17th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Mt 14:13-21)

    Jesus was a charismatic leader. Something about him attracted people. Why was that so? A truly charismatic person isn’t necessarily someone who has an overwhelming personality. No, a charismatic person is a person who is in touch with the spiritual world. We have a world that we see where things are very predictable. What you see is what you get as the old expression goes. But Jesus lived in an alternative reality. He was always led by the Spirit. He had a whole different way of addressing the challenges that one meets in life.

               Jesus tells a series of parables in today’s Gospel. We could say the examples he uses are a continuation of the story he told in last week’s Gospel when he spoke about weeds and wheat. His message is basically that we have good and bad events in life. Sometimes the two are mixed. And it is hard to see at first which is which.  We may be fooled at first. A failure might in the end be a blessing. Success may in the end lead to difficulty. Sometimes we must take a wait and see attitude. We must be patient.

               Jesus speaks of a dragnet today. A dragnet was a specific kind of fishing net. A boat would pull the net behind it, picking up whatever fish were in the wake of the boat. When the fishing was over the net was emptied out. The edible fish would be put in one bucket. The fish that were inedible were thrown out. A person fishing wouldn’t know what they had until they emptied the net.

               Jesus also speaks of a treasure in a field. He then speaks of a pearl of great price. The pearl was a surprise. The treasure was also unexpected. Again, many times we don’t know what is most precious until we sort things out.

Jesus says that all this is like the Kingdom of God. Most often we misunderstand what the Kingdom of God is about. But the Kingdom of God is one of the most important concepts in Christian preaching. Jesus came to proclaim that Kingdom of God was at hand. Sometimes, we might think the Kingdom of God is the Church. It is said Jesus came to start a Church. But the Church is only one part of the Kingdom of God. We might also feel that the Kingdom of God will happen at the end of the world. Perhaps we will see it when we die. Again, this is true but that isn’t the whole story. The Kingdom of God is now. The Kingdom of God is also in the future.

What is it really? The Kingdom of God is about a new wonderful way of seeing things. I remember when my mother was growing older. One of the things she feared the most was going blind. Her mother had been both blind and deaf at the end of her life. When my mother found out she had cataracts she made me promise that she would have surgery to remove them. She wanted to see clearly.

As her sight failed, I took her to the doctor. She did need cataract surgery. We arranged for the surgery on one eye. We had a few problems, but the operation on that eye was a success. She then had surgery on the other eye. I went to the doctor with her the day she had the second eye patch removed. As we left the eye clinic she spoke about how bright things were. She commented about the vivid colors she saw. She was so happy when I put her on the shuttle that took her back to the nursing home. She saw things clearly. The next day she died. I thought, what a blessing it is that she now sees as she never has before.

And for me that that is what the Kingdom of God is like. When we choose to live in the Kingdom of God it affects how we see things today. And it affects how we look at the future. We aren’t trapped in pessimism. We see issues of injustice, war, peace, global warming, bigotry, sin, salvation, mercy, forgiveness and a host of other things, differently. We no longer want to maintain things. No, we want to transform things. Jesus announces to us today, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Come live there with me.”