It’s a lot like looking through a kaleidoscope – reading and hearing these parables of Jesus, one after another. The images shift as you adjust the tube just a little, forming and reforming in patterns that are connected to each other but always changing.
When I was a teenager, my dad brought home a kaleidoscope that – instead of shifting a set of colored chips like the toys I was used to – formed its intriguing patterns by simply reflecting the world in front of you through a curved lens and a set of mirrors. I loved to point that kaleidoscope at different familiar scenes or objects – a table lamp, the cats, the bright trees and plants in the yard, my family members – and watch patterns form that were almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the familiar sights of my home.
That’s what it feels like to me, as seed and bush and leaven and treasure and pearls and merchants and fish all tumble over one another in these stories of Jesus that we hear together today. Patterns of the “real world”, the world around us, are stretched and reflected in odd and curious ways, recognizable and unrecognizable mixed up together and forming new patterns, different from what my eyes – or the rest of me – is used to.
The world seen through the kaleidoscope – or through the parables – is one that I don’t quite know how to navigate, but it’s attractive to me, and I keep coming back to look. To see the world a little differently.
And I suspect that’s why Jesus tells parables in the first place.
To get us to see the world a little differently.
It struck me this week that every time Jesus introduces one of these sayings or stories, he says, “the kingdom of heaven is like…”. Is, not “will be”. He’s not inviting us to imagine how a future perfect world would work. He’s inviting us to look at the world right in front of us, right around us, the is of our own life, and see the reality reflected by the presence of God saturating what is.
And that reality isn’t like just a pearl, or a seed – it’s like the whole story. The kingdom is like the experience, the fullness of the moment described. We’re not supposed to be able to focus on, to navigate, by a recognizable and familiar object or action as we respond to Jesus’ parables. We’re supposed to respond to the whole image, made strange and yet attractive, by the lenses and reflections Jesus offers us.
And these stories, these images are strange, as soon as you stop and think about them a little. Deliberately sowing an invasive plant – the mustard bush – in your ordinary field? Putting yourself out of business to purchase one particular pearl? (what are you going to do next?) Dragging ashore a net with rotten fish well mixed in your catch?
Some of the actions Jesus describes are just… weird. Foolish, probably. Unusual for sure. Ordinary actions of work and business stretched into odd and unexpected shapes. Making a pattern – a pattern in which we start to recognize the kingdom of heaven by a resistance to “conventional wisdom”, and the “right” way to do things.
Most of these little moments, these parables of Jesus, depend on something foolish or worthless or unattractive.
A seed both invasive and insignificantly small.
Leaven – not our familiar packaged yeast, but a rising agent made from spoiling dough that can easily become dangerous, and is considered a symbol for corruption in Jesus’ other teachings.
A cheater or thief, sneaking hidden treasure through a probably dishonest purchase.
The foolish merchant and rotten fish.
Little or icky or worthless things that are also an experience of exuberance, or fulfillment, or abundance, or the balancing of righteousness in the world. A ridiculously oversized bush that benefits the birds. Ten gallons of flour and bread for a hundred from one hearth. Treasure that’s worth everything. All the fish, not just the good ones, not just a few.
New patterns emerge, in which we start to recognize the kingdom of heaven by an embrace of the unexpected and uncomfortable, an openness to discovering glory and value, abundance and fulfillment in the small, worthless, and unattractive.
Dig into even one commentary, and you’ll find even more little themes, patterns of oddness and amazement; patterns of things hidden and revealed, of the sensible and the ridiculous in these parables. All of them adding up to a pattern of the unexpected, the glorious or miraculous, in what we thought was ordinary.
Through the lenses and mirrors Jesus uses, the insignificant becomes extraordinary, stretching and changing what we see, so that the most everyday things start to glow with the presence of all God’s holiness.
So that silly and impractical choices – picking the loser for your team, buying every single zucchini at the farmers market – start manifesting God’s healing and justice.
And boringly mundane actions – laundry, calendaring meetings, commuting – start to resonate with the presence of the Creator of all, or overflow with unconditional divine love.
It's all in how you look.
All in the lens you or I put to our eye, in the little twist that changes how the world reflects, and what we see.
The kingdom of heaven is like the world we know, reflected into shapes of unfamiliar grace, surprise, and beauty. All around us, here and now, if we just look through a different lens.
“Have you understood these things?” Jesus asks his disciples.
Asks us, maybe.
I don’t think he’s asking if they, or we, can explain what we’ve learned. I think he’s asking us if we’ve understood how to look for the shape of heaven, the vivid reality of the life-giving work of God, in the mundane and foolish objects and actions in front of us, the awkward and unimpressive realities of our daily lives.
That’s part of what it means, I think, to be Christian. To be followers of Jesus is to be people who see the world differently because we look differently. Because we practice encountering the world through the lens of expecting to find God at work, transforming and healing and loving us. Practice expecting God’s presence to be reflected in everything.
I have found that when I start looking for the traces of God’s work in the world, I tend to find them. To find foolish, extravagant, hope in the pet photos, generous jokes, and little declarations of solidarity that are mixed into the ridiculous disputes, sensationalism, and advertising avalanche of social media. To find a miracle of creative love – and a temptation to give everything I have for a single treasure – in the taste of one perfectly fresh tomato or cherry.
Found that when I start trying to find one small way to follow Jesus’ teaching to love my neighbor, I discover a previously invisible groundswell of people selflessly running errands, sharing their homes, or giving difficult public testimony to promote the human dignity of their neighbors.
A friend of mine once described this as the “blue Chevy” phenomenon. It’s the way you gradually or suddenly start to notice just how many blue Chevrolet sedans there are on the road around you in the days and weeks after you start driving a blue Chevrolet sedan for the first time. Your experience makes just a slight shift in your lens of vision, and the world reveals just how full it is – how full it always has been – of blue Chevys.
Or mustard plants and pearls.
Or tiny, ridiculous actions of peace and joy.
Or unlovable folks who unmistakably love their neighbor as themselves.
Lovable folks who do that, too.
So maybe the kingdom of heaven is like a kaleidoscope.
Or maybe it’s like a blue Chevrolet (or whatever you vehicle you used to get yourself to church today). Like a car that someone drove day after day after day, until the everyday road was filled with treasure, and acts of love, and the wonder and glory of God. And then, in our joy, we leave all the other roads behind to share the road that gives abundant life to all.
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