REFLECTION

If someone begins a sentence with something akin to 'The kingdom of heaven is like...', what would you expect in the continuation? Would it be something amazing, quite unlike your everyday experience? Perhaps it would be a place with all your best holiday features rolled into one. Perhaps life in the kingdom would be endless leisure-time, or at least without drudgery or hard-work. Perhaps it would boil down to an image of the Garden of Eden, in which every feature is a delight, life is idyllic, and everything - God, humanity and the whole of creation - exists in perfect harmony. If that is what Jesus' hearers hoped to hear, they would have been quite disappointed.

For a start, Jesus used what must have been a most familiar image, the image of a sower sowing wheat. Even more mundane - frustratingly mundane - Jesus goes on to speak about weeds that grow up in the midst of the wheat. Weeds that take away nutrients from the crop diminishing its yield. Weeds that threaten to overwhelm the crop or a significant part of it. Weeds that are so difficult to remove, and no matter what one tries, they stubbornly rear up year after year. Hardly a Garden of Eden kind of image to those who work in the fields I imagine.

In a similar fashion, Paul writes to the church in Rome. He has strongly stated that Jesus' life, death and resurrection has made all the difference. Believing in him and following his way is the way to new life, eternal life, for believers. Indeed, believers are adopted as children of God. Yet life for believers - these adopted children - is no more the easy life of bliss than it is in Jesus' parable - Paul explicitly speaks about the 'sufferings of this present time'. Yes, suffering! And suffering as a fact of life for the believer in their day and age.

Of course, they are both in their different ways, addressing the reality of life in an in-between time. For Paul the present sufferings of the believer pale into insignificance against the 'glory about to be revealed to us.' And for Paul it isn't just human beings who can look forward to this wonderful state of being: 'the creation waits with eager longing', 'the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now'. Jesus commenced his ministry with the announcement that the Kingdom of God has come close or is near. Time and time again he referred to his actions as testimony to his being from God, and their results as signs of the Kingdom. At the same time he could speak to his closest followers about the fulfilment of his life and work as yet to come, on the cross and in resurrection, and of the time when the Son of Man would come again as judge of the world.

Yet, Jesus' parable and its explanation, don't just speak about the kingdom of heaven in the future, but as something in the present. As with similar kingdom imagery of the seed, growth is part and parcel of the idea - the kingdom expands, grows, increases, comes gradually to fruition or completion. But in this parable we should not lose sight of the fact that the kingdom of heaven was already present. The pattern of the parable is that the sower is the Son of Man (Jesus himself). The seed are 'are the children of the kingdom' (the disciples, and subsequent believers, sent out to continue his work). What's more, 'the field is the world', this physical world in which we live and the reality of human life in it.

Of course, Jesus was well aware that his message of the kingdom was not universally accepted. He knew the opposition mounting against him and that would dog his disciples too. Jesus was at pains to tell his disciples that following him was not an easy path - like Jesus himself, they would be despised, and even face death. They would, he told them, go out like sheep among wolves. Sometimes they would not be well-received, and they should pass on shaking the dust from their sandals as they did so. But the image remains - Jesus, the sower, sending out the disciples (sowing good seed), but his work and theirs (the fulfilment of the kingdom) is hampered by the weeds of unbelief.

The point of the parable and of Paul's words is encouragement, assurance. However hard it may be now, the kingdom of heaven will come. However, in the meantime, remember you who believe are the good seed of the kingdom sown to grow in the world. Remember that you are adopted children of God, fully part of the family, cared for by God.

Life for everyone today is strange and difficult. Even as lockdown is gradually being relaxed there are restrictions on what we once considered 'normal' in life. At the same time, the virus is still circulating and each of us still has to assess our own level of risk and decide for ourselves what we are happy to do and what we choose not to do. Covid-19 is not the only problem facing people around the world. There is still war and violence, abuse and injustice, poverty and homelessness, disease and post-code lottery availability of treatments - and more. The life and work of the church is not what we are used to - maybe we feel the weeds have got the upper hand - but faithful lives are still seeds of the kingdom sown in the field that is the world. Faithful lives that follow Jesus' example of love and care for one's neighbour, that bring hope and light into the gloom, that lift the eyes to the one who gives life in all its fulness, are indeed part of the kingdom of heaven here on earth. Thanks be to God for each of those lives, and for every way they bring something of the kingdom into the life of the world.