Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 (NRSV)
He 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 a man found and reburied; 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.
"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."
"Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes." And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."
This week's Gospel reading is a string of short stories Jesus tells about the kingdom of heaven, none more than a sentence or two long. Taken together, they say something worth carrying into an ordinary week.
Jesus starts small. A mustard seed and a pinch of yeast are nothing to look at in the moment that matters — you can't hold a seed and see a tree, or watch yeast vanish into dough and see anything happening at all. That's worth sitting with, since most of us measure importance by size: the big event, the visible success, the thing everyone notices. Jesus keeps pointing the other way, to the quiet kindness nobody photographs, the patient word, the prayer said before anyone else is awake. None of it looks like a tree yet. But Jesus has a track record of growing enormous things out of what the rest of us overlook.
Then the stories shift from smallness to discovery. A man finds treasure he wasn't looking for, buried in a field he was simply working. A merchant finds the one pearl worth more than all the others, after years of deliberate searching. I appreciate that Jesus gives us both, not just one — because that's true to how people actually come to faith, or to whatever ends up mattering most in a life. Some of us stumble into it on an unremarkable Tuesday. Others search for years, through doubt and dry seasons, before recognizing the thing worth all that looking. Neither path is the lesser one. What both people share is what they did once they found it: they didn't hedge. They gave everything they had for the one thing that turned out to be worth everything.
The last images bring things back to ordinary life. A fishing net pulls in fish of every kind, and the sorting doesn't happen until the net reaches shore — and even then, it isn't the fishermen doing the sorting. Jesus closes with a household bringing treasure out of storage, old alongside new, keeping both rather than choosing.
That feels like a fitting note to end a week on. None of us has to have it all sorted out, or choose between the faith we inherited and whatever new thing we're still working out. We're allowed to hold both, and to trust that the small, hidden, ordinary things we plant this week are worth more than they look.
This is Pastor Chad, from Our Savior Lutheran Church in Wayne. We'd love to have you join us this weekend.
Peaceful Blessings.
Word in Faith is a collaboration of Wayne Association of Congregations and Ministers (WACAM), an organization partially funded by the Wayne Community Chest.
