What is Heaven Like?

This sermon was preached at our Sunday morning service on 26th July 2026. The gospel was Matthew 13:31-33,44-52

 

Do you ever sometimes get that ‘aha!’ moment? When someone’s been trying to explain something to you for ages, and then it finally twigs? I remember back in school being taught quadratic equations in maths. Lesson after lesson, the teacher taught us what we needed to do, and – whilst I was in class – I vaguely understood. As soon as I left the room though, it was like I tucked my understanding back under the desk alongside my chair. I distinctly remember (long after the rest of the class) the feeling when I finally understood what it was that I needed to do to solve these monstrosities; that sudden click when it all became clear. Of course, I can’t remember any of it now…

 

At the end of our gospel reading this morning, Jesus asks his disciples a question: Have they understood what Heaven is like? We’ve had three Sundays’ worth of gospel passages from Matthew now specifically talking about Heaven. Two weeks ago, Edith opened up to us the parable of the sower, with grain falling on good or rocky soil. Last week, Fi talked to us about the parable of the wheat and the weeds. And this week, like my long-suffering maths teacher to 13-year-old me, Jesus reels off example after example to his disciples to help them understand.

Where are you right now? What would you say if someone asked you what Heaven was like?

 

In our gospel, Jesus gives us five quick-fire examples of what Heaven is like. There’s enough material in here for a sermon on each of them… but we don’t have time for that this morning! Instead, I’m going to try to pull on some of the threads that cut across all of these parables to find some common themes.

I’ll start with the first three – the parable of the mustard seed, the parable of the yeast, and the parable of the treasure in the field.

 

 
 

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

Jesus says Heaven is like a mustard seed. This is such a well-known parable, it’s one we often overlook. Last week, we heard about the parable of the wheat and the weeds, with the wheat having been sown by God, and the weeds by an enemy. There’s one problem this morning, though. Mustard seed in Jesus’ time was a weed. It is an invasive plant, and one that – once taken root – would grow to fill the field, preventing anything other plants from thriving there.

Jesus is turning his whole previous parable on its head. Instead of the kingdom of Heaven being like good seed, it is now a weed – grown from a tiny seed hidden in the ground – that invades the rest of the field, giving shelter to the very birds the farmer would wish to keep away from his crop.

 

The Parable of the Yeast

In Jesus’ next parable, he compares the kingdom of Heaven to yeast (or ‘leaven’), hidden in flour that is made into bread. We know that unleavened bread has religious links. We still use unleavened bread for our communion wafers in churches today. Because of this religious symbolism, in Jesus’ day, leaven/yeast was a symbol of corruption or impurity. Jesus is saying that the kingdom of Heaven corrupts.

In adding yeast to the dough, the bread cannot be used for religious purposes. But, in leavening the bread, it will grow and expand, and can feed many, many more people.

The kingdom of Heaven breaks religious rules, but it prioritises need over purity.

 

The Parable of the Treasure in the Field

In our third parable, Jesus returns to the field. But in this case, the kingdom of Heaven is not a tiny seed hidden in the field. Instead, it is a treasure hidden in the field. The presence of this treasure in the field suddenly makes the whole field so valuable that someone would sell everything they own to buy the field in which they found the treasure. That person, by the way, must have been trespassing in that field to find the treasure in the first place. They would have had no right to be there. They were not a worker in the field; any slave working there would have had no possessions they could sell.

The kingdom of Heaven is a treasure found by trespass; found by someone with no right to have been looking for it in the first place.

 

The Parable of the Pearl

And so, onto the last two parables. Jesus tells us another parable about treasure. He talks of a merchant who is searching for pearls, and finds an incredibly valuable pearl. Like the trespasser in the field, the merchant sells everything he has to buy this single pearl.

So far so good. This story is often grouped with the previous parable about the treasure in the field, but Jesus – as always – flips the focus. In this parable, the kingdom of Heaven is not the pearl of great price. Jesus says the kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant. The kingdom of Heaven is the one this time which is hunting for treasure. It is not the treasure itself. Heaven actively hunts for, and finds treasure and sells everything it has to own it.

In case you hadn’t spotted it, you are the treasure that Heaven is seeking. You are the one that Heaven sells everything for. You are the one who God gives up his very life to call his own.

 

The Parable of the Fishing Net

That should be our last parable. That should be our conclusion. But there’s a fifth:

Jesus says that the kingdom of Heaven is like a net. It’s trawling the ocean and scooping up whatever fish it can from the sea. It gathers everything. Completely indiscriminate in what it pulls in. We cannot deny – as Fi stated last week with the wheat and the weeds – that there is a separation in this parable. A separation of the bad fish from the good. But – like with the wheat and the weeds – that separation is held until the very end. And I am quite confident that – if Heaven is truly transformative – if Heaven breaks religious rules in order to prioritise people – if God is willing to give up everything to gain us as his treasure – bad fish can still be turned into good eating!

 

 

 

And there we have our whistle-stop tour of the five parables Jesus told in our gospel. I’m going to turn back to the question that Jesus asked his disciples at the end. Do you understand what the kingdom of Heaven is like?

 

Heaven is so small it goes unnoticed; like a mustard seed, yeast, or a tiny pearl.

Heaven is hidden, working out of sight; like a seed in the ground or yeast in bread.

And yet, Heaven is disruptive and invasive, like yeast that cannot be separated from dough, or a mustard plant that overtakes a field. And Heaven transforms everything it touches, like a treasure that completely changes the value of a field.

Heaven breaks the rules. The weed takes over the field and provides comfort and shelter for birds who will eat what the farmer wants to grow, and the yeast prevents the bread from being using in the temple, providing food, instead, for the multitude who are not welcome inside.

And Heaven is active. Trawling the ocean to gather all in. Furiously searching for precious treasure and forgoing everything else when it finds it. Actively waiting for your own ‘aha’ moment when you realise your value to Heaven, and its value to you, and maybe you start looking to see what that field with the mustard tree and the big ‘x marks the spot’ mark might cost you, and what you might gain.

 

But the main takeaway, the main piece in all of this is this: Heaven is here already. Small and hidden, but actively at work, breaking all the rules and disrupting lives. And for those of us who allow it to grow within us, the outcomes will be unmistakable: more obvious than the largest of trees, more plentiful than overflowing fishing nets, and more valuable than the greatest of treasures.

What is the kingdom of Heaven like? Will you let it take seed in you, so that the world can truly find out?

 

Amen

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