Star-Crossed Lovers and the Kingdom of Heaven

Genesis 29.15-28; Matthew 13.44-53

First a star-crossed love story from Genesis, in which poverty stricken Jacob is on the run from his furious brother, Esau, whom he has just swindled out of his inheritance. By a local watering hole, he meets and falls for the dusky shepherdess beauty, Rachel, younger daughter of a real tyrant of a dad, Laban, who, in turn, happens to be Jacob’s uncle, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob’s co-scheming mother in the plot against Esau and her aged, sight-impaired husband, Isaac. It’s a yarn that makes ‘Desperate Housewives’ look like a Sunday school picnic. And then three little parables of Jesus about what the kingdom of heaven is like—like a treasure, a pearl and a fishing net—from Matthew’s Gospel. But the lectionary writers have twinned these texts together. Why?

My guess is they think the love story illustrates the parables. Jacob and Rachel’s experience illuminates what Jesus says about the kingdom of heaven. Now the kingdom of heaven, God’s kingdom, is God’s action, God’s intentions in this world, as in heaven. But what exactly is that? In answering such questions, Jesus almost always uses pictures. Here are three. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. A person stumbles across it unexpectedly, recognises its worth and liquidates all her resources to buy the field. Or the kingdom of heaven is like looking for a great pearl amid hundreds of inferior examples. When the merchant finds it, he too sells all else to have it. The two stories make the same point. The kingdom is hidden in some way. And yet it holds enormous value. If we uncover it, either by accident (the treasure finder) or by design (the pearl dealer), it is worth giving all we have to be part of it. But the third picture is strikingly different. The kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet fishing venture. You throw the net into the sea and hall it in. But the net captures everything—good, bad, ugly. It all has to be sorted before any treasure is enjoyed, or any pearl discovered.

We can see here glimpses of what the kingdom may be like. But it’s sketchy. And that’s where the love story comes in. You may have noticed that in the story about Rachel and Jacob there is no mention of God at all. If there is divine treasure here, it’s well buried. If there is a magnificent pearl here, it’s mixed up with a host of pretty ordinary, and indeed some very fake, examples.

But Jacob stumbles across it. He meets Rachel—‘graceful and beautiful’, the text says—at the home of uncle Laban, and he falls for her at first sight. Here is a pearl of great price if ever he saw one. And he’s prepared to give all he has to get her. And all he has is his labour. So he bargains with Laban: ‘I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.’ Laban agrees. But he’s a treacherous fellow, like Jacob himself. Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of his inheritance. Now Laban tricks Jacob out of the woman he loves. When the seven years are up—and the text says delightfully: ‘they seemed to Jacob but a few days because of the love he had for her’;—when the time is up, Laban disguises his older daughter, Leah, and gives her to the love-sick Jacob on the wedding night. He wakes up the next morning, and the story says, with massive understatement: ‘it was Leah!’ But Jacob knows he has found a treasure, however out of reach she may seem. And, when Laban plays on his love, he immediately agrees to work another seven years for the prize.

Well, that is a concrete illustration of what selling all to obtain the treasure might look like. Fourteen years labour for an unscrupulous relative is dedication to the cause alright. And Jacob does it.

But surely that’s not what Jesus is on about in his parable of the kingdom. Surely the kingdom isn’t just another word for human love, is it? Well, no, but they are connected. Jacob sees something buried in the field, and he gives everything for Rachel, that is clear. But is that all it is? No. There is more. And the more has to do with the hidden God. Just before this love story flowers, Jacob is fleeing his brother into exile. One night, alone and defeated in spirit, he lies down in the desert to sleep. And he has that famous dream of a ladder reaching up to heaven and angels of God ascending and descending on it. God speaks to Jacob in the dream these words: ‘Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’ (Gen 28.15)

The divine promise, that too, is buried in this drama; the divine promise first made to Abraham, Jacob’s grandfather, then repeated to Isaac, Jacob’s father, and now remade to Jacob. And the promise is this. God will be with this family line, will protect and provide for them, and will through them bless all of Israel and finally bless the whole world. That promise is the divine treasure hidden in this field. And that promise is what Jacob dimly feels in his dedication to Rachel. He doesn’t know it yet, but Rachel will be mother of Joseph, and Joseph is the one who will save Israel in Egypt a generation on. And Israel in Egypt, as we know, becomes the Israel of Moses and the Exodus. And the Exodus has become, in our tradition, the paradigm revelation of God’s acts of freedom, justice and liberation in the world, a revelation second only to Jesus himself. It is a pearl of great price. And Jacob and Rachel gave all to be part of it.

Buried treasure and hidden pearls. Alright. But the dragnet picture remains. What’s that about? The Rachel/Jacob story illustrates this aspect of the kingdom even more strikingly. If we only work with the treasure and pearl stories, God’s intention in the world might seem like something that just lies there, waiting and hidden, and if we stumble on it, it’s immediately clear what it’s all about. But the dragnet qualifies all that. The dragnet catches up all sorts of things, good and bad; of God and against God; true and false. And this aspect of the kingdom in the world is brilliantly shown in the love story. Yes, their love is a treasure. But how mixed up it is with the messy business of life. And the two of them have to go it alone. God’s promise holds true deep within the dynamics of their drama. But on the surface, as the lovers experience it, everything is mixed up, and they must make their way as best they can along with the other actors in the story.

And look at the complexity. Everything is jostling and battling and competing. Of course, there is love and desire between the woman and the man. They live it passionately. But there’s family power play, and inter-generational conflict, and jealousy and revenge. Laban knows his sister and Jacob swindled Esau and the old man, Isaac. He’s out for payback, and he does it with real flare. There’s economics at stake, too. The two men bargain about the meaning of work and how it is to be paid for. There’s asylum seeking and its mixed reception in town. Jacob is an outsider. He needs shelter and food. But Laban’s crowd is ambivalent. They see a chance to exploit the situation; but also feel a certain obligation. Social custom, the enormous pressure of what is acceptable and what is not, plays its part. When challenged by Jacob on the morning after the wedding, Laban justifies his trick with Leah, by saying: ‘this is not done in our country—giving the younger before the first born.’ And politics is there. Laban gathers ‘all the people of the place’ to the wedding to ensure power lies on his side in his treacherous scheme. The question of justice and keeping his word is swept away by the power of a local majority arrayed against Jacob and Rachel.

Power, parental authority, inter-generational conflict, sibling rivalry, love, jealously, work, wages, wealth and poverty, a stranger in a strange land, trickery and betrayal, stuttering efforts at peacemaking and getting on in tough times. All these things bristle through the story. It was all there for the two lovers in Palestine so long ago; and it’s all here in Australia for us today. If we are to play our part in carrying the promise of God’s kingdom of freedom, justice, hope and life in our times, it will only be through our involvement in all this stuff which makes up life.

The kingdom of heaven doesn’t happen in some quarantined realm of holy living or special devotion. The kingdom is a dragnet; it trawls through the waters, deep and shallow, that make up our life, with its complex mixture of power, love, hate, wealth, poverty, and so on. The kingdom is about God’s grace working to make human life truly human and the created world truly creation. Love is its hallmark. But this treasure is implanted in the real world. This pearl is discovered in ordinary life. And in the real world of ordinary life we give our all for that treasure and pearl, or we do not.

And let us note one last thing. Jacob and Rachel are not obviously saintly. Especially Jacob. He’s a trickster from way back. He works hard for Rachel. But he’s no innocent. His dedication to God’s cause happens in and through his limitations, mistakes and deceptions. God’s grace makes Rachel and Jacob bearers of the work of God’s kingdom, despite their frailty and foolishness. But it happens, when it happens, in the murky reality of their ambiguous choices; it is a mixed thing and needs continuous sifting by the angels of the Lord.

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field; like a brilliant pearl lost in the midst of imitations; like a dragnet trawling through the sea. God’s intentions are being worked out. We are invited to be a part of them. But if we agree, we have to dig the treasure, select the pearl and drag the net in the real world out there, not just in our hearts, and not just in the church. And that means taking responsibility for our actions, our loves, jealousies, politics and economics on the way. For this mixed-up haul is the net in which the love, forgiveness, justice and hope of the kingdom of heaven are worked out in God’s creation.

Graeme Garrett

Canberra Baptist Church

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

July 24, 2011.