A HIGHER LOYALTY
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
By Dr. David Rogne

My parents were immigrants from Norway.  For some reason my mother did not apply for citizenship for many years.  When she did do so, I was a child of about eight.  She went to citizenship classes and told me that she would have to be able to answer certain questions put to her by a judge.  I was greatly distressed.  "If you couldn't answer the questions," I asked, "would they put you on a boat and send you back to Norway?"  She assured me that that wouldn't happen.  My fears were unnecessary.  She passed the examination and became a citizen.  I asked her what she had to say as she became an American citizen.  She said that she had to openly declare her loyalty to the United States of America, and if need be, to rise to its defense.  Some of your parents may have had to do the same.  Perhaps some of you were presented with that choice.

Most of us, however, don't get the chance to choose our loyalties--at least not our national ones--they are the result of the accident of birth.  As a consequence, our loyalties may be unexamined.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus challenged his hearers to examine their loyalties, and if they found that what they were loyal to was unsatisfying, he invited them to commit themselves to a higher loyalty--one that he called the Kingdom of God.  Matthew, who recorded the words we read this morning, did not feel comfortable using the name of God, so he says Jesus was calling people to consider the Kingdom of Heaven, which means the same thing.  Unfortunately, while Jesus often described what that Kingdom is like, he never defined it.  From what he did say, however, we can make out that Jesus was not so much talking about a place as about a relationship.  It is that relationship in which we accept God's sovereignty over our lives.  We enter the Kingdom when we decide to dethrone all lesser considerations, including self, and to pledge our allegiance to the reign of God in our own lives.  Since we are called to become citizens of that Kingdom, we ought to become as informed as we can about what that Kingdom is like.

In the first parable read this morning Jesus said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed which someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs . . . ."  I think that what Jesus is suggesting here is that, whatever God's Kingdom may be one day, it starts out as the smallest of things.  Ideas which have changed civilization have often begun with one person.  The great advances of the race have often started without any trumpets sounding or anybody being aware that anything exceptional was taking place.

On the one hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, John McCutcheon drew a famous cartoon.  He showed two Kentucky backwoodsmen standing at the edge of a wood in the winter.  One asks the other, "Anything new?"  The other man replies, "Nothing much.  Oh, there's a new baby over at Tom Lincoln's.  But you know, nothing significant ever happens around here."

Centuries before that, someone might have asked in Bethlehem, "Anything new?"  And the answer might have been, "No, nothing new.  Oh, they say a woman named Mary had a baby in a stable last night.  But nothing significant ever happens around here."  George MacDonald wrote of that birth:

                                    "They all were looking for a king

                                        To slay their foes and lift them high:

                                     Thou cam'st, a little baby thing

                                        That made a woman cry."

And when that child grew up and taught, it was of little things:  a cup of cold water, a person with one talent, a widow's offering, a lost coin, kindness done for "one of the least of these."  And subsequently, how insignificant the movement must have appeared:  a teacher on a hillside, a man slain on a cross, a borrowed grave, twelve unlearned followers, and one of them was a traitor.  So many of God's greatest happenings begin so unobtrusively that they appear at the moment no more important than the planting of a mustard seed.  But therein lies our hope, for the seed which God plants in every one of us, may, in God's good time, put forth its branches for the benefit of all.  God's reign may start off as something small in us, but it has the potential to grow as others pledge their allegiance to it and come under its sway.

In a second parable Jesus said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that a woman took and put into three measures of flour until all was leavened."  As a child I used to help with the baking of bread in our home.  I remember breaking up the cakes of yeast, dissolving them in the liquid ingredients, mixing that with the flour, and then letting the dough sit for a while so that the yeast could do its work.  It worked silently, invisibly, transforming the dough from something flat to something light and palatable.  During that rising process the dough had to be pummeled once or twice, pushing it back down to get rid of air bubbles so that the texture would be more consistent.  It took time to accomplish, and sometimes there was nothing to do but wait.

What Jesus seems to be saying here is that it is the work of the Kingdom to influence the world, not to turn the world into the Kingdom.  The Kingdom cannot always be seen, because it is working within the lives of individuals, and through them influencing the world.  Christianity has often been too optimistic about what the church can accomplish.  Many have assumed that it was our responsibility to bring in God's Kingdom--to make the world into a Utopia of peace and prosperity.  That is indeed our vision, but not necessarily our responsibility.  If we are supposed to be turning this world into the Kingdom of God, there is an awful lot going on to discourage us:  the Holocaust of the Second World War, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, savage tribal strife in Rwanda and Burundi, terrorist attacks all over the world, racial hatred in our own country.  For every step forward, there is a step backward.

What I want to suggest is that God has not given us exclusive responsibility for all that is to be done.  In the first parable, Jesus does not use the illustration of an acorn becoming a giant oak tree or a seed becoming one of the great cedars of Lebanon, with which his audience would have been acquainted.  Instead, it is a tiny seed that becomes a common shrub, just a step above a weed.  In the second parable the dough is not turned into yeast--but the dough is influenced by the yeast, so that the dough is different from what it was.  Our vision is a world without war, but perhaps all we can do is bind up the wounds of one victim; our vision is for a world without hunger, but perhaps all we can do is share canned goods through a food distribution center; our vision is a world free from ignorance, but perhaps all we can do is teach one person to read.  In all those lesser activities God's Kingdom is present, the mustard seed is planted, and the yeast is changing the situation of one person from hopelessness to hope.

Jesus went on to say that "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."  Such situations were not unknown in Palestine.  All through its history Israel was subject to invasions.  There were no dependable banks or safe deposit boxes.  As the enemy descended upon the land, a person would often bury coins in the ground, intending to come back and dig them up when the danger was past.  But the burier could be killed or carted off to die in exile, and his cache go undiscovered.

Generations later a poor tenant farmer might accidentally unearth the treasure and learn how important it could be to own that field.  We can envision that person looking every which way to see whether he had been noticed, covering his find, and running home to see what he could possibly do to purchase that field.  The ethics of such a purchase is not in view here, only the joy of discovering something so special in the course of one's everyday routine.

What Jesus seems to be saying here is that the Kingdom of God may be found in the mundane and ordinary as readily as in the spectacular.  The famous scientist George Washington Carver called his busy laboratory, "God's Little Workshop."  The name was indicative of the humility of this man who prayed for God's guidance in discovering the uses of what was then an unimportant crop, the peanut.  He once shared that he had prayed the following prayer:  "Dear Mr. Creator, tell me why the universe was made."  "Ask something more in keeping with that little mind of yours," the Lord replied.  "Dear Mr. Creator, what was mankind made for?"  Again the Lord said, "You ask too much.  Cut down the extent of your request and improve the intent."  So Carver tried again.  "Mr. Creator, will you tell me why the peanut was made?"  "That's better," the Lord said, and from that day Mr. Carver developed over 300 uses for the peanut.  He found treasure in something that was part of his everyday experience.

Finally, in this series of parables, Jesus said that "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."  I take this parable to mean that the Kingdom of God is worth whatever it takes to possess it, because of the joy that comes from being part of it.  Millard Fuller's father gave him a pig when he was a boy.  As a result of that gift, while other boys in Lanett, Alabama, were concentrating on baseball or fishing, Millard became a livestock trader.  He made enough money as a trader to put himself through college.  While in law school, he sold holly wreaths, desk blotters, campus directories, and birthday cakes.  He invested his profits in real estate.  By graduation he was clearing $50,000 a year.  He was looking for the good life, and he felt that he knew how to find it.

By age 29, Millard Fuller was a millionaire with an estate-type home, a vacation retreat, two speedboats, a luxury automobile, and shares in three cattle ranches.  One day Millard's wife left him, taking their two small children.  "I don't feel I have a husband," she said.  "You're always working and thinking about making money."  In the aftermath of his wife's departure, Millard began to reflect on the meaning of his life.  He had his first million at the age of 29; he had already set his next goal--to have ten million by the time he was 39.  But when his wife, Linda, left him, he woke up to how much his "success" had cost him.  He asked Linda for a chance to reconcile, which she granted.  To get away from things for a while, they went to visit a project called "Koinonia Farms" near Americus, Georgia.  They stayed there for a month, helping to replace dilapidated shacks and shanties of poor people.  They had found a purpose.

The Fullers sold most of their possessions and founded a corporation to help poor people build houses for themselves and others.  The Fullers then took their plan to Africa where they oversaw the building of 114 homes.  They called their new-found mission "Habitat for Humanity."  Included among their carpenters have been Jimmie and Rosalyn Carter.  The Fullers' program has now placed houses for the poor in several hundred communities in this country and more than 25 nations around the world.  Of their new-found purpose Millard says:  "I don't believe we're saved by how many houses we put up.  I don't believe that we're saved by how many poor people we feed.  I know that we're saved by . . . Jesus and by the grace of God . . . What matters is our response to what God has done.  We believe that 'Habitat for Humanity' is one response, one manifestation of what God has done for us in Christ."

The Kingdom of God starts out small, but its influence grows; we discover it in ordinary things, but eventually we come to know that it is worth more than anything else.  When we decide to become followers of Jesus Christ, we become citizens of a new country.  We become residents of the Kingdom of God.