Matthew 13:44-53

 Three More Parables

The three parables that follow are unique to Matthew’s Gospel, figuring in neither Mark’s nor Luke’s collections.  The first two share similar points; the third picks up the judgment interpretation of the parable of the wheat and the darnel.

Matthew 13:44-46   Two Parables of Commitment – Hidden Treasure and Fine Pearls

The two parables had one point of similarity – the other details were insignificant.  In each case the lucky man and the trader sold all they had/owned to secure the one thing that mattered to them.  Matthew would address that issue once more in his later discussion of the requirements of discipleship.

Already, he had shown how the five disciples whom Jesus had explicitly invited to join him (Peter, Andrew, James, John and Levi) had immediately left everything and followed Jesus.  As the other parables, with all their differences, had already indicated, given the certainty of ultimate judgment, and in the light of its outcomes, choice was decisive.

Both parables would serve to encourage total commitment, and confirm the promised insight into God, pledged to the pure of heart (the truly single-minded) in the Beatitudes: “They shall see God”.   Yet the Kingdom could be seen as something already completed that had to be gained, and held – rather than as an overarching network of human and divine interactions still in process and requiring to be laboriously constructed.

Matthew 13:47-50     Parable of the Fishing Net – Judgment

The parable, not unlike the parable of the wheat and the weeds, only simpler and less detailed, referred to the coexistence of good and bad, and a final sorting out (when it was full) and separating of the two.  

It avoided the awkward ambiguity of the separate “sowings” by the Son of Man and the devil.

The interpretation, probably added by the early Christian community, though phrased obviously by Matthew, looked to God’s action at the end of the age.  Evil and good coexisted in the present, but evil would encounter suffering.  The focus was squarely on the fate of the evil, nothing being mentioned of the righteous.  Matthew’s colourful use of language, if not intended as threat, was at least a strong warning.

God’s Kingdom and the Kingdoms of the World

Matthew’s sense of the Kingdom seemed to be of something already established by God and into which people were invited to step.  That step involved a deliberate movement away from the kingdoms of the world and the values on which they were based.  The option for God’s Kingdom required commitment to a lifestyle expressed substantially in the values indicated in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.  In the interim, the kingdoms of the world would continue to exist, but, effectively, they had been (or were soon to be) vanquished by the saving action of Jesus, even if they failed to realise it.  As more and more disciples chose to live according to the values of God’s Kingdom, the kingdoms of the world would gradually disappear.

The allegorical interpretation of the Parable of the Sower had made reference to the importance of good soil for the word, without making much reference to what that would consist of.  Such good soil would remain constant under persecution, and would not be choked by the cares of the world and the lure of wealth.  The parables of the mustard seed and the yeast had emphasised the inevitable triumph of the Kingdom, despite its present insignificance.  Those of the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price had insisted on the total commitment required to partake in that triumph.  The parables of the darnel and the wheat and of the fish caught in the dragnet insisted that good and bad would coexist in the present but that God would separate the good from the bad, and their final fates would be appropriate but different – without any details of the basis of the discernment.

In his reflection on the Kingdom, Matthew’s preoccupation often seemed to be with its eventual final outcome – which, in his mind, would be overwhelmingly due to the action of God.

In the unfolding life of the Church across history, the shift of emphasis from involvement in the present to future judgment, detectable in Matthew, has often served to provide justification for spiritualising Jesus’ sense of Kingdom, purifying it of its social and political challenge, and privatising and domesticating morality.  Social justice lost its urgency and was often seen as peripheral to discipleship.

The Trained Scribe

Matthew 13:51-53     Treasures New and Old

Mark had criticised the disciples’ lack of insight; Matthew wished to defend them.  For Matthew, the disciples understood; the crowds lacked insight and interest.  His defence of the original disciples was consistent with his defence of the members of his own community in conflict with the local synagogue.  Christian disciples represented faithful Israel; despite misunderstanding, lack of success and ostracism from the mainstream, they were those truly devoted to the Law and the prophets.

Earlier in the narrative, Jesus had referred to himself as householder: If they called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more those who live in it! [10:25]  … The farm hands came to the landowner and told him, “Did you not sow good grain in your paddock? [13:27].

Perhaps Matthew saw himself as a scribe who has been schooled for the kingdom of the heavens, a disciple truly following in the footsteps of Jesus (The Greek word for schooled sounds, in fact, like the word Matthew).  He was faithful to tradition, but not locked into it: the new grew out of the old, but fulfilled it at the same time.  It was the committed embracing of the new by the Christian community that was the source of persecution, yet, like the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price, it was the one thing that mattered. 

Tradition in the Church

Matthew’s sense of Jesus’ relationship to the Hebrew Scriptures, and his approval of the “scribe schooled in the ways of the kingdom”, give a useful insight into the place of tradition in the Church.  Jesus drew respectfully from the Hebrew Scriptures, indeed, in Matthew’s words, he fulfilled them.  He saw them faithfully interpreting the mind of God at different moments in human history, and witnessing to people’s ever-improving capacity for deeper human reflection and clearer expression.

But he saw insight into the mind of God as something developing –  and he himself contributed to that furthering of understanding.  The criterion of development was 

• fidelity to past insights
• and perceptive reading of the ever-changing situation of the present.  

The overriding concern was always to apply God’s will to the present.

Fidelity to the past involved understanding its essential message, irrespective of culturally conditioned assumptions and of its deficient articulation in words and images.  Fidelity to the present involved a discerning interpretation of current questions and needs.

Understood in this way, tradition is essential to the life of the Church.  Tradition is not adherence to something static, but deep respect and clear understanding of the essence of the “old”, translated and applied to the ever-changing “new”.

Matthew’s reflection on the mystery of the Kingdom had finished for the moment. 

Next >> Matthew 13:54-58