The Kingdom Of Heaven Is Like . . . .
There are three parables that Jesus gives us, and in each parable, he starts off by saying, “the kingdom of heaven is like . . .” “You know the kingdom of heaven is like . . .” So what we hear in the parable is not what we are listening to. What we are listening to is how what we are hearing in the parable reveals some mystery of the Kingdom of God. Lots of people wax warm on wheat and darnel, and people have theories about wheat and darnel, and darnel and wheat, and mustard seed and yeast, and plenty theories, but the point of the parable is that the parable is speaking to us about a mystery, a mystery that is so big that we really have to work hard to listen and to hear that mystery, otherwise we will stay with the storyline and not be open to the mystery that the storyline is conveying to us.
The whole parable ends or the scripture ends with “listen anyone who has ears.” So this is another reminder -listen anyone who has ears. We know Isaiah 6 which says “they have eyes but they cannot see, ears and they cannot hear, because their hearts have been hardened, and they refuse to repent and believe in me. And so when ‘listen anyone who has ears’ is invoking Isaiah 6, and reminding us that we’re not listening with these two things that he gave us; rather we are listening with our hearts, we’re listening with our minds, our will, our intellect, and our understanding.
In the middle of this wonderful and incredible text, he takes a pause from the parables to give us a way of understanding, and in this way of understanding, he’s saying again, you have to listen. He says, “I will speak to you in parables and expound things hidden since the foundation of the world.” Now if Jesus says that what the parable contains are things hidden since the foundation of the world, please don’t believe that you could ‘wash your foot, jump in, and understand it at the first go. If it has been hidden from since the foundation of the world, it means there’s a reason why it’s hidden, and in this case, it is hidden in plain sight because those who have eyes cannot see. So with these three clues let’s jump into our parables and see what they are really saying to us.
