Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.  

In Matthew 18, Peter asked Jesus, “How many times should I forgive a persistent sinner? Maybe seven times?” Jesus replied, “Don’t stop at seven, try seventy times seven!” 

Then Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like a king whose servant owes him twenty bags of gold. In today’s money, that’s 20 or 30 million dollars. 

The servant begs the king, “Be patient and I will pay it all back.” Right. That’s likely to happen. At day labor rates in Jesus’ time, it would take 10,000 years to earn just one bag of gold. This guy is going to pay back 20 bags on a servant’s salary? But the soft-hearted king says, “Why don’t we just forget it? Your debt is cancelled! Off you go.”

Now this servant had a fellow servant who owed him one piece of gold. Not a bag, mind you, just one piece. The servant who just lost his multi-million dollar debt was determined to collect that one piece of gold. The debtor begged, “Be patient with me and I’ll pay it back.” But the forgiven servant sued for his piece of gold, and threw the debtor into prison. 

When the king heard about it, he was angry. He said, “What’s up with this? I forgave your huge debt. That’s a hint about how things work in my kingdom. Clearly you didn’t catch the hint, so now you owe it all again. Off to prison with you, so the jailers can torture you until you pay back all 20 bags worth.” 

Now only death can set that servant free. 

Here’s a list of things that are wrong with the story: 

1. First, how in the world did the servant manage to rack up a multi-million dollar debt? Didn’t the king do a credit check on him? Why didn’t the king fire him after the first bag or two? I think the king was an irresponsible manager.

2. Second, the servant’s offer to pay back the debt was totally implausible. The king should have said, “That’s impossible. Can’t be done.” Instead he says, “Let’s just forget the debt.” My credit card company could take a lesson from this king.

3. And third, when the servant didn’t forgive that small debt , the king retracted his forgiveness and reinstated the multi-million dollar debt. Kind of arbitrary, don’t you think? Does the king just go about offering forgiveness and then retracting it and throwing people in jail? 

But Jesus ignored all that and spelled out one lesson from the story. He said, “This is how my heavenly father will treat you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” 

Let’s pray. 

Jesus, is that how the kingdom of heaven works? We humans owe this massive debt to God because he’s given us ourselves and the whole world, and we’ve messed it up and squandered it and we’re unable to put it right? 

But you say that God will forgive all if we just forgive each other a bit? Is there no sense of proportion? No bookkeeper to track God’s losses? No list of wrongs we must right to make forgiveness kick in? No enforcer who tells applicants to repent?

Jesus, it seems from your story that the only way to receive forgiveness is to give it away. God’s forgiveness is not a bag of gold to hide under a mattress for judgment day. It’s a river that flows from God’s heart into our hearts, washing us clean as it flows in us through us and out into the lives of others. If we try to dam it up into a lake, it no longer works.  

O Jesus, let the river of forgiveness flow. Let it flow from you to us. Let it flow from us to everyone we know. 

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.  

In Matthew 13, Jesus explained his kingdom with word pictures when he said, 

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest garden plant and becomes a tree, so that the birds perch in its branches” (Mat 13:31-32).

When I was growing up, we used soupy-smooth bright yellow mustard for sandwiches and finely ground dry mustard in recipes. Today, we’re more adventurous–we have a small bottle of hot mustard, some smooth dijon mustard, and a plastic squeeze bottle of grainy dijon. The grains in the dijon are crushed seeds–certainly not the smallest seeds in a modern garden–but small enough to make a point. 

Jesus’ point is the marvelous discrepancy between the smallness of the seeds when they are sown and the large plants that result. Tomato seeds are also small. Put one in your mouth sometime and try to crush the slippery thing. Then think about what tomato seeds become in summer–large tomato plants supported on stakes or trellises, growing a harvest of cherry or heirloom or beefsteak tomatoes.  

Jesus says that’s what the kingdom of heaven is like. It starts small and powerless, almost invisible, and grows into a lush and fruitful plant. When we pray, “Your kingdom come”, we ask that God’s kingdom which today seems small and invisible and ineffective, will grow as Jesus promised into something large and world-conquering.

Jesus also said, “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman mixed into sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough” (Mat 13:33).

This woman is not your average home chef making a loaf or two of bread. She’s a serious baker, starting with three twenty-pound bags of flour! 

My wife made ciabatta buns recently, but she didn’t start by sending me to Costco for twenty pound bags of flour. She used three cups of flour in a no-knead recipe. The other three ingredients were: a cup-and-a-half of cold water, a teaspoon-and-a-half of salt, and one quarter teaspoon of yeast. After mixing the ingredients at 3:00 one afternoon, she let the dough rise on the counter for 19 hours. At ten the next morning, it was properly risen, and soon we had fresh buns for snacks and supper.

Jesus’ point is that the kingdom of heaven looks like it’s lost itself in the dough of the world. But in fact it is the controlling ingredient. It is present and active in the whole batch–the whole world– preparing it for the great bake-off when the doughy mess will become a feast of bread.

Let’s pray. 

Our father, we pray “Your kingdom come”. But we don’t see much evidence that your kingdom is on its way. Is your kingdom still at the mustard seed stage? Growing silently and unobserved toward its final form? Getting ready for an unscheduled but certain harvest? 

Is your kingdom like the leaven, already permeating the whole world, silently and invisibly preparing it for the day of your return? 

O Jesus, you are the bread of life. Take the small leaven of your kingdom we hold in our hearts, take the small mustard seed of our faith. Let it work in us and in the world, until you, the king, come out of hiding and reveal the kingdom you have built.

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.  

In Matthew 13, Jesus uses stories and metaphors to explain the kingdom of heaven. He doesn’t tell us where God’s kingdom is or how to find it, he doesn’t explain how to become a citizen or tell us what the laws are or how to vote. 

So what does Jesus tell us in his stories? I think he tells us to understand the kingdom of heaven by participating in it, not by defining it. 

Much religion in Jesus’ time and in ours is concerned with defining things. What are the right beliefs? If you have the wrong beliefs, will God let you into heaven? 

This is right-brain thinking like my GPS unit does when I drive to Calgary. It computes the route and says, “You will arrive in 2 hours and 59 minutes.” But the unit doesn’t know I need a mid-trip bio break, complete with coffee and Pringles.

Jesus doesn’t provide a GPS-type map of the kingdom of God. Instead he tells us that God’s kingdom is hidden, and that God works in mysterious and circuitous ways. His processes are organic, not linear; the results are relationships not products. 

Here are three stories Jesus told to draw us into the kingdom of God. 

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is like a man who plants corn. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces corn – first the stalk, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.  As soon as the corn is ripe, he harvests it” (Mark 4:26-29). 

Again Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it he sold all he had and bought that field” (Mat. 13:44).

And again, “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he sold everything he had and bought it” (Mat. 13:45). 

The stories are simple, the pictures vivid. But what do they mean? I think Jesus is inviting us to reflect on life-long issues like these:

– The farmer planted his fields, then spent the summer doing absolutely nothing while the corn grew to a harvest. That’s not how many pastors tell people to live the Christian life. They say God’s kingdom will grow in your life if you attend church and pray and give money and get involved in church programs. Why aren’t their stories like Jesus’ story?

– The man who found the best pearl ever and the one who found treasure in a field sold everything to acquire it. I certainly haven’t sold everything I own to get a piece of God’s kingdom. In what way does Jesus want me to sell everything? 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, thank you that your kingdom is not just another human project we schedule and manage and implement. It grows organically while we sit and watch. Grow your kingdom in our hearts and lives, in our churches, in our world. 

We thank you for the great value of your kingdom. We look for hidden treasure in the lottery and antique shops and attics filled with junk. Show us your hidden kingdom, God, and help us to sell all we have to buy it. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.