A few weeks ago at church we were talking about the all sufficiency of Jesus and the Gospel. How everything hangs on these. How these are all that we need. How these are at the very center, the very core of our faith and should be the focus and aim of our lives: To know Jesus and to experience and reflect forth the Gospel message.
I agree with all of this (here it comes) but I think it frankly leaves me wanting. Maybe it’s because of how I define my terms or because of my narrow mindedness, which is all fine, but it still is an interesting idea to wrestle with and try to work out.
At any rate, in our small group we began discussing all this, which was really an excellent time, did a great job of filling out the picture and addressing some of these issues of semantics, etc. But in the midst of all this I had one of those personal “AHA moments.” Now maybe this isn’t as profound for anyone but me, but I feel like I was able to draw some very meaningful connections with some different sections of scripture that I had always somewhat glanced over and never really engaged with.
In Matthew 13:31,32, Jesus tells the parable of the mustard seed. It is nestled in the midst of quite a few other parables and is connected to them to be sure, but it is really interesting, and quite simple. 2 sentences.
“He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”
So Jesus uses this simple image of a mustard seed to discuss the kingdom of Heaven. This is where the light bulb came on for me. You know the image presented in the parable: teenie, tiny, itsy, bitsy little seed. (They really are too if you ever look at one.) Small. So anyways, out of this little, teenie seed comes this humungus tree-like plant that birds can come and perch in the branches. In other words what seems small, simple, obscure, easy to look over or to get quickly bored with is the origin and birthplace of this disproportionately large and amazing plant.
And like I said this is where the lights came on for me. Jesus and the Gospel is central, absolute, the core. But sometimes (and again words/meaning and how I understand those terms) it can seem like that’s pretty limiting to God. Aren’t we called to love and serve our neighbors? Aren’t we called to serve the widows and orphans? Aren’t we called to love our enemies and pray for those that persecute us? To love God with all our mind, soul, strength? To carry one another’s burdens? To be generous? To love our husbands/wives/children? To live lives of faith? To view ourselves as aliens and strangers….. You get the point, I could go on and on.
But if we think about the central/core/basic focus of our faith being the Kingdom of Heaven, and if we understand the Kingdom of Heaven to be this all expansive / encompassing invitation into this grand journey and story in which God is drawing all of his lost children to himself, and then loving them and sustaining them, and helping them go and invite others into that kingdom through innumerable, myriad ways, THEN for me that makes room for what I see in the scriptures as this exciting, multifaceted adventure that God has called us into, where we’re all made in his likeness, and yet unique, specially gifted and called to be a part of that Kingdom right where we are, and as who we are.
It’s sort of like in Men In Black I. You remember that? Good show, anyways, that cat had that little marble on it’s neck chain. And apparently inside that marble were many “galaxies.” If you looked inside there or could crawl inside there, you would find endless exploration, galaxies, planets, moons, space….
Or imagine someone handing you a small wooden box (also from some sci-fi experience) and you open the simple small wooden box to find that you could somehow crawl inside that itsy, bitsy box and there were other worlds in there: countries, mountains, oceans, lakes, streams, forests, cities to explore. (I guess this is ala Narnia, I have no shame)
So that’s where I’ll leave this. For me it is thrilling to know that I am invited into this thing Jesus calls the Kingdom of Heaven (which can also be made to sound simple or trite), which is a multifaceted adventure story that I’m invited into, right now where I stand, by a great God who loves his creation deeply and who has started on this amazing plan to rescue as many as will have him.
- mark rohlfing