Matthew 13: 31-33, 51-52
Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS
February 22, 2026
Recently, I was talking with someone who helped me remember how important it is to get about definitions when I’m in the pulpit. He was talking about how Jesus speaks about the “Kingdom of God” and I realized that he and I had completely different definitions of the term. In his mind, “Kingdom of God” was synonymous with going to Heaven.
When he said that, I suddenly remembered: that’s what I always thought, too, before I went to seminary. There, we learned that when Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God, he’s not referring to heaven. He’s talking about a vision for what the world could look like when God rules. It’s a counter-cultural vision for a world where the Herods no longer rule. Instead, God is in charge. We’re not talking about pearly gates and streets of gold. We’re talking about empty bellies filled, the brokenhearted healed, the prisoners and captives set free.
I think some of the confusion around this term likely started because the author of Matthew’s Gospel usually uses the phrase “Kingdom of Heaven” rather than “Kingdom of God.” Some scholars think this was to avoid saying God’s name for his Jewish audience. To muddy the waters further, 21st century theologians sometimes call it the Kindom of God, the Reign of God, the Realm of God. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. borrowed the phrase “Beloved Community” from Josiah Royce and used it as the core of his theology.
For King, the Beloved Community wasn’t some farfetched, pie in the sky idea. The King Center’s website describes it like this:
The Beloved Community was for him a realistic, achievable goal that could be attained by a critical mass of people committed to and trained in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence.
Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict….
… The core value of the quest for Dr. King’s Beloved Community was agape love. [1]
Whatever you want to call it - Kingdom or Kindom of God or Heaven, Reign or Realm of God, Beloved Community - there’s no doubt that this concept is at the very core of the Way of Jesus. He uses the phrase almost 100 times in the gospels, often speaking in parables like the ones we heard this morning.
These three parables: the parable of the mustard seed, the yeast, and the treasure chest are the shortest parables in the Bible.
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed. Someone planted it and even though it’s one of the smallest seeds, it grew into an enormous bush where birds built their nests.
The Realm of God is like yeast. A woman put it into some grain and it bubbled up and grew.
The Beloved Community is like a householder. He brought up his treasure chests from the storeroom and took out things that were old and new.
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The beauty of Jesus’s parables, of course, is that they are open-ended. They are invitational, rather than didactic. And so I found myself looking, this week, for signs of the Beloved Community still with us, here and now.
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The Kingdom of Heaven is like a high school social studies teacher in a small town in southeastern Kansas. Hoping to inspire his young students, Mr. Norm Conard, gave three teenage girls a clipping from a newspaper. He wondered if it had a typo in it because he had never heard this story before, but it said a Polish woman named Irena Sendler saved 2,500 Jewish children from death by smuggling them out of the Warsaw ghetto.
The girls began researching and found that it actually wasn’t a typo at all. Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker, cooperating with a network of 20 or so other women, did save all those children. They were snuck out of the ghetto in coffins, potato carts, and false-bottomed ambulances. Again and again, these women risked their lives and somehow managed the impossible task of convincing Jewish mothers they were trustworthy. Desperate parents trapped in the ghetto released their children into the hands of strangers, hoping against hope that they would take care of them.
Sendler and her colleagues found local Polish families who were willing to take the Jewish children in. And she kept careful records of every child that was placed, hoping they could one day be reunited with their families. She wrote their names and placements on thin paper and sealed the lists in glass jars, which she buried under an apple tree.
She was arrested, beaten and tortured. On the day she was to be executed, friends from the Polish Resistance somehow arranged to get her out of prison. She walked free while the official record showed she had been executed. She continued to help children and their families. After the war, most of the children’s parents had been killed and she worked to get them settled in permanent homes.
For decades, the story of Sendler and her colleagues' heroics was buried - buried like the jars with the children’s names, buried like a mustard seed.
Buried until these three girls in a classroom in rural Kansas were challenged by their teacher to see what they could learn. Megan Stewart, Elizabeth Cambers, and Sabrina Coons brought her story to life. They researched, they wrote. They eventually learned that Sendler was still alive and they visited her in Poland. They created a play which has been performed for audiences all over the United States. Their work eventually inspired the creation of the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes in Fort Scott, which encourages students all over the U.S. to find unsung heroes like Sendler and revive their songs. [2]
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The Realm of God is like a rabbi from New Jersey who followed love to the wide open plains of Kansas. A man of many talents, keeping his mouth shut is not one of them. In the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, he discovered a spectacular talent for speaking truth to power - and making a lot of people mad in the process. After trying his hand in a few pulpits, Rabbi Moti Rieber eventually became the director of a climate-justice nonprofit, Kansas Interfaith Power & Light. Like yeast working its way through a pile of grain, the work continued to grow and eventually, Kansas Interfaith Action was born.
For years, Rabbi Moti was the only staff member, operating on a shoestring budget. But the yeast continued to do its thing and the organization grew. Clergy and people of faith from all over the state got involved. Grants were written, many miles were driven, and time and time again, Rabbi Moti showed up in the statehouse talking about the Beloved Community.
In time, the yeast worked its magic, somehow creating a substance that is pliable, stretchable, and continuing to grow. When the legislature doubled down on attacking LGBTQ Kansans, Rabbi Moti and KIFA became clearer and bolder in their advocacy. Held together by the glutinous bonds of belief in a more just world, a fair amount of sass, and plenty of prayer, KIFA representatives showed up year after year in Topeka, with a simple message, “God loves everyone. No exceptions. Could you seriously, really, truly, pretty please just consider being kind and compassionate for once?”
Year after year (after year after year) the pleas fell on deaf ears in the state house. And one unseasonably warm February day in 2026, a hateful piece of legislation was finally rushed all the way through and signed into law. SB 244 requires Kansans to use the bathroom consistent with the gender assigned to them at birth in government-owned buildings. And it mandates that driver’s licenses display the gender assigned to people at birth. With the weight of hearts breaking all over the state, the Rabbi bubbled up with one more yeasty proclamation from the gallery as the vote was finalized. Rabbi Moti shouted, “First they came for the trans people, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t trans!” As he was escorted out by security, you could hear him yelling, “Shame on you!” [2]
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One last story. The Beloved Community is like….well, I’m going to let Syreeta McFadden describe this because she tells it so beautifully.
In a 1972 episode of Sesame Street, Jesse Jackson, then 31, is standing against a stoop on the soundstage modelled after an urban neighborhood block. He’s wearing a purple, white and black striped shirt, accented with a gold medallion featuring Martin Luther King Jr’s profile. The camera cuts to reveal a group of kids, the embodiment of Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition – children under the age of 10 from every ethnicity and racial group. He leads them in a call-and-response of his famous liberatory chant: “I am somebody.”
The adorable, cherub-cheeked kids light up the camera with their enthusiasm as they repeat the same words back to him. They are fidgety, giggly and powerful when they respond to Jackson in a cacophonous and slightly out-of-sync roar: I am somebody. The call-and-response is a wall of activating, energetic sound.
If you pay close attention, you can hear a smile behind every word Jackson speaks and feel the shared energy between him and the kids. It is an incredible artifact of a time when the United States teetered on the precipice of a different world order in the wake of the civil rights era and the waning years of the Black Power movement. The episode is a document that demonstrated to Americans the possibility of what a beloved community could look like, integrated and brimming with youthful promise. [4]
Now, I know you’re not all kids and this isn’t Sesame Street. But will you join me as we take out treasures new and old and remember Rev. Jackson’s words? Repeat after me.
I am
somebody.
I am
Somebody.
I may be poor -
but I am
somebody.
I may be young -
but I am
somebody.
I may be on welfare -
but I am
somebody
I may be small -
but I am
somebody.
I may make a mistake -
but I am
somebody.
My clothes are different.
My face is different.
My hair is different.
But I am
somebody.
I am Black,
Brown,
White.
I speak a different language,
But I must be respected,
Protected,
Never-rejected.
I am
God's child.
I am
Somebody.
NOTES
[1] https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/
[2] Info about Sendler and the Kansas students can be found here https://irenasendler.org/history-of-the-lowell-milken-center/ and here https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1335641221926880&set=a.599146178909725
[4] Read McFadden’s whole article here: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/18/jesse-jackson-sesame-street-somebody and watch Rev. Jackson here: I Am Somebody - Jesse Jackson #sesamestreet
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