The Gospel of Matthew, the Kingdom of God, and the Church

Written for New Testament, Dr. James Prothro, April 25, 2020

Pope Benedict XVI has called the kingdom of heaven the recurrent theme of Jesus’ preaching. The kingdom is mentioned 122 times in the New Testament, including 90 times from Jesus himself.[1] Benedict states “[t]his in itself makes it clear that the phrase has a fundamental importance in the tradition stemming from Jesus.”[2] Other sources specifically cite God’s kingdom as Matthew’s central theme, stating that he refers four times to the kingdom of God; thirty-three times to the “kingdom of heaven,” and simply as “the kingdom” seventeen times.[3]

Despite all these mentions of the kingdom, scripture never actually defines the kingdom of heaven. “Because Jesus nowhere defines what he means by the kingdom concept, commentators have long debated whether it is a spiritual state that develops subjectively in the believer or an external government imposed supernaturally from above.”[4] We can glean some knowledge from a string of parables in Matthew 13:24-53: the kingdom is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; it is like a mustard seed; it is like yeast; it is like a treasure buried in the field; it is like a pearl of great price; it is like a net thrown into the sea. None of these explain the kingdom of heaven to us in a concrete way. We understand the kingdom of heaven s as the dwelling place of God, his angels, and his saints, a place that is beyond our knowing, beyond our experience: “No kingdom of the world is the Kingdom of God, the total condition of mankind’s salvation.”[5]

Yet, since all that is revealed in scripture is important for salvation history, and, as earlier states, Jesus often speaks of the Kingdom, we cannot simply dismiss the kingdom as a mystery that we won’t know until death. We must, then, consider that all Scripture reveals about the kingdom is not simply to give us a vision of our goal, our true home, but is also directions, a map of sorts, showing us how to attain the Kingdom. We can take Jesus’ depictions of heaven and relate them to the church. Pope John Paul II states the Kingdom begins here on earth: “the kingdom of God has truly begun to be realized in the history of humanity and of the world….”[6] We see this concept introduced in the Old Testament, where it states in Daniel “the kingdom and the dominion and greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heavens shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High.”[7] By applying to the church the knowledge of the kingdom of heaven that we learn from studying Matthew, we can raise up these holy ones, these saints of heaven. For what is the church? It is not that building where Mass is said; it is the people assembled there in worship. It is not simply the Pope, nor the Magisterium, nor the Bishops; it is all of them, and more. It is us, the people of God, individually and collectively. The church is the sum of its people, for if the church is to evangelize, it is up to people to evangelize; if the church is to grow, it is up to people to grow it; if the church is to have a good harvest at the end of time, it is up to us to sow and care for the field.. “The beatitudes point up the internal dispositions of citizens of the reign of God, looking mainly to a spirit of trust, confidence, and moral uprightness.” [8] To apply Scripture to the church is to apply it to its people; and to apply it to its people is to apply it to the church.

In Mathew 5, Jesus gives us specific directions of how to attain heaven. In the Beatitudes, we are told the attributes we must have to live a life of the Kingdom. We are told to be poor in spirit and clean of heart, and to accept persecution for the sake of righteousness, all of which will lead us to the kingdom of heaven. We are told that we are blessed when we are falsely persecuted for our religion, that we ought “rejoice and be glad, for [our] reward is great in heaven.”[9] The Beatitudes have “long been seen as a summation of the Christian way of life,”[10] and we can, perhaps must, also see them as directions for the church. “The beatitudes point up the internal dispositions of citizens of the reign of God, looking mainly to a spirit of trust, confidence, and moral uprightness.” [11] The church is the sum of its people. To apply Scripture to the church is to apply it to its people; and to apply it to its people is to apply it to the church. An example of this duality can be found in Pope Francis. He lives in example of the first beatitude, to be poor in spirit. He has done this by simplifying the lifestyle of the Pope, just as he had simplified the lifestyle of a Bishop when he was in Buenos Aires. He does not simply preach that others should do this; rather he lives the example. His personally living the lesson of this beatitude is an influence on the church, both as individual members and as the institutional church. It is a small step that brings the meaning of the first beatitude to life.

The Sermon of the Mount continues, calling us “salt of the earth,” and “light of the world,” teaching that we must “so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”[12] While we likely all can point to times when we as individuals have failed at this, we know that, sadly, we have a contemporary example of how the church has failed at this, in the various scandals that have come to light over the past few decades. One of the many lessons the church can take from this failure is that it is not possible to be the light of the world and a witness of Jesus while simultaneously living a life which does not follow the Gospels. Jesus himself said “Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of.”[13]

Matthew relates parables describing the Kingdom, including the parable of the mustard seed. It is a short parable which appears in all three synoptic gospels with little variation. “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”[14] This description parallels the growth of the church. If we consider only the journeys reported in the Acts of the Apostles, we can see that growth beginning. That growth, from Jerusalem, to Cyprus, to Turkey, to Greece, to Macedonia, and to Italy, occurred in an era with no mass communication, when travel was difficult and time-consuming. Looking at the church today, we can see its many branches, and its many peoples, like the birds of the parable, are of all nations.

Matthew reports several other short parables describing the kingdom of heaven: “The kingdom of heaven is like a leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened.”[15] We can apply this to the church’s call to evangelization. In this call, as applied to each of us individually, the yeast is that yearning inside us that leads us to search for the Lord, which grows when introduced to catechesis, and which leads us to then evangelize another, until we have “leavened” all those in our personal sphere of influence. This call is to evangelization, however, is directed on an institutional level, with RCIA classes held at the parish level, a program developed in accord with guideline set forth on the diocesan level, which itself responds to guidelines at the next level, all the way to the Magisterium and the Pope.

Matthew tells us of the great value of the kingdom of heaven: “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. ”[16] The lesson for us here is not that we need spend all we have to enter the kingdom, although charity and almsgiving certainly are worthy practices that help lead us to the beatific vision, but that the kingdom of heaven is something we ought strive for, and put other things aside for. The church must focus on that which we seek to attain. Everything the church does and teaches needs to lead us toward our eternal reward. While we want our beautiful churches to reflect the presence of God, we should not care more about beauty than about caring for one another. Everything we do ought to be in service of the Gospels. We have examples right now of the church using extraordinary measures to lead us to God. Bereft of public Masses, parishes have turned to live streaming the Mass. Some parishes are offering “drive-in Confession” and “drive-through Eucharist.” Others are offering additional online programming. Parishes are giving parishioners ways to attain the greatest treasure of all.

One of the longer parables in Matthew 23 is that of the good seed, whose field is laced with weed scattered by an enemy. Just as the good seed and weed are permitted to grow together and are not separated until the harvest, so will mankind be separated at the harvest at the time of divine judgment. Pope John Paul II calls this a “significant allusion to the eschatological perspective of human history.”[17] We must recognize that this winnowing process is one that we contribute to every day, in every decision we make, whether our behavior make us good seed or choking weed, to ourselves or our neighbors. The church participates in this winnowing in a particular way, in the canonization process, which holds up for us individuals whose examples we may follow to ourselves attain what they attained. We are justified through the life and resurrection of Christ; we gain the kingdom by how we live our lives in following what he teaches us.

For the kingdom of God begins here. “…Jesus, in an authoritative fashion, proclaimed the imminent end of the world, the breaking in of the Kingdom of God.”[18] Jesus could not have been wrong; he spoke not solely of the Second Coming, not solely of the Kingdom we will enter at our end, but of the preparation time which continues. He gave us the Our Father: “this short prayer, presented as the single prayer given us by Christ, is a remarkable compendium of “end-time” values that are to characterize our present life as we prepare for that which is to come.”[19] He taught us to pray “the kingdom come” and so we pray “for the end of the world, and the breaking-in of a new reality which only God can create.”[20] The church is called to prepare us for this ending and beginning

We can’t truly conceive of heaven, because we are limited by being bound to the world. We can imagine a house of many rooms. We can understand separating of the wheat from the chaff. But what is heaven? Is the kingdom of heaven a place we can only hope to gain? Can we say that this, our exile, takes place in a sort of anteroom of heaven? Our earthly life is our time of preparation, our forty days in the desert. Everything that Scripture teaches us about the kingdom of heaven applies to the church, and to us, so that we can attain the kingdom. John Paul II states “[t]his then is ‘the Gospel of the kingdom.’ Its reference to humanity, which can be seen in the entire mission of Christ, is rooted in a ‘theocentric’ dimension which is accordingly called the kingdom of God. Jesus announced the Gospel of this kingdom, and at the same time he made present the kingdom of God in the whole unfolding of his mission.”[21]

Scripture leads us to the kingdom. What we experience here is but a mere shadow of what we will gain when we enter the kingdom. Saint Thomas Aquinas believed that “there will be no sacraments in heaven (see 1-2.101.2). As much as Thomas values the sacraments, he sees them as provisional. Just as the rituals of the Old Covenant were sacramental signs pointing toward Christ and the New Covenant, so too the sacraments of the New Covenant are signs pointing toward the marriage of heaven and earth in the New Jerusalem, where there will be ‘no temple in the city, for its temple is he Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb’ (Revelation 21:22).”[22] How much more wonderful than Eucharist will be the beatific vision!