This time, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepares a feast and invites people via his slaves.  They brush off the invitation so the king sent different slaves, but the invitees either had better things to do and/or killed the king’s slaves even after being told that an enormous feast had been prepared for them.  The king was outraged and sent his troops to destroy the murderers and their city; afterwards, he sent his slaves to the streets to invite anyone to the wedding banquet he had prepared.  The slaves gathered all they could find – good and bad – and invited them to the great feast but when the king saw a man without a wedding robe on, he ordered him thrown out into the outer darkness, where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 22:1-14).    (more…)

Matthew 13 isn’t the only place where parables about the kingdom of heaven can be found.  Jesus tells another one in Matthew 18:23-35 about a king, a forgiven servant and an unforgiven servant.  You’ve probably heard this one: the king orders a slave to pay back a huge debt, the slave says he can’t pay so the king is about to have him, his wife and everything they owned sold off but the slave begs for more time and king forgives his debt.  This same slave immediately turns around and seeks out one of his own debtors and demands repayment but when this second slave begs his patience, the first slave has him imprisoned.  The other slaves see this and report it to the king who orders the unforgiving servant to be tortured until he can pay back his much larger debt.  “So will it be with you before my Father in heaven,” Jesus says.  We are called to forgive our brothers and sisters from our hearts (Matthew 18:35).

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“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.  So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:47-50).  We come to last parable in Matthew 13, beginning again with this word again.  Perhaps Jesus is trying to tell us that He’s saying the same thing in different ways: kingdom of heaven is like a seed, like a seed planter, like yeast, like a merchant, and now…like a net.  Similar to the wheat  growing up with weeds, the kingdom of heaven as a net brings in a full catch; the good will be separated from the bad but not until the end.

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“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” (Matthew 13:45-46).   The word Jesus begins this parable with – again – points back to the previous parable about the buried treasure.  There, the kingdom of heaven is the buried treasure, which might be why the current parable, where the kingdom of heaven is the merchant, frequently gets interpreted as saying that the kingdom of heaven is the pearl of great price.  There is a common theme running through all the parables thus far: the kingdom of heaven starts out woefully small but it is worth everything.

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Without so much as taking a breath after His explanation of the parable of the weeds, Jesus launches rapid-fire-style into three more parables.  The three parables in Matthew 13:44-50 are literally part of the same quotation as the explanation of the parable of the weeds – perhaps they should be read as part of this explanation as well as for what they can illuminate about the kingdom of heaven on their own.  The phrase “that someone took and…” should be familiar to us by now: the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and planted; the kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and worked into dough; now, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field that someone found and hid” (Matthew 13:51).  The kingdom of God requires engagement on behalf of those who seek and want it. (more…)

So we’ve seen that the kingdom of heaven is like a seed sower in a wheat field.  Before Jesus explains this, He tells two more parables – that of the mustard seed and that of the yeast.  This should give us a clue that perhaps we should consider what we’ve learned about the kingdom of heaven in those parables to inform the content of Jesus’ explanation of the parable of the wheat and the weeds.  Also of note is that Jesus does not explain every parable He tells – in fact, there’s only one other time He does so: that of the parable of the sower, which is how all this parable telling in Matthew 13 begins.  Interestingly, though the other parable Jesus explains is called the parable of the wheat and the weeds, it, too, focuses on a seed sower.  Something about sewing – planting, tending, waiting – is central to the kingdom of heaven. (more…)

Jesus has already explained once why He is using parables to teach in Mathew chapter 13.  After telling His first parable, His disciples ask him why He’s using them and He answers, as we’ve seen.  After He explains His use of parables, He explains the first parable then tells three more.  This cycle is repeated twice in Matthew 13; the second explanation of the use of parables is unprompted, much shorter and offered by the “narrator” (Matthew) rather than Jesus, as if just as a reminder.

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“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” (Matthew 13:33).  With this parable, Jesus switches the running theme of farming, reaping and sewing and moves us into the kitchen.  One phrase that links the previous parable about the mustard seed with this one about yeast is the phrase “that [someone] took and….”.  The kingdom of heaven isn’t just a mustard seed but a seed someone took and sewed in his field.  The kingdom of heaven isn’t just yeast, it is yeast that a woman took and mixed with flour until all of it was leavened.

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