• Genesis 29:15-28 and Psalm 105:1-11, 45b 
• Romans 8:26-39
• Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

That’s an interesting lot of scriptures. Notice that the liturgical order the Scripture reading, psalm, gospel (accounts of Jesus life and the life of the early church), then epistle (Letters written by the early church). The epistle for me is key to my interpretation of the  gospel. The scripture and psalm prepare us for the gospel. Let’s start at the beginning.

We’ve come into a part of scripture where I believe we must culturally distance ourselves from the story because it’s a story fraught with problems for any reader who is a follower of Jesus. The only thing that seems to redeem it is the love and seeming chastity of Jacob waiting seven years for the one beautiful Rachel who he loved on being offered her as a wife. The way Rachel behaved afterwards, I am not sure love came into it for her, as she was chattel. Jacob’s listening to his parents is commendable also.

These may be good things, but I don’t think we can allegorize the story as the early Church Fathers did saying that Leah and Rachel stood for  the Gentiles and the Jews and Jacob as Christ uniting them or, some of them, who talk about Leah being the synagogue and Rachel being the church. Leah has bad eyesight, though they’re supposed to both be beautiful which fits the picture according to the Church Fathers. But we need to pause here as Leah commits adultery as Jacob is actually married to Rachel and they are not free agents in terms of their culture but they as Paul are free to treat scripture in this way. I can’t accept that this story encourages us in the understanding of Christ, but the Fathers were conditioned to allegorise as part of their belief about the purpose of the Scriptures. If like me  you think this story is awful, and read the next chapter, chapter 32, I must culturally distance myself from the mandrakes and from the shaking of sticks to affect genetics, but there you go.  It probably makes a good Sunday School story, or inform us a bit about the working of the spiritual world, but I don’t think it is to be encouraged as a way to live our lives.  

What’s the way we should approach these stories? They’re informative in terms of the history of the promise of Abraham; how it worked out despite the sin of men. The intervention of God in terms of the judgment between Rachel and Leah happens in this chapter, but not in these readings. Leah is fruitful and Rachel remains barren. This hardly seems fair on Rachel who has done nothing wrong. I think we could say that God accommodates the cultural idolatry, works with the society  and intervenes as necessary. I make this judgement because of the life of Jesus. The story of the maidservants being forced to bear children continues into this generation and the children of promise, Joseph and Benjamine are late additions as God intervenes and hears Rachel’s cry. In my opinion God does not look good in this but the narrative of the older serving the younger continues.

Recently I was reading and preparing a piece on  loving the Lord God with all your strength, … with all your might. You find that scripture in Leviticus 19 a chapter which begins: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. Within that section we have the mitigation for the rape of slave girls. Surely, we can distance ourselves from that and realise that Leviticus is a constraining text for the most part on the evil behaviour of powerful unregenerate men. That is not very positive for women and wholesome and requires parental guidance if a child is to read it. People will pick and choose bits of Leviticus and say that as a result, their opinions are biblical. I think in studying the Bible you need to look a bit closer at the Bible and realize the cultural distance between us and these scriptures is immense because of the light of Christ in the life and words of Jesus. We cannot pick and choose according to our taboos or preformed bias but need to listen to the spirit and judge. Jesus teaches this in our gospel today (verse 52):  …every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old…

The story is paired with what follows in an enlightening way and that’s good. But you know we can culturally distance ourselves from the bigotry of the early Church Fathers as we do from some of the practices in the early church written in the epistles. We can culturally distance ourselves from the way things were in these times and must, especially as the treating of women as chattel, second class citizens whose role is to submit to men, and the excusing of male sexual violence as boys will be boys, still happens in our world. Some cultures would not see that anything that’s in these chapters is wrong. But I think we can in the light of Christ and, in the light that these scriptures reveal Christ in us importantly, make the judgment of Christ with  the authority of Christ and say, no, this is wrong and search the treasure for the good. I judge this is wrong in any time, in any place, and was wrong when it happened. Just because it’s in the Bible and Jacob is a hero of the faith, doesn’t make it right.

Thank God for the Psalm! It brings us back to what this is all about, the covenant of Abraham. As a church we are encouraged to sing and  as individuals to seek God’s presence continually. Amen!

Now to Romans a beautiful exclamation of Paul who pours out his heart to the divided Roman Church where some trusted in their salvation because they were Jews and others found themselves on another culturally challenging course with respect to the Jews. They had been separated from the Jews because of the persecution and banishment of the Jews Under Claudius (c. 49 AD). When the Jews return to Rome, they find the church changed.

Paul begins with prayer pictured as a groan of the spirit as God searches our hearts and intercedes for us. Our place is to trust that we are in God’s will, and he is working everything for the good, so we don’t need to sort it out and worry that we get the right formula of practice or words. In fact, it says later that Christ intercedes for us in the grimmest of times through his love made real in us.

Now I firmly believe that the election is in Christ. This is the promise of Abraham fulfilled. The inclusion of the Gentiles was foreknown and predestined in the promise of Abraham and its fulfilment is in Christ. It is sad to me when a scripture that is meant to be inclusive has ended up being about the nuts and bolts of election. And so the  baying wolves are released, and Christians forget to disagree agreeably even to the point of violence. The elect are as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore according to the promise and they certainly shouldn’t be going at each other’s throats. Shame on you church.

When Paul writes of his certainty that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, he meant it.  His outburst confirms that our election is sure both for  both Jew and Gentile, church and synagogue, in Christ.

The epistle links forward to the Gospel in my understanding, and I hope you will allow me some latitude in what they mean for me. This teaching comes after the parable of the Sower taught to the people and is a section of parable’s taught to his close followers which includes the parable of the wheat and the tares. It’s a teaching for those who have heard as Jesus says.

The mustard seed indicates that the disciples must expect this message to go to the nations represented by the birds of the air, those same birds who picked at the message in the parable of the Sower. The pearl of great price speaks to them of the hiddenness of the treasure, which is buried once found. It can be seen to be preparing the disciples for a life of hiddenness which they will have sold everything to gain. Historically this was the case with the church growing by people witnessing Christian lives and seeking to know why they were so counter cultural and flourished. So strong was the need for the church to remain hidden, records show that it would take over three years before people were admitted to the church. They were concerned about the habits of nonviolence, purity in relationships and self-sacrificial love, especially in the care of the poor and attitudes towards enemies; the Way. We can see from the Paul’s letters how protective the church was of the reputation of the Way. Jesus himself prophesied the marginalization of his followers as these habits marked them out.

The parable of the net repeats the message of the wheat and tares. The link back in our scriptures is that this is the promise to Abraham and the letter of Paul; all will be included, every nation. As people are drawn in to the church the church needs to exercise discernment, but it is at the end of time that the angels judge. Paul helps us not to fear this in his exhortation! Both in the case of the wheat and tares and the net it is the angels that judge. The kingdom of heaven isn’t like the judgement, Jesus taught, he did not come to condemn anyone, it is the drawing in of the net and the harvesting of the field. The tares are wrong teachings sown by the evil one and the bad fish are people judged to be bad by the fishermen. It is the angels who separate the evil from the righteous.

My interpretation of this takes Paul’s exhortation and adds these parables and is that, the church is to disagree agreeably knowing that the Spirit in each will discern the truth and that though they have to exercise authority with regards to the Way, they do not have the final say as to destiny of people. We can be reassured that Paul exhortation says: who can bring any charge against God’s elect. For me the parables say, it’s not the church that gets to decide this.

 And surely Christians have persecuted and set to the sword one anther because of their judgement of who is good and who is bad, whose word is planted by the evil one and whose of God. The warning for me is that we are to be humble, because when the judgement is made, when the end of the age comes, we may find the fire of God proving us, burning away the dross to reveal a treasure we had rejected(1 Corinthians 3 and Hebrews 12). Indeed, there will be much weeping and grinding of teeth as we must let go of our treasured opinions about doctrine and treasured judgements about who the elect are not. Salvation is to be found in Christ’s teachings on love. We will suffer loss in the flames of God’s purging fire. For those found in Christ this may fall as persecution as we stand for truth in this world as Paul lists.

I believe these parables are a call to humility and cautionary for the close followers, those who have heard; you’ve found a treasure you can’t boast in as all people can see is you have sold everything for a field; you need to stay humble especially as the age comes to an end, and stay close to God; and not be drawn out by evil teachings that don’t lead to love of our neighbour and our enemies, and the power of people who don’t welcome the stranger and do good to the afflicted (parable of the sheep and goats)

For some of you that has challenged my credentials. Thank goodness we get to discuss this and we can agree to disagree agreeably in this gathering. Jesus teaches us to find the treasure.

Grace and peace.

Attribution

Koenig, Peter. Treasure in the Field, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt University Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://act.library.vanderbilt.edu/artworks/58507 %5Bretrieved August 4, 2026]. Original source: Peter Winfried (Canisius) Koenig, https://www.pwkoenig.co.uk/.