The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea,
which collects fish of every kind.
The Kingdom of heaven is meant to cast a wide net. But the Church, insofar as it continues to fish at all, seems to have a very specific target species in mind. She seems to go after only those that seem already to be clean and appealing. Indeed, when she sees her nets filling with anything other than this prototypical convert she seems all too ready to dump the whole net and start over. But why would this be? Perhaps because between the catch and the end of the age there is a duration of time that is not short, and during which a net with fish of every kind, both good and bad, will grow increasingly uncomfortable together. The Church, at least insofar as she is a human institution, seems only to be able to tolerate a minimum level of perfection within her walls. She seems less able to adequately address the needs of those fish that, at first glance, might look bad. She seems ready to toss back those that don't meet her standards. It is as though she insists that a fish be cleaned even before it is caught. However, the Church, at the divine level where it is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, is not content with evangelization that is limited by merely human predisposition and prejudice.
When it is full they haul it ashore
and sit down to put what is good into buckets.
What is bad they throw away.
Thus it will be at the end of the age.
We need to focus less on sorting, more on catching. It is the plan of Jesus for this manifold diversity to subsist in his nets until the end of the age. We imagine that this is not without thought for the fish themselves, uncomfortable though they might become. How might we grow if our churches were filled with more people who were different from ourselves, even different in ways that seem to us to make them somehow worse? Moral character ought not disqualify anyone who desires to remain in the net, insofar as remaining in the net reflects the presence of a desire for continued growth and change. Perhaps such an individual would desire that, even if he does not feel himself capable of change, nevertheless he hopes the net will be able to drag him to the distant shore he desires to reach. Does this plan of Jesus sound like it would lead to more chaos in the Church? Probably it would on one level. But trying to insulate ourselves from such chaos might also insulate us from some of the ways in which providence would work in and through it.
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.
The parable of the net was probably something striking and new from the perspective of first century Judaism. Israel would certainly not have wanted to be seen as full of both the good and the bad. She strived for a rigid standard of holiness to the exclusion of anything that was objectionable. But by bringing forth this new thing Jesus was actually also embracing something that was old. He knew that Israel was meant to be a light to the nations, and that through it the Gentiles were meant to receive salvation. Israel seemed to have become content to exist primarily for itself alone. It had never quite learned how it was meant to achieve the purpose promised by God. To see that promise fulfilled it would need things that were old, chiefly the promise of the covenant, but also a new approach and the grace that was only available in Jesus himself. What Jesus inaugurated was not merely the old kingdom of Israel. But neither was it something entirely separate and novel. It was a New Covenant, but one that finally realized all of the promises of the old. There has been a persistent temptation to ignore or downplay the Jewish context in which the Church came to be. But Jesus himself explained in this parable why such an approach was inadequate. As Paul insisted, "the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good" (see Romans 7:12). But he was equally insistent that it was insufficient by itself, saying "For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do" (see Romans 8:3). May we grow in our own appreciate of both what is new and what is old in the message of the Gospel. If we don't, we may miss out on blessings that God has always intended for his people.
Blessed he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the LORD, his God.
Who made heaven and earth,
the sea and all that is in them.
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