31 Then Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”
33 He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
44 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.
When I was a kid growing up with five brothers and sisters in a fairly disarrayed household, it often happened that one of us couldn’t find something we were looking for. So we would yell from where we were to my mother: “Mom where’s my red sweater? Mom, have you seen my social studies book? Mom, where’s my baseball glove?” And her answer was always the same: “here it comes flying!” Here it comes flying. This was my mom’s way of saying, “I’m not going to find it for you. You can find it.”
When Jesus began his public ministry, Matthew tells us that the first thing he said was: “Repent, turn around, the kingdom of heaven has come near!” And there were plenty of Jewish folk in the first century who were looking for the kingdom of heaven. They’d been waiting for years. Once upon a time they had their own human kings and their own earthly kingdom. But other kings and other kingdoms kept winning the wars the ancient Israelites fought, until finally they had no human king and no earthly kingdom of their own. They had only God, the Creator, the Covenant maker, their divine ruler and heavenly king. So people attached themselves to Jesus, this Jewish rabbi who appeared out of nowhere, and announced with great authority and passion: “the kingdom of heaven has come near.” All the while the folks following Jesus around are watching, and listening, and wondering: “Jesus, where is this kingdom you keep talking about? We can’t see it.” He doesn’t say, “Here it comes flying!”
Looking them straight in the eye, Jesus says: the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed—so small that it disappears between your thumb and index finger—as seed that a man planted. The kingdom of heaven is like a bit of yeast—a fragile fungus—that an aproned woman mixes into three twenty-pound sacks of stoneground wheat.
As Jesus describes the kingdom, his disciples are silently staring back at him. When he passed through their obscure little villages they had followed him, leaving wet tangled nets behind on the seashore and empty chairs around the kitchen table. They had cast their lot with him and mortgaged their futures for the promise of a kingdom of their own better than the one they now experienced under Roman occupation. They thought he was the guy who knew where the treasure was hidden in the field. The merchant who had found that most precious kingdom pearl they had been looking for.
In their minds they have imagined the kingdom of heaven. When they ask Jesus about the kingdom, they want to hear him say: THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS LIKE THE ROMAN EMPIRE BUT STRONGER, MORE POWERFUL, BIGGER MILITARY, BETTER ECONOMY, GREATER THAN ANYTHING ANYONE’S SEEN BEFORE. They want to hear Jesus say, “And in this kingdom everyone one of you will have a cabinet appointment, a bright corner office, executive immunity if you screw up, your own expense account, and power like you’ve never had before.
When Jesus finishes describing the kingdom, I can see the disciples taking sideways glances at each other, biting their tongues, and rubbing their beards as they try to imagine what a minute mustard seed and a woman mixing yeast into scads of flour has to do with the kingdom of heaven. The endings of these two parables aren’t awful. Better a big tree with birds swooping in to hang out on its branches than just a weeny seed. And better to picture the kingdom as bread dough getting bigger and bigger as the carbon dioxide is released and plumps up the lump than just a few dust-sized pieces of yeast. But still, the endings of these parables come up far short of what the disciples have imagined and hoped for. It hadn’t occurred to them to look in the kitchen or meditate on a mustard seed to get a glimpse of what the kingdom of heaven is like.
The disciples are looking to live in another kingdom, another geo-political reality than the one they are living in. They want a replacement. A fresh start. A new beginning from ground zero. And I am so feeling the appeal of their longing. I said of the protesters who in the wake of George Floyd’s murder rioted and burned buildings, “I get their impulse to just want to burn it all up and start over rather than have to work our way through all the rubble, the mess of our history as a nation, all the hurt, all the brokenness.” It feels so hard to undo the racism, the sexism, the classicism, the nationalism, all the “isms” that we human beings continue to create. All the “isms” that obstruct our ability to be in relationship with others who are like and unlike us, relationships that are just, peaceful, life-giving, joy-creating, and sustaining for all of us human beings.
But this kind of “burn it all up and start over” isn’t the story Jesus is telling about the reality of the kingdom of heaven. This is the third week we have heard a parable about the sowing or planting of seed in the soil. This week it is the mustard seed that is planted, mixed in with and hidden in the soil. This seed is the kingdom. And the field is the world, just as it is. The one who plants this mustard seed appears to be less careless than the sower who indiscriminately throws the seed of God’s Word all over the place. Devil may care. But in both parables, Jesus is the profligate sower and the mustard seed planter. The field is the world, the field is our hearts, and the soil of the world and of our hearts, is at the same time rocky and thorny and packed down-hard and receptively fertile.
And in the parable that Preaching Elder Rob laid before us last week, the wheat and the weeds grow up together, side by side, roots and fruits intertwined, good and evil at work in the world, and in each of us. And Jesus says, don’t try to uproot the weeds. Let it all be. Let the sunshine and the rain do what they do. Let the powerful love and grace of God do what it does. Let the Spirit of life do what she does to enrich the soil and grow good fruits.
The cumulative effect of all these parables together is to say that God doesn’t start over with a blank slate, a clean canvas, a perfectly luscious and fertile field. God doesn’t wipe out what is and slickly replace it with something wholly new. The story that unfolds in Scripture is about the mystery by which the power of God forms this creation into God’s new creation. It is about the mystery of how the power of God transforms the geo-political realities, the kingdoms of this world, into the kingdom of heaven. It is about this earth and all the places we live. It is about every time, and this time right now in which we are struggling globally with an invisible virus, and we in the U.S. are confronting visible racism, and the challenge of a nation divided. The Word of God, the kingdom of heaven, the grace and love of God get mixed into what we are and what the world is right now, just as it always has been mixed in from the beginning of time.
With the parable of the yeast mixed in with the flour by a woman who represents God, Matthew takes us deeper into this whole business of how God works to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth. The kingdom is hidden. Really, really hidden in the dough that is the world and all its peoples. When you sow and plant seeds, if want to bother, you can go and dig them up again before they sprout and plant them in a sunnier, more fertile spot. But not so with yeast mixed into flour. Once in, you can’t take it out.
In Jesus’ time, the yeast was grown by fermenting grain in water. Once this woman mixed that yeasty, fungus-rich water into her 128 cups of flour, forget about it. Once you mix the little grains of Fleischmann’s yeast into even a small amount of flour and water, forget about it. The yeast becomes so intimate a part of the lump as to be indistinguishable from it, undiscoverable in it, and irretrievable out of it. So it is with the kingdom of heaven in the world. From the beginning, the kingdom has been hidden in the messy mix that is the world, and it is hidden in the messy mix that I am, and that you are, and that we are together.
The good news of these parables is not in a promise that the kingdom of God will bring rapid numerical growth to the church, or that the kingdom will unfold in a steady string of stunning successes that bring reconciliation, peace, justice and abundant life to the world, or that we as individuals will dwell in perpetual joy—free from depression, discouragement, fear, and anxiety about the way things are in the world, or in our own lives. I wish it worked like that. And I don’t know why God chooses to work in ways that are mysterious, and hidden, and tiny, and fragile, and slow.
The good news of these parables is that the whole kingdom of heaven is irremovably, intimately, permanently mixed into creation and into everyone of us. Like yeast that when mixed into flour and water creates breath that causes dough to rise, so is the Spirit of the Creator, the warm breath that causes creation to come alive and rise at the beginning; so is the eternal Spirit breath that causes the lifeless body of Jesus to come alive and rise; so is the resurrected breath that Jesus exhales onto scared, disappointed, despairing disciples causing them to rise again with joy and peace. The warm breath, the life of the Trinity is the power and presence of the kingdom of heaven. Mixed in. Inseparable from the world. Inseparable from you. Patiently. Infallibly. Intimately at work. Inviting you. Inviting me to take a deep breath and to know in this breath the truth that love has found us and hidden in us the priceless treasure of the kingdom of heaven.
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Jesus Christ to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.