Thursday, August 3, 2023

3 August 2023 - variety show


The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea,
which collects fish of every kind.

The Kingdom is therefore not like an exclusive country club that only welcomes people of a certain sort. This unrestricted aspect of the Kingdom reminds us of the sower who sows his good seed generously on all sorts of soil. He does not judge based on the state in which he finds things, nor on the state of their progress midway, but only on the final condition of the fruit of the plant or on the appearance of the fish as they are sorted on the shore.

When it is full they haul it ashore
and sit down to put what is good into buckets.
What is bad they throw away.

Fishers would be foolish to attempt to do the sorting and the fishing at the same time. Not only would it be almost impossible to sort the fish as the net was in the water and still catching others, as the dynamism of life in the world was still in play, but it would also hinder the whole project of fishing and risk losing even those fish that would later turn out to be desirable. 

We ourselves may at times appear to be the sort of fish that wouldn't make the cut, not particularly appealing of nutritious, perhaps apparently all but inedible. But who can say? The net is still moving and we have not yet arrived at the shores of our heavenly home. And so we should have patience with ourselves, hoping that our lives may yet be among those the chief fisherman desires. But to be patient with ourselves is one thing. To be patient with those others with whom we share the close quarters of the net is something more challenging. No doubt many of those in this net appear to be garbage caught by mistake and not fish at all. And there are certainly more than few fish that are so odious that it makes it hard for others to, shall we say, relax and enjoy the ride. Yet the Jesus himself knows more about all of this than we do. Our perceptions of which fish are good and which aren't, of which plants are wheat and which are feeds, are flawed and partial because the dynamism of growth and change and movement makes them obscure. We aren't meant to excessively focus on the sorting and separating here and now, but to leave judgement to the Lord to whom it belongs (see James 4:12).

Thus it will be at the end of the age.
The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous
and throw them into the fiery furnace,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.

Our lives are meant to contribute to the feast of the Kingdom. We pray that at the end of our lives and at the end of time it will be revealed that our fruit has been that which the sower of the seeds desired. Rather than fish that have made themselves appear inedible so as to avoid making the contribution of our lives to this project of the fisherman may we be revealed as fish fit for the feast.

Then every scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of heaven
is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom
both the new and the old.

Jesus is the fulfillment of everything written in the Scriptures before his coming. As he said, it was of him that Moses wrote (see John 5:46). We can see this when we realize that it was Mary on whom the cloud descended, on whom the Holy Spirit descended, who was overshadowed by the power of the Most High even more definitively than the Dwelling tent made by Moses in the desert. Jesus was himself the Dwelling of God in a complete and final sense which the tent in the dessert only foreshadowed. The ark contained in the tent contained the written commandments. But Jesus was himself the living word of God. If we learn to let his glory be the goal that guides our journey we will certainly arrive at our destination, our promised land.

I had rather one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere;
I had rather lie at the threshold of the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of the wicked.



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