The Millions




Le Livre des Merveilles de Marco Polo

Matthew 13:24-43

 Another parable He put forth to them...

The story begins in a jail cell. It is actually the story about the telling of stories. The storyteller is a gentleman from Venice named Marco Polo. He was formerly a world traveler and court official in China and in the future he would be world famous for his biographical adventures but at the moment he was just another jailbird sharing the story of how he got ended up in a prison in Genoa. It appears that his current misfortune was due to his coming home at the wrong time, since Venice and Genoa were currently in a war. But this current predicament had come after he had spent decades of sharing the fortune of being one of the few Europeans that had seen the mysterious lands of the East. And it was in his present state of poverty that he shared the tales of the riches of the Orient: tales of a far off kingdom that seemed like another world. It was a predicament that was similar to that of Jesus in Matthew 13:24-43. Jesus found himself in the role of a humble carpenter from a dusty town in Palestine (the backwoods of the Roman Empire), yet he had experienced another kingdom. This kingdom was one where peace and love flowed like the proverbial milk and honey. This far off kingdom too seemed like another world. It was the kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God. So Jesus told of this place in a series of parables: stories that relate the foundation of God's spiritual kingdom to those who dwell in the kingdoms of men. With both storytellers (Jesus and Marco Polo), their audiences were left with the same question: What was the overall purpose of these stories?


Vie quotidienne en Arménie mineure

A Kingdom In Three Parts

...saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them.  Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”
Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field,  which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.”
Another parable He spoke to them: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened”...

The greatest focus of the tales of Marco Polo are the years that he spent in service in the court of China's Yuan Dynasty. The secret of the Yuan Dynasty is that unlike previous Chinese ruling dynasties it actually was not Chinese at all. It was Mongolian... but even that may be a misnomer. The Yuan Dynasty was the Mongolian khanate under the rule of Kublai Khan, grandson of the Mongolian conqueror Genghis Khan. Even though Kublai did not speak any dialect of Chinese, he loved Chinese culture and set up his kingdom in the city ofKhanbaliq (which we now know as Beijing). But he didn't just love Chinese culture or only rule China and Mongolia. The Yuan Dynasty ruled parts of the modern day countries of  Mongolia, China, India, North Korea, South Korea, Laos, Myanmar and Russia. They also engaged in military campaigns in Japan, Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia and the Mongolian Empire in general stretched Westward throughout Central Asian into Persia (Iran) and Mesopotamia. So along with his love for China, Kublai Khan also heavily mixed in elements of the cultural, aesthetic, religious and philosophical treasures of Persia and India. You could say that the Yuan Dynasty was a Mongolian kingdom that was equally as Chinese, Indian and Persian. It was a an Asian-fusion food truck parked alongside the Silk Road. When Jesus described the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew 13:24-43 he does not describe it as one monolithic structure. It appears to be many things. Like Kublai Khanh's kingdom he finds three ways to express it. And with each expression of the Kingdom of Heaven tells us something important about it. In the parable of the Wheat and Tares (weeds) we learn that t
he Kingdom has a reckoning... meaning that it is a place of justice and judgment. This expresses the kingdom on the cosmic level and reminds us that God is the initiator of the cross-cultural idea of justice and inspirer of its pursuit. In the following parable of the Mustard Seed we learn that t
he Kingdom starts small but grows powerful. This aspect is even seen in the microcosm level of God's kingdom when it expresses itself in our personal faith. The last is the parable of the Leaven (or Yeast), which leaves us with the hopeful reminder that the Kingdom permeates its surroundings...even when it is outnumbered and overwhelmed. All three parables are diverse but they still have a unifying theme of the kingdom of heaven. Which in itself is an interesting notion because that means they are extended metaphors about a concise metaphor. Jesus describes Heaven as a "Kingdom." Heaven in itself is a loaded word that comes pre-packed with a lot of cultural, religious and artistic ideas...many of them informed by extra-biblical sources. Some of them are right and some of them are just part of our popular fantasy. Heaven just becomes a label for whatever we view as the ideal or perfect. In these ideas about Heaven the greatest two are its association with dead people (which is mostly true) and its association with God (which is fully true). Heaven is where God reigns...even when that reign is over the living. Therefore it is often referred to as a "kingdom" in Scripture: a place governed by a sovereign ruler. The Kingdom of Heaven is not necessarily for the dead. The Kingdom of Heaven is not necessarily in the Sky. The Kingdom of Heaven is not the land where winged babies play harps on marshmallow clouds (even though that idea is awesome and worthy of a Beatles/Led Zeppelin collaboration song). So what is the kingdom of Heaven and how does one explain what it is? This is the dilemma that Jesus faced. So he told a story... or a series of stories. A single story could never fully describe the Kingdom of Heaven but several stories could describe what it "is like."

Le calife de Bagdad et les chrétiens

The Story of the Kingdom

...All these things Jesus spoke to the multitude in parables; and without a parable He did not speak to them,  that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying:

“I will open My mouth in parables;
I will utter things kept secret from the foundation of the world”...

When Marco Polo did finally publish his stories into a book it was titled "Il Milione", which is Italian for "The Million." Some think that it refers to his family sometimes using the name "Emilione" to distinguish themselves, since "Polo" was a popular Venetian surname. Detractors to his fanciful tales mockingly said that it referred to the "millions" of lies and fabrications that was found in the pages of the book. One can also conclude that it referred to the millions of miles, stories, lands and people from the East that the Western and Southern European readers were now exposed to. One of those avid readers and fans was Christopher Columbus. When Columbus set sail to the New World he did so in search of the treasures and spices of India that he had read about in Marco Polo's adventures. That is also how I always imagined Marco Polo travelling: setting sail en route to China. But my original imagining of Marco Polo was more informed by the children's swimming pool game named after him than his own narrative. Marco Polo may have taken a sea route back to Venice but his initial trips were travelled on the The Silk Road, a series of trade routes connecting the East and West that had existed since the Roman Empire. When you think about it, Marco Polo's stories were a metaphorical Silk Road of there own. They connected Europe to a
 world that was secret to Westerners...yet one that was always there ready for them to explore. Jesus' parables were a spiritual road. They didn't connect the cultural divide between the East and West or the North and South but rather the Up and Down: Heaven and Mankind. And like the Silk Road, Jesus the storyteller was not the first traveler to use this road. As we discussed in last week's blog post, Jesus' parables follow in the tradition of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible parables.
Why did Jesus and the Old Testament use parables? Well the answer may lie in the Gospel writer's allusion to an Old Testament Psalm. As one of my preacher buddies advised me last week "Take note when the Scripture quotes Scripture." It is never a mistake...it is always a wink to the reader. So when the writer of the Gospel of Matthew quotes "the Prophet" saying "I will open My mouth in parables; I will utter things kept secret from the foundation of the world”, he is referencing Psalm 78 which opens, " Give ear, O my people, to my law; Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old, Which we have heard and known, And our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, Telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, And His strength and His wonderful works that He has done..." The secrets from the foundation of the world is a family secret of the Nation of Israel. It is an open secret among the elect of the Old Testament. That secret s the knowledge of God's kingdom. The revelation of the Kingdom of Heaven is something that unfolds gradually throughout salvation history but even those who only understood the foggy outline of its parameters still could perceive its existence. Even in the Creation story there is a testimony of future Redemption and an immediate act of Grace. Throughout the Old Testament there is shadow of the Church. All of these types and foreshadowing allude to the glory that were to be revealed in Jesus. And Jesus' stories...his parables express to us the reality of this Kingdom on Earth...amongst the living. God's kingdom was not just "up there" or on some future great day. God's kingdom is among us and within us now. God's Kingdom is in Christ.



Polo_quittant_Venise

Explaining the Kingdom

...Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.”
He answered and said to them: “He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.  Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth... 

When you really think about it Venice is sort of like Beijing...where Kublai Khan ruled. Venice was an island protected from outsiders, yet it spread its influence abroad: trading through the sea routes with distant lands. Kublai Khan's capital was landlocked, but it was still centrally located enough to command his vast empire. The Ming dynasty that followed Kublai's Yuan Dynasty would develop his capital even more as a place of imperial seclusion when they built the Forbidden City in the midst of Beijing. Through a series of gates, courts and social constraints the Ming Dynasty would make the Forbidden City as secluded to outsiders as Venice. So Marco Polo and later explorers/writers could use this as a tool to bridge the cultural gap in their explanations. It would help them explain something that was simultaneously like something their readers knew and like nothing that they had ever seen or experienced. There stories were in effect parables. telling what something was "like." In relating the Kingdom of God to something we can understand and have experienced Jesus' first concern was a pastoral one. Even in the church crowd we do not usually think about the fact that Jesus was a "pastor." But for three years he was...and in a cosmic sense he still is. Jesus sought to speak to the pastoral needs of his audience. In doing so he explained his parable with the intention of hermeneutically revealing how it applied to their lives. But what is the secret revealed in this parable? What does hermeneutics say that it tells us today? Those are the answers that pastors and theologians throughout the millennia have asked of this text. This is especially the case since Jesus left us with the explanation to one parable and two non-explanations to the other parables. Many, including the reformer Martin Luther, took to the idea that this parable dealt with the subject of heresy (apostasy and intolerable deviation from core doctrinal beliefs). This makes sense since Jesus says that the angels will "they will gather out of His kingdom" the tares/weeds. This signifies an internal threat in the Church. So this is the point in my post where the thread of the Marco Polo illustration and the thread of the scriptural narrative cross paths in the story of Church history. When Marco Polo traversed through the lands of the Mongol Empire he encountered a minor note that tied in all of the three major cultures that influenced the Yuan Dynasty. It was a minor note that was seen as a discordant note to Western/Latin Christianity that Marco Polo knew in Venice. Whether he was in China, India, Persia or even in the Mongolian royal family, Marco Polo encountered the Nestorian Church. Kublai Khanh's own mother, Sorghaghtani Beki, was a Nestorian Christian. The idea that the Far East didn't have Christian missionaries until the Jesuits and the later Protestant missionaries is a false one. The Nestorians, who follow the Syriac tradition, have had a presence in these areas since the first and second centuries and continues today (though often confused as Eastern Orthodox). What these areas did not have was a communion with the Western Churches. This rift occurred when Nestorius, an early Archbishop of Constantinople, got into a theological tussle about the relationship between Christ's divine and human nature. Nestorius was falsely accused of an extreme theological position, recanted it and was still deemed a heretic. The Church of the East did not label him a heretic, but rather embraced him. This caused one of the earlier Church schisms (long before the Protestant one or the Eastern Orthodox one). The problem with Christian history is that unless you are extremely vocal or remain in the same area after a schism, reform or Church break (like the Protestants) then everyone assumes that your movement died out. So for centuries after the Council of Ephesus that declared Nestorianism a heresy (which all parties involved agree now was all a mistake and just a difference in syntax), the Church of the West acted as if there was no witness to Christ in the East. But there was and is... because the Nestorian Church still remains. Which brings us to the true meaning of Christ' parable of the Wheat and Tares... and the overall meaning of all three parables together. The underlying, silent theme is the element of time. It is evident in all three stories and it is evident in the story of the Church universally: the Kingdom of Heaven is about time. 


Marco Polo, son oncle et son père présentant à Kubilaï la lettre du pape

The Wonder of the Millions

...Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

When Marco Polo was doing hard time, that was all he had...time. Yet it was this time on his hands that allowed him to tell his stories to his fellow prisoner, Rustichello da Pisa. And that fellow prisoner was a romance writer put it into text. He wrote it originally in Old French and it was titled "Livre des merveilles du monde" or "Book of Wonders of the World" in its French printing. The illustrations (which I have posted) were done by an all-star team including Maître de la Mazarine, Maître d'Egerton, Maître de Bedford, Maître de la Cité des dames, Évrard d'Espinques. Many of these artists had also worked together on Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, a French Gothic illuminated manuscript and prayer book that is a treasure of western Art. Sometimes art comes through suffering and beauty is birthed from patience. That key to success in literature, art and beauty is working with time. This is the message in Jesus' literary masterworks, the parables of the Kingdom. I am not just speaking of the three that we have covered in today's reading. I also mean the parable of the sower from last week and the other parables of chapter 13. Each illustrate truths about the Kingdom of Heaven. The overall truth between them...the unifying element is God's usage of time to build his Kingdom. Rome was not built in a day and Heaven isn't built in one either. I come to this conclusion by taking note of the Psalm that Jesus references when he says "Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." He is referring to the overall theme of Psalm 37, which tells us "He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, And your justice as the noonday. Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him; Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way," It tells us to find strength through patience and encouragement in God's use of time to establish His kingdom and reward His citizens. The Psalmist does this to distract them from being envious of those evildoers who prosper temporally in the kingdoms of men. Jesus uses it to encourage his remnant of disciples who with him have been rejected from the neighboring towns and religious establishment. All of the Kingdom parables share the factor of time as the silent, shaping element that will soon bear fruit. Very soon the just will be rewarded and the wicked judged, the Kingdom will grow from the few to the faith of many and the principles of the Kingdom of God will permeate through the kingdoms of men. God's work. God's promise and God's kingdom are all fulfilled in time... the strength of the follower of Christ must be patience. In time the wheat will be separated from the tares. In time the mustard tree will grow. In time the yeast will rise. In time the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. This is why Jesus told the millions of stories that we know... Yes he may have just told a few parables but he shared far many more illustrations of the Kingdom of God in the lives of believers and movements of believers. maybe you are one of those believers. Whether you are Italian, Mongolian, Chinese, Indian, Persian or even American or your local church that you worship God in is Nestorian, Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant, you are the a picture, a story, a parable of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. You may not sound like the perfect parable now but allow God to use one of His greatest tools, time, and one day you will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of your Father



Arrivée de marchands à Ormuz