Re-Thinking Kingdom Parables

Sermon for July 30, 2023 Pentecost 8A, Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR

Matthew 13:31—46

[Jesus] put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

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.”

“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.

 “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.

Did Jesus smirk?  Or did he wink?  Maybe; of course, we do not know.  

But I think perhaps he did.  At a minimum, I think he often had a hint of a grin and a twinkle in his eye as he told his parables. They often have exaggerated or absurd elements meant to get people’s attention and make them think.  

For example, think of how ridiculous it would be to leave 99 sheep unattended and at the mercy of predators just to go after one lost one.  

Today we are looking at a number of parables Jesus used to try to communicate what he meant by the kingdom of God.  Matthew likes to call it “the kingdom of heaven” — often observant Jews avoided saying God’s name — but parallel texts in Mark and Luke show that they are one and the same.  

The kingdom of heaven is not about a heavenly afterlife, it’s about God’s kingdom, which Jesus said was present here and now, for those with eyes to see it and hearts open to it.

So, back to the absurdities. Jesus said, The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field… Mustard plants are weeds.  No farmer would ever plant one in her field.  And they don’t grow into trees, they are bushy.  

So why would he say that?  And why add the odd bit about birds nesting in it? 

Jesus was riffing on a well-known prophecy and turning some aspects of it on its head.  Ezekiel had compared the nation of Israel to a tree that God would plant back in their own land after the Babylonian exile.  

So this is a tree metaphor for future national restoration.   Ezekiel said:

“This is what the Sovereign God says, ‘I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches.’” (Ezekiel 17:22-23)

So, that’s why the birds showed up in Jesus’ parable, to make the reference to that prophecy unmistakable. How does Jesus stand aspects of that metaphor on its head?  

Because for Jesus, the kingdom of God was more like a kin-dom than a kingdom.  Ezekiel’s tree was a nation.  But Jesus’ was a family.  

It was about relating to each other as kin.  And how do you treat family?  Y

ou care for each other, take responsibility for each other, have each other’s backs. 

And this is hugely significant, especially for people like those Galileans who were Jesus’ first followers.  All but a few were landless peasants, people overlooked, people barely making it.  

So, the kin-dom of God is like getting a new family.  The vision Jesus had was to start small, like mustard seeds, and then watch it grow.  

It was not a national vision, like Ezekiel’s was.  That part gets turned on its head.  The kingdom Jesus had in mind was not a nationalist dream, it was a peasant’s dream.  

But why use a mustard seed for the metaphor of small beginnings?  Because, again, it was a weed.  Jesus is winking.  

Some people thought his moment was like a weed that needed to be eradicated.  Jesus had opposition.  From whom?  

From the wealthy aristocrats running the temple and its banking operations in Jerusalem. We all know how that story went. 

But to those who have eyes to see, the kin-dom that some wanted to eradicate has the capacity to grow up, not into a bush, but into a tree (wink, wink).  

Next, Jesus says the kin-dom of God is “like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”  

Again, a wink.  Yeast was a symbol for corruption.  At Passover, you had to remove all the yeast from your house and eat only unleavened bread.  

So, again, we ask, who might have looked on Jesus kin-dom movement as something negative?  The ones who were threatened by it.  Remember, Jesus was teaching that people had direct access to God who loved them like a Heavenly parent without needing temples, priests, and sacrifices.  

And it was not just talk.  He had plans to go to Jerusalem at Passover and confront the temple administration head on.   

But the kindom had the capacity to spread, like yeast in dough, and nothing was going to stop it.  

His next two parables are so similar we can think about them together.  The kin-dom of God is like a “treasure hidden in a field” and like a “pearl of great value.”  Upon discovering it, the finder in both cases “sells all that he has” to buy it.  

Is there a wink involved here too?  Yes.  Most of the people following Jesus were in no position to own land or pearls. 

Even if they sold all they had, they could never afford either.  Even a simple wooden fishing boat was a family possession for the fishermen in his company.  And selling a boat would not get you land or pearls.  

So who would be in a position to sell enough stuff to make those purchases?  People like the young aristocrat who asked Jesus what he should do to be good with God?  

Remember him? He was the one who said he had kept all the rules in the Law of Moses.  Jesus said,

“If you want to be righteous, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Matthew 19:21). He wanted no part of that kind of kin-dom.

But for all those peasants who were following Jesus, they knew that they already possessed the kin-dom.  Jesus told them that the kin-dom was “at hand,” “among them,” and “within them.”  

And it was of inestimable value. In what way? It could turn non-persons into persons.  It was open to everyone; men, women, even children, enslaved people, non-citizens, even sick and disabled people.  All of them could consider themselves like found sheep, cared for by a Shepherd who would do anything to rescue them.  

They gathered together around common tables where there was enough for everyone.  

They learned how to forgive each other to prevent their inclusive community from becoming toxic.  

They valued meekness over power and held each other’s grief and trauma histories as sacred.  

They valued their communities like buried treasure.  

They felt lucky to have made the discovery of life in the kin-dom of God. 

Is that how we feel?  We, who have nice homes, plenty of food, doctors, safe streets, and air conditioning; is the kin-dom of God a treasure?  

Not for everybody.  We live in a time in which there are organized efforts to create a kingdom in which everybody looks the same, speaks one language, has the same views about gender, marriage, family, and self-sufficiency. 

They look at people who champion inclusion and who value difference as weeds.  

They want to teach their children a version of the past that is as rosy as it is wrong: that enslaved people learned valuable skills, so maybe it was not all that bad.  

That the holocaust was only about Jews and not about the five million other people that the fascists slaughtered, including gay people, and people with intellectual and physical disabilities.  

If we do treasure the values of the kin-dom that Jesus taught us about, then we need to be as organized and as savvy as they.  

We need to be wise as serpents, even if our goals are to be innocent as doves.  

We need to believe that the arc of the moral universe does bend toward justice, but not by gravity.  It bends when people actively work to bend it.  

The kin-dom can grow, but only if we water it frequently.   There is opposition to that vision today, just as there was in Jesus’ time.  

So it is out time to do all we can, as agents of the kindom of God.  

What is the alternative/. As has been said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” 

The Vision of a Weedless World

Sermon for July 23, 2023, Pentecost 8A, Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR.

Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43

24   He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27 And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ 28 He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 29 But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30 Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

36   Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” 37 He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; 38 the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40 Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 42 and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!

My botany professor told us the official definition of a weed: it is any plant where you don’t want it.  

He said, a rose, if it appears in the middle of the yard where you don’t want it may be considered a weed.  

What do we do with weeds?  We try to eliminate them.  That is why this parable is morally complicated, and why we need to think carefully and critically about it.  

In this parable, there are people who are considered “weeds.”  In the end, they are eliminated.  

In the meantime, they are to be tolerated, but nevertheless, they are to be considered weeds.

This brings up all kinds of problems.  First, who did Jesus treat like a weed?  We should clarify that question this way: who did the historical Jesus treat like a weed?    

Second, who does God treat like weeds?  And finally, who should we treat like weeds?  

First, let us begin with some reflections about the historical Jesus.  The overwhelming scholarly consensus, including the faculty of our Presbyterian Seminaries, agree that the gospels as we have them contain several layers.  

There is a layer of material that goes back to the historical Jesus, and there are layers of material that come from the later communities that considered themselves followers of Jesus.  

That later material reflects the concerns and issues of those communities decades after Jesus.  In some important ways, their perspectives diverge from the historical Jesus.  

The material that scholars are most confident that comes from the historical Jesus are his short, memorable aphorisms, like “turn the other cheek” and “render unto Caesar…” and his clever, and memorable parables.   

If that is where we start, what do we find?  Jesus said things like, God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust, …turn the other cheek, …forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,  …love your enemies.”  

Clearly, the God Jesus believed in was non-judgmental, forgiving, and the source of blessing for the just and the unjust (good guys and bad guys).  Because God was like that, Jesus concluded we should not just tolerate, but actually love, our enemies.  

The God that Jesus believed in treated no one like weeds.  And so, Jesus treated no one like weeds, and told us not to treat anyone like weeds.  

Rather, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, and instead of treating them like weeds, we are to love even our enemies.

But the early followers of Jesus had a hard time with this perspective.  Especially when they started getting kicked out of the synagogues where they originally had been meeting, and especially when some were being persecuted, they did not want love or forgiveness of enemies, they wanted revenge.  They wanted God’s vengeance.  

And so they were seduced by another vision of God — the vision that was common in those days, the vision that John the Baptist believed in: the apocalyptic vision.

Jesus, remember, was baptized by John the baptist and was part of his community, probably until John was arrested and executed by Herod Antipas.  

But then, Jesus  broke away to form his own community based on his own teachings which significantly diverged from John’s.  

In what way did they diverge?  John was a preacher of, and believer in, a coming apocalypse in which God was supposed to miraculously intervene in world affairs. God was to come down and cut down the evil that had grown up, not just like weeds, but like entire trees — and God’s action was coming soon; John said that the axe was already at the foot of the evil trees, ready to start chopping.  God would pulverize them and burn their chaff with fire.  (see Matt. 3:8–9)

But John’s expected apocalyptic intervention never came.  He was killed.  And Jesus had to re-think that whole apocalyptic perspective.  

He decided to abandon it.  That was not how God works, he concluded. The sun shines on the evil and the good.  

The kingdom of God is not coming in a future apocalypse of judgment but is already present everywhere that God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.  That was Jesus’ message; quite different than John’s. 

But, when you are being hurt, you want to hurt back.  Forgiveness is hard to swallow.  So, the early followers of Jesus misremembered Jesus, as if he continued to accept John’s apocalyptic vision of future judgment in which God would be the weed-eliminator-in-chief.  

Mathew elaborated this misremembering into a full-blown parable of the end of the age, complete with angelic reapers and a fiery furnace for the weed-people, leaving the non-weed people like us, shining like the sun.  

How unlike “love your enemies” that perspective is.  How unlike the historical Jesus that is.  

What are you to do with weeds?  Eliminate them, and do so before they spread and ruin the whole lawn.  That is still the perspective of some who claim to be followers of Jesus today.  

Some of them stand on the corner of Rogers and Waldron Ave. with signs calling for repentance. Their signs list the weed-people: fornicators, gay people… you know the list.  

Interestingly, their weed lists never seem to include bitter people, people who are lovers of money, prideful people, people who are not meek, people who don’t turn the other cheek or go the second mile, people who refuse to forgive, and who don’t love their enemies.  That’s worth thinking about.

Treating people like weeds is the perspective that leads to the Trail of Tears and to lynching.  That perspective leads to the Tulsa and Elaine massacres, and even to the holocaust.  It is, in other words, not just incorrect, it is the exact opposite of what the historical Jesus taught.  For Jesus, no one is a weed.

But if God is not the ultimate weed-eliminator, and if we are not to be weed destroyers either, that leaves a final problem: is there then, no justice?  

Because, even though we are called not to treat people like weeds, nevertheless, there are people who do evils, small and great.  There is injustice, there is oppression. There is fraud, abuse, sexual misconduct, human trafficking, deceit, crime, murder… the list is endless.  Are we to turn a blind eye?

Not at all.  We are called to do all that we can in order for God’s will to “be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  That means that we are the ones to ensure that justice is done here, in this life.  

We are to champion and protect those who have been marginalized and discriminated against.  We are to work to end unjust systems that hold people down and abuse them.  We are to call out corruption, abuse, and neglect.  We do not treat people like weeds, but we do hold them accountable.  

We believe in redemption, we believe that people can change, under the right conditions, no one is a hopeless case or a lost cause, no one is a weed.  

But there must be accountability, there must be consequences, and we must hold people responsible so that evil does not flourish.  There must be restitution. 

There must also be honest confession of past evils and humble acknowledgment of the times we have not lived up to the values of our national creed, “liberty and justice for all.”  

If we are going to repent, therefore, it must be repentance for the times we have treated people like weeds, instead of as bearers of the image of God.  

Ours is not an apocalyptic vision of judgment, but a Jesus-shaped vision of a world without weeds.

The Seeds of the Controversial Kingdom

Sermon for July 16, 2023, Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR

Matthew  13:1-9, 18-23

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the lake. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. 

Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. 

Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 

Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!

“Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. 

As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. 

But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

I wish Jesus were here in the flesh to defend himself.  If he were here, he would have a lot of defending to do. 

He had to do that a lot when he walked the earth many years ago.  He had a lot of opposition.  Back then his opponents were right out in the open.  They disagreed with him, and they were not shy about it.  

Eventually, they were successful in getting him arrested and executed.  They were opposed to his ideas that much.  They saw him as a threat.  

Even though the gospels tone Jesus down, still they report that opposition, and of course, they report his execution.  

First, lets take a moment to ask why and how did the gospels try to tone Jesus down?  

The gospels were produced by the early communities of Jesus’ followers who, in the beginning, were mostly, if not all, Jews.  By the time of their writing, Israel had just lost a revolt against Rome that lasted four years and took tens of thousands of lives.  

The gospels wanted to reduce the way that Jesus could come off looking like a guilty-rebel leader.  After all, his main theme was that the kingdom of God was present, as an alternative to the kingdom of Rome, internationally, and of Herod, locally.  That sounds treasonous, so the gospels tone Jesus down.  

How do they tone him down?  

The clearest example is the event that sealed his fate.  Remember, Jesus took a long journey from Galilee up to the capital city, Jerusalem, 90 miles from his home, timed to arrive at during the Passover festival, which we could call it Jewish Independence Day.  

He went up to the temple complex when Jerusalem was filled with thousands of pilgrims and led a demonstration that shut it down temporarily.  

The gospels report it, but provide so little reason for it, as to make that bold, public act look nearly inexplicable.  

The people who ran the temple which was also the national bank, and profited handsomely from it, the chief priests, all from the aristocracy, and the Roman-appointed high priest, saw that act as an existential threat to their authority and livelihood, and it was.  

The gospels also tone down Jesus’ teaching about money, the dangers of having a lot of it, and the necessity of sharing it.  

How?  By sweeping under the rug the fact that the only people with a lot of money were the large land-owning aristocrats.  

They were the very people whom the peasant revolt that became the Jewish uprising of 66 CE were attacking.  

So, again, Jesus could look like a guilty rebel if his story included that kind of what we might call class conflict. 

So, a lot of people were opposed to the movement that Jesus was leading and to its values.  

One of the functions of the parable of the Sower is to explain why people would be put off by Jesus’ teaching.  

The sower sows the seed which is the word; specifically the word, or message of the kingdom.  What is that message?  That the kingdom of God is a present reality.  That’s the message the sower sows.  

Some are completely uninterested.  Like seeds landing on the hard-packed path, there is no chance that the message of the kingdom will take root for them.  

Whom, we might ask, would be opposed to that message? Who would have anything to lose if God, rather than Caesar or Herod were on the throne?  

Whose interests would be threatened by a quest, as the prophets would say, to let justice roll down like waters? (Amos 5:24).  

Remember Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and God’s justice.”  (Matt. 6:33)

Some may initially seem interested in the kingdom’s message, but when they realize that accepting that message may entail bearing some costs, like seed on rocky ground, the message does not take root.  

When, Jesus said, “trouble or persecution arises on account of the word” of the kingdom, they lose interest.  

Again we could ask, for whom would that message cause trouble?  Why would anyone persecute someone for that message?  

The message had to be stronger than merely a call to love your neighbor as yourself and turn the other cheek. No one gets in trouble or persecuted for saying that. 

Others may seem receptive to the message of the kingdom, like the curious rich young man  (read aristocrat) whom Jesus met one day, but, as the parable says, “the cares of the world and the lure of wealth” are like thorns that choke out the message.  

Who would be in danger of falling prey to the lure of wealth?   Not the peasants of Galilee. Remember, that rich young aristocrat when away sad after hearing he needed to part with wealth.  He rejected the message of the kingdom.

So, a minority of people accept the message of the kingdom.  But for those who do, it is amazing.  It is like a bumper crop to a farmer.  

Why?  Because it is such a liberating message.  The prayer Jesus taught us to pray captures the essence. 

Having God as their heavenly “Father” or parent, they know each other as family, so they treat each other with respect.   

If the kingdom of God is a present reality, then people will do all they can to make God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  

Recognizing their “daily bread” as a gift, they are willing to share.  

They will practice debt-forgiveness, just as they have been forgiven.  

Well, I wish Jesus were here to defend himself today against people who oppose his ideas, but if he were, he would find himself in a familiar position. 

Just as Jesus’ opposition came from the religious establishment in his day, many people who oppose his central teachings today are from the religious establishment: they call themselves Christians.  They put Jesus up on a pedestal so high that his voice is not heard.  

Many are trying, for example to re-introduce their versions of a purity culture here in our country.  

Let’s remember that one of the messages of the Kingdom is that the categories “pure and impure” are no longer relevant.  Jesus touched people with blood disorders and lepers, that is, the uber-impure people of his day. 

His hero in the story of the Good Samaritan who, unlike the purity-obsessed priest and Levite, went ahead and touched and cared for the bloody body victim.  Touching blood, of course, made a person impure.

Jesus clearly had no time for the pure/impure binary.  It’s not part of the alternative value system of the Kingdom.      The father welcomes home the prodigal son, disregarding the impure state the pigs he lived with have left him in. 

But some today want to ban books from the library that help young people who are asking questions about their gender identity or sexual orientation, as if being gay or transexual somehow made them impure or contagious.  As if who a person loves should be a problem.  

Another way the values of the kingdom are being undermined today by people calling themselves Christians is their support for what they call Christian Nationalism.  

I have seen nationalism up close in Europe.  This month is the 28th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia.  More than 8,000 men were slaughtered as nationalists tried to ethnically cleanse them.  

In that nationalist conflict women were captured and terrible things were done to them in attempts to break up their families and drive them away.  

After it ended, there were mass graves.  In Croatia, I lived within a thirty-minute drive of two of them.  

Nationalism that oppresses anyone is totally antithetical to the values Jesus taught when, according to Matthew he said, “Go in to all the world and preach the message of the kingdom…”.  

The kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed has no geographical boundaries, claims no territory, has no aspirations to dominate and includes people from every tribe and nation, every race and ethnicity.  

The values of the kingdom that we learn from Jesus are about inclusion, about inviting people from the highways and byways to come in to enjoy the wedding banquet.  

It can only be oxymoronic to link the words Christian and Nationalism, though some today are doing it. 

By contrast, those who receive the message of the kingdom and let it take root in them can only be described with the metaphors of fruitful abundance.  

Their lives produce a crop of 30, 60, or even a 100 fold increase.  

The increase is a bumper crop of the joy of justice and equity being done, of inclusion and affirmation, of compassion, mercy, and love. 

Jesus’ Invitation

Sermon for July 9, 2023, Pentecost 6A, Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR

Matthew  11:28—30

[Jesus said] “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”                                  

When, according to Matthew, Jesus said, “Come to me…” he was offering an invitation, a call.  

What was actually on offer? 

He called it “rest.”  What did that mean, in his context, and what could that mean for us in our vastly different context?  

He specified the people he intended to invite: 

“all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens.” 

What was making them weary, and what were they burdened by?  

Answering Jesus’ invitation included taking his yoke, as an alternative to the yoke that was burdening them and making them weary.  

To answer the invitation, people needed not only to take his alternative yoke, they also were called to “learn from” Jesus.  

What did that yoke mean, and what did he want them to learn from him, in his context, and what could that mean for us in our vastly different context?

Let’s begin with the rest Jesus was offering to those who answered his invitation.  

Let me start with a question.  Can God get tired?  

In the Ancient world, they thought so.  God, or the gods, had a lot of work to do and it made them tired and hungry.  

That is one of the reason ancient people sacrificed to the gods: it was the way to feed them.  Burning meat turned it into smoke, which the gods ingested by inhaling it.  

There is almost a comic scene in the ancient flood story, the Epic of Gilgamesh in which the gods, after going without sacrificial food all during the flood, swarm like flies around the first post-flood sacrifice.  

The work of the gods that made them so tired involved keeping chaos under control.  As is often the case in ancient mythology, states of being, like chaos or death, were depicted as characters.  

Chaos was depicted as the chaos monster that lived in the watery depths under the earth, always threatening to burst out and ruin everything.  

Chaos is when civilization is in a mess, people are being oppressed, justice is not being done, and evil triumphs.

But when everything was working as it should, when adequate sacrifices fed the gods and the work of subduing chaos was accomplished, then the gods got what they most desired: rest.  

Picking up on this idea, the ancient people who gave us our Biblical creation story made the seventh day the climax.  On the Sabbath, the seventh day, God rested.  Creation was complete.  

It had started as a disordered place, but God’s Spirit or breath hovered over the chaotic depths and brought forth light and life, symmetry and beauty, fish, animals and people, peace, and harmony, justice and abundance for everyone.  

The principle of Sabbath rest was then built into the structure of life for the Israelites.  The perfect world was not only when God was resting with chaos under control, but the humans that God had made in God’s image also participated in Sabbath rest.  How?  In multiple rhythms of rest.  

Every seven days, on the Sabbath, there was literal rest from all labor.  It was to be a day of rest for everyone — men, and women, slave or free.  

Every seven years, on the Sabbath year, all debts were forgiven and thus, the cause of debt slavery was reversed.  

Every fiftieth year, after seven Sabbath years, was the Year of Jubilee, on which all land was returned to its original owner and all debt slaves were released. 

The land was also given a year of rest from agricultural production.  

This Sabbath-based redistribution system is what we mean by the term “distributive justice.” 

Well, no one knows when, if ever, this Sabbath-rest system was ever implemented.  But that is the vision of how it should be.  

However, by the time of King Solomon, the story is that all this was scuttled.  The people were put under a heavy taxation system to build up the king’s palaces and temples and to supply his court with lavish opulence.  

It was so bad for the people that when Solomon’s son took the throne, the people came to him begging for relief.  

They said,

“Your father made our yoke heavy. Now, therefore, lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke that he placed on us, and we will serve you.”  

1Kings 12:4

Notice they called the oppressive system a yoke.  He did not, however, heed their pleas, and so they seceded.  The nation was split in two, never to unite again.  

The biblical story of the monarchy is told as one long spiral into disaster.  

Prophets periodically inveighed against corruption and injustice, but with limited if any success.  The once-proud nation was eventually swallowed up by the Babylonian empirical regime, and Israel’s monarchy was brought to a devastating end.  

Viewing the smoldering ruins of the temple in Jerusalem, with his compatriots — at least the survivors — in exile, Jeremiah described their plight in prayer, saying,

“With a yoke on our necks we are hard driven; we are weary, we are given no rest.” .  

(Lam. 5:5)

A yoke of Babylonian oppression was hard, making them weary, and giving them no rest.  

Now we are in a position to understand what Jesus was talking about.  

To the desperately poor people in Galilee, under the oppression of both the Roman Empire and the Herodian dynasty’s complicit corruption, Jesus was saying in effect: I see the yoke you are carrying. I see how heavy it is.  I know that you are weary.  This is not the “rest” of distributive justice that God wills for you. This is a condition of oppression.  

So, Jesus extended an invitation: “Come to me…take my yoke, learn from me.”  What was he offering?  

Jesus was offering an alternative vision of life, an alternative vision of God, and an alternative vision of humanity.   

The alternative vision of life was that the earth is the Lord’s.  God is king.  Let God’s “will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  

What is God’s will? It is not a mystery. As Jesus learned from the prophets:

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” . 

(Micah 6:8)

“Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” .  

(Amos 5:24)

God’s will is a sabbath rest from the burden of oppression and injustice.  That is a new vision of life.

Jesus also wanted people to learn from him a new vision of God who could be addressed without a priest, a temple, or a sacrifice. A God who was a loving heavenly father/mother who wanted his children to live together as neighbors, as a beloved community of inclusion around a common table. 

It was that God who was for them, not against them.  It was that God who heard the cries of the blessed poor, the meek, and the least of these.  

This vision of God produced a new vision of humanity; not a world of pure and impure people, not a world that excluded the women and children, the sick and disabled, not a world in which it made a difference if you were Samaritan, Roman, Canaanite or Jewish, but a united humanity of sharing and abundance.

What does this mean for us today?  We too are invited by the same offer: “Come,” Jesus says.  Come, embrace this vision of life in the kingdom of God.  Come embrace this vision of the loving God of distributive justice.  Come learn from Jesus that humanity can begin to know each other as “neighbors,” and that there is enough for all of us.   

Today, the sources of injustice and oppression are not the Romans nor the Herodian aristocracy.   But they are nonetheless real and cause suffering.  Many today are weary and carrying burdens, desperately in need of rest.  

We do not live in a society of distributive justice.  Nor do we live in a society that has learned much from Jesus.  Plenty give lip service, but have learned virtually nothing of his alternative vision of distributive justice.  

But the call is still, “Come…learn.”  The call is to join Jesus by taking up his yoke,  his cause on behalf of the weary and burdened people of our day.  

The call is to join Jesus in solidarity with the marginalized in our context.  

The call is to join Jesus in non-violent resistance to systems of injustice and discrimination.  

The call is to learn from Jesus’ teaching and lifestyle which will empower us to resist the gross distortions of Christianity being marketed today.  

The call is to keep answering that invitation until there is the sabbath rest of justice for all.