“Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.”
(Matthew 13:51)
None of us likes to appear ignorant. Chances are when someone asks if you’re aware of a bit of news, you’re tempted to say, “Of course.” Meanwhile, your mind is a hamster wheel racing through all the headlines you’ve grazed lately in a desperate search for the needed information. It’s not that we pretend to know more than we do, necessarily. It’s that we presume we know more than we do. Which is to say, we presume we know more than anyone who’s talking to us.
This miniature arrogance that imagines we’re the most informed person in our circle likely extends in other directions. We assume our opinions are the right opinions. If we are dog people, we’re suspicious of folks who don’t swoon over our animals. If we enjoyed a movie, we look askance at the person who dismisses it as cinematic garbage. My friend Erin disliked onions in her food. She would sit at my table night after night and pick every particle of this vegetable from the meals I prepared. I should clarify that I add onions to everything short of ice cream. I imagined someone dropped Erin on her head as a child, which is the most charitable thought I can muster for an onion-hater. No doubt Erin thought something equally damaging had happened to my brain, since I continued to serve her onions.
The thing is, for many if not most of us, being wrong isn’t an option. If our foolishness becomes undeniable, we’ll hasten to qualify it. There’s a good reason, if not a bulletproof excuse, for why we weren’t in possession of the correct facts, or that our behavior was in some limited sense flawed. The farther we’re out of our depth in a conversation, the more frantically we attempt to swim to shore.
It seems something like this was going on during the long and imaginative discourse Jesus directs to his disciples about the kingdom of heaven. Jesus describes in lush detail how the kingdom is like an improbable sower of seeds who scatters them in every direction with abandon. Or perhaps it’s a thwarted farmer who allows wheat and weeds to grow together in the fields until harvest time. The kingdom’s a tiny mustard seed that matures to magnificence. And it’s yeast hidden in flour to create the miracle of bread. It’s buried treasure lost and found. It’s a merchant of fine pearls who discovers to his joy the pearl of a lifetime. It’s a dragnet cast into the sea that dredges up whatever’s out there for a later sorting.
After delivering this effusive extended description of the mysteries of God’s realm, Jesus asks his followers, “Do you get it?” And their one-word response in unison to this whole remarkable teaching is, “Yes.” Just yes. Which to me sounds quite suspicious.
“Sure, Jesus. What you just said.” Don’t you suspect this response is a cover-up for a lot of head-scratching and confusion? How can the reign of God be perceived in so many diverse ways? Seeds and weeds, bread and pearls, and fish and garbage! Yet the disciples betray no hesitation about having absorbed this complex lesson. It’s not merely that they don’t want to appear dull before Jesus. They’re also, as we know, competitive with one another about their personal rank and rating in this enterprise. Surely the one who earns a seat of honor in Jerusalem won’t be the one who frowns and asks, “Hmm. What does this have to do with chasing the Romans out of our country?”
Mark’s gospel, the shortest and first one written down, is most willing to routinely identify the disciples as a day late and a dollar short in discerning what Jesus is about. Note, the first evangelist was not among the original followers of Jesus, though tradition places him in the company of Peter. Mark’s primary source, then, was the stories Peter told during their work together in the early days of the church. Peter earned his humility the hard way, in embarrassing episodes of impulsive speech and behavior—not to mention three painful denials. In his wiser years, doubtless he would have been frank about how obtuse the disciples had originally been, including his own sorry record of incomprehension.
When it’s Matthew’s turn to write his account a few decades later, he uses Mark’s material but edits out the unflattering parts. After all, by his generation, the first disciples are heroes and, in many cases, martyrs for the faith. So, when Jesus asks his summary question, “Did you get everything I just said?” the reply will neatly be, “Of course.”
Twenty centuries later, the real question is not what the first disciples understood but what you and I get out of all this as hearers of the Word. We are, at least, no longer self-deceived that Jesus’ purpose was to drive the ancient Romans from Israel. But it’s still easy for us to dismiss all this kingdom talk as pertaining to a heavenly home in the hereafter. Seeds and weeds and pearls and fish and garbage? Surely, Jesus will sort it all out one day from his judgment seat. In the meantime, you and I need simply to go to church and follow the rules.
This dismissal conveniently ignores what Jesus also says: The kingdom is near, among us, within us. Yes, we say, we get it. And really sort of don’t. What’s apparent in tales of the kingdom is that its arrival starts small, in seeds and yeast and the irritation inside a clamshell, becoming through time and effort a remarkable bounty hidden in plain sight. While we’re looking up at the sky for the sun to swirl or angels to descend, the kingdom is maturing right under our noses in the unnoticed labor of farmers, in a fishing crew’s perseverance, in a merchant’s relentless dreams, in a woman feeding her family daily.
God’s kingdom creeps into our awareness as a small child struggles to learn to read. As an artist is inspired by an image and races swiftly back to her studio. As a father applies for yet another job this week without losing hope of success. As an elderly person patiently undergoes months of physical therapy to regain mobility after a fall.
The kingdom squeezes through the cracks in our days: when we’re ready to clobber a clerk who screwed up our order but, at the last second, we choose to smile, be gracious, and let a fellow mortal off the hook. When we opt out of blaming the other side for everything and, instead, seek ways to work together for mutually valued goals. When we stop saying, “It’s impossible,” and begin saying, “Let’s try.”
Toward the end of my seventh decade, I’m only just learning how to admit I don’t know everything. I’m often out of the loop of new information. I haven’t read that book everybody’s talking about. I don’t always or often know the right answer or what to do. If I were present at one of Jesus’ amazing lessons and he asked if everybody got it all, I hope I would have the courage to raise my hand and say, “Not really. Could you run through that one more time?” Parables may sound easy, but they are not obvious. The kingdom is not a place or a time but a decision we’re making every hour. It begins small. But like every meal that Jesus serves, it can feed a multitude.
This article also appears in the July 2026 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 91, No. 7, pages 46-48). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: Adobe Stock/pronoia
