Both New and Old

Gospel: Matthew 13: 47-53

Jesus tells us that those who are truly instructed in the kingdom of heaven take out from their storerooms things both old and new.  He asks us if we understand these things, if we understand what his parables truly say to us.  Naturally, the disciples say that in fact they do understand.  We, of course, make the same bold assertion.  Jesus knows better.  He knows that neither his disciples of that time, nor us, really understand the realities of the kingdom.

Take, for example, what he says about the old and the new here.  Traditionalists despise all things new.  They have created an artificial date where all things that come after that date are suspect and rejected.  Similarly, progressives have created a similar criterion where all things that came before their created date of validity are rejected as expired and stale.  If one were to compare the dates of these rival camps, one would discover the one thing these groups have in agreement - their own artificial constructs.

If we tilt to one of these extremes, we have an incomplete storeroom.  We find ourselves impoverished rather than enriched.  We deprive others of great treasures or great discoveries, and what we have in our storeroom is not the kingdom of heaven but a kingdom of our own making, a world of make-believe of one sort or the other.  Today is the day for the progressive to rediscover the treasures of the old, and for the traditionalist to realize the value of the new.