Sermon for Trinity, Sunday 26th July 2026

1 Kings 3: 5-12 & Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-52

“Jesus put before the crowds another parable: The kingdom of heaven is like…”

For the Gospel reading about the kingdom of heaven to make sense we need to remind ourselves of a bit of history.

In the year 586 BC a war began between Judah, with its capital city in Jerusalem, and Babylon. Well, I say a war, but that implies it was two-sided. Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, was in charge of a superpower. It was technologically and militarily advanced, and huge in scale. He wasn’t afraid of a tariff or a direct intervention into the affairs of a smaller neighbouring state. 

Judah, the little Jewish kingdom far away, had become a problem. Its king, Zedekiah, had allied himself with Egypt, the other world superpower. Why had he done this? Well they closer, and they were offering better trading terms, and Zedekiah gambled that the Babylonians wouldn’t risk provoking a war with Egypt just to punish him.

He was wrong.

Nebuchadnezzar took the change of allegiance rather badly. The Babylonian army destroyed the Judean cities and farmland. The population starved. Finally, Jerusalem was taken. Its population was taken as slaves. Zedekiah had his eyes put out. But worst of all, far worse for the Jewish people, was the destruction of the great temple, built by Solomon as a final resting place for the Ark of the Covenant. The temple, one of the largest buildings in the world, where God resided in its holiest of holies, was gone.

This is the beginning of the Exile, and it is impossible to understand the Old Testament, and most of the New Testament, without it. God once promised the Land to his people, promised to dwell with them in the Temple, promised to raise up a king over them. Now all of that was lost; and, captive amongst the gardens of Babylon, the Hebrews wept.

Nebuchadnezzar had a plan of his own. He believed that if he took away the Temple he took away the Jewish God, and that this would make the people who survived, more biddable, better slaves. Their God had not stopped this terrible thing happening; real power belonged to Babylon. After their temple was destroyed, who could say where the God of the Israelites was any more?

But like Zedekiah, Nebuchadnezzar’s plan failed. The people he took to Babylon were educated and skilled; the scribes, the priests, even some prophets including the gloomy Jeremiah. They assimilated very successfully into his Babylonian civil service. But they were also theologians, and over the generations they also assimilated their faith to the new conditions it found itself in.

The temple was gone but worship could continue- the scrolls of the Torah were re-written, smaller buildings were made where the scrolls lived and where the community continued to hear the word of God. These buildings were eventually called Synagogues, literally in Greek places of coming together. They became the places where the Word of God was heard and taught, places where the people relearned who they were and where God was in the face of terrible disaster.

We’re ready now I think, to look at Jesus’ teaching for this week, again from chapter 13 of Matthew’s Gospel.

“Jesus put before the crowds another parable: The kingdom of heaven is like…”

The Jewish people came back to Jerusalem eventually, and the temple was rebuilt. That’s all in the Old Testament too. But they weren’t the same people as before. After tragedy none of us can go back to being the people we were. So they brought with them their synagogues, their places of coming together, and for most Jews these and not the temple were the regular places of worship now. This was where you went to learn about God and to hear God’s Word. And we are supposed to note that this is not where Jesus is teaching.

The crowd Jesus is speaking to are beside a lake, not in the synagogue. He has tried, he has started to preach inside the building, but what he had to say was not popular and so he had to go and teach elsewhere. That was chapter 12. He goes back in chapter 14.

So Matthew is making a point here. Once upon a time the faithful were driven from the temple and in their exile they learned a new way of understanding God. Now the faithful are driven from the synagogues and they again they have to learn a new way of understanding God. 

It’s one thing to say that God is not just in the Temple- OK they learned that long ago. But Jesus goes further - God is not just in the synagogues he says. God is working through this new thing called the Kingdom of Heaven and it is not a place – a building or a shrine; it is the work of God in the lives of ordinary people.

Jesus said that the kingdom of God has come now. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the poor hear good news, the deaf hear, the dead are raised.                                                                                             

And while Jesus says that the kingdom has come, he also teaches that one day the kingdom will be completed. If this looks good he says, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The kingdom has come, and the kingdom will come. That’s what we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer – ‘Thy kingdom come’, or in other words, ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’.

Standing then outside the synagogue, standing now all too often outside our churches, Jesus asks us to see God at work in a bigger picture. That is our mission. . That is the work of the kingdom.

So sometimes, when we see justice prevail, people given their dignity, when we experience a sense of inner healing, or have grace to forgive, we experience now, today, the kingdom of God, the pearl of great price, the treasure that we so rarely glimpse buried in the mud of this world’s fields.

This church at any time might seem weak and insignificant. We may feel powerless. We may feel like a frightened little flock. Well, your discipleship, your prayers, your loving service, your faith – even if it seems as insignificant as a mustard seed, or a little packet of yeast, is part of the kingdom work of God. It is something you can be intentional about. To pray for God’s kingdom to come is simply to pray for God to work in the world, and start by using you. There is a prayer to use during August on the notice sheet if you’re stuck for a way to ask. Please use it. God will use you, if you’re serious about it.

We started today by looking back to 586 BC because we have been learning new things about God for a long long time. Jesus tells us the parables of the kingdom because we still have so much to learn.