“[T]he Kingdom of Heaven is like a net[.]” This net which is cast so deep and wide, this net which catches all, and leaving nothing out, the Kingdom is brought, bursting with harvest, onto the shore. There and then, the catch and bycatch are looked upon, sorted.
It’s a lot of effort to bring such a large and full and writhing net back with you from the sea onto the shore, you have to make a deliberate effort not to lose anything, only to then sit upon the shore and make sense of what you have gathered. Today, you would work hard to only catch what you wanted to keep in the first place, and you would certainly sort your catch on the boat. You would freeze or process as much as you could right then and right there to get rid of the waste and to throw out whatever you don’t want. It’s efficient, it makes the best use of your time, it wastes the least of your resources.
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When I think of the catching by net of absolutely everything, I am put in mind of those cultures which really let nothing go to waste. Some of the catch is prized, maybe to be sold, or maybe to be eaten by the ones who catch it. Some is smoked or cured for harder times. Some is packed in salt and left to rot, broken down by its own digestive enzymes into a priceless liquid which can make anything taste glorious. Everything has its use.
You can’t really catch everything, of course. A net by definition is filled with gaps for something to be missed, for something to be let out. You do not want to catch the water, you do not want the plankton. The Kingdom of Heaven catches everything.
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St. Isaac the Syrian wrote that God did not make us just to let us go to waste in suffering, and resisting the perennial temptation to imagine some evil god of equal power and opposite ends to our own, says that sin will pass away, and death will pass away, and we will find ourselves in the one thing that endures beneath everything else, the light and the fire of God. That is comfort and warmth to all those who want it.
The Kingdom of Heaven does not choose to catch some and abandon others, the Kingdom of Heaven is the net, and the net leaves nothing out. There are good baskets waiting to receive everything.
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We fear that the net will miss us, and we imagine that we will be found wanting and be thrown into a furnace of fire, and we live in a state of constant denial of our worst fears, even as we hold onto them with all our strength.
Christ offers parable after parable in which the Kingdom of Heaven is nothing like we hope and nothing like we fear, and he asks: “Have you understood all this?” Without hesitation or qualification, a quick and easy “yes” comes in reply. These things which confound and confront, all these frustrating and circuitous visions, in fact defy understanding. They gesture, and only gesture, at a peace which passes all understanding, but still we pretend to understand.
We imagine that the Kingdom of Heaven is the pearl of great price for which we should give up everything else, but Christ says plainly that the Kingdom of Heaven is the merchant. We think of the shore and the sorting-baskets as the Kingdom of Heaven, and the place of judgement, but Christ tells us that it is the net. God is never at work in the ways we imagine and the places we expect. God is never in our cheap passion for judgement and destruction, but always in the wasteful and exuberant and abundant. God is the sower who spreads good seed everywhere, just in case. God is the one who lets mustard grow like weeds so that there is somewhere for us to live. God casts this net of Heaven throughout all of Creation and lets it hold us in the Kingdom, until something we cannot possibly understand happens on a shore we do not know.
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May you let yourself rest in the love of God who made you and does not desire your destruction. May you trust in the net which holds you, which is the Kingdom of God. May you set your heart on heavenly things, like togetherness and abundance and grace. May you love the glorious and meagre Kingdom for which we are being made ready, that we may flourish forever in the light and warmth of the Holy.