t marry off the second daughter before the first. So, accepting Leah unquestioningly, he works seven more long hard years for Laban before he finally gets the bride he wants. And thank God for polygamy.

Paul teaches us to let nothing stand in the way of the love of God we have known in Jesus Christ. And in Mathew the merchant in the parable lets nothing stand between him and the pearl he desires. Seventeenth century Puritans spoke of the experience of conversion as “buying the pearl”. For once, life has a centre and a meaning that reconfigures everything else, an Ultimate Concern worth having, in Paul Tillich’s words.

The pearl and the treasure in the fields are secrets, hidden things like the mustard’s seed’s proverbial status as the least of all seeds. Jesus quotes Psalm 78, which is worth chasing up a few verses further:

¹Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth.

² I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old,

³ things that we have heard and known, that our ancestors have told us.

⁴ We will not hide them from their children; we will tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.

The parables disclose fundamental mysteries that have been forgotten, according to this psalm, in the perverse behaviour of a previous generation. I think of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: “Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed” (verse 51). The idea is disclosure, not mystification. It’s like Pane and Teller explaining what the secrets are behind the trick they have just performed. And the secret is God’s unconditional love. You are accepted. In the context of Psalm 78, this secret comes in the gift of Torah, a way of life that is freely given to a people, without their deserving, that they might live as compassionately as God is compassionate. Freedom from servitude, land (the root meaning of salvation in Hebrew is “spaciousness”—a place in which to be free), a way of life that is compassionate and just, all this comes to us as a gift from what Burns called “the Giftie”.

This giftedness of the essential divine love that is the foundation of all of life is what theology means by “providence”. When Paul says (verse 28) all things work together for good for those who love God, he doesn’t mean a home in the suburbs with a paid-up mortgage or a holiday villa in Majorca, let alone peace in Zimbabwe. He gives this assurance in full awareness of the hardships and persecution surrounding the Christian life. Tillich, in The Shaking of the Foundations, says,

Providence means that there is a creative and saving possibility implied in every situation, which cannot be destroyed by any event. Providence means that the daemonic and destructive forces within ourselves and our world can never have an unbreakable grasp upon us, and that the bond which connects us with the fulfilling love can never be disrupted….The content of the faith in Providence is this: when death rains from heaven as it does now, when cruelty wields power over nations and individuals as it does now, when hunger and persecution drive millions from place to place as they do now, and when prisons and slums all over the world distort the humanity of the bodies and souls of men as they do now, we can boast in that time, and just in that time, that even all of this cannot separate us from the love of God…..Providence means that there is a creative and saving possibility implied in every situation, which cannot be destroyed by any event. Providence means that the daemonic and destructive forces within ourselves and our world can never have an unbreakable grasp upon us, and that the bond which connects us with the fulfilling love can never be disrupted.

What Tillich says is born out in the organic images of growth in the parables, the mustard seed, the yeast. The “creative and saving possibilities” that Paul speaks of as the Spirit moving within and through us in prayer and unvoiced desire are prior to human agency, divine, ultimate.

The business about predestination in this reading from Romans that has exercised the community of Reformed churches so painfully over the years can thus be understood in terms of this general priority of God’s love which becomes, for us, that pearl of great price. In our tradition, it became a rather frightening doctrine, leading to sermons like Jonathan Edwards’ notorious “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. Probably influenced as much by sixteenth century theories of the divine sovereignty of kings as anything, John Calvin’s understanding of God’s complete sovereignty over human affairs combined with this passage to create something of a theological monster. But I doubt Paul was intending to speak systematic theology here. He’s picking up on prophetic language of covenant and promise, the general proclamation of a fundamentally gracious God: “A God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” Exodus 34:6-7). The message is, God’s love is something you can count on, a fundamental sense of companionship in the midst of whatever disasters we may confront, a companionship we proclaim most visibly at the Lord’s Table, and in the Christian life to which we are called. At the end of the day it is in our discipleship that God’s promises become publicly visible. As we love one another no matter what, God’s Providence finds its place in the world. As Promise Keepers, we keep the promises that were made to us from the beginning of time, the mysteries the parables disclose. What gets in the way of us keeping the promises God has made to us?