Jesus put before the crowds another parable.
So begins today’s Gospel, and Jesus certainly does just that. Thanks to the omission in our Gospel reading of verses 35-43, He quickly delivers not one, but five examples of what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. We listen to the familiar comparisons, ones we’ve heard many times, and we think we are being told that the Kingdom of Heaven appears deceptively small, but is of immense strength and value. Well – that’s easy! Like the disciples we think we get it. But, while our appraisal, as far as it goes, is accurate, because we are listening with modern ears, we are missing a great deal.
“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” Three measures of flour. Do you know how much that is? About fifty to sixty pounds! This woman is not Martha Stewart whipping up a couple delicate, exquisite little biscuits that together weigh less than a canary. No! This woman is a baker! She’s emptying sixteen five-pound bags of flour into the biggest mixing bowl you’ve ever seen. She’s pouring in forty-two cups of water. She’s got a mass of dough on her hands that weighs over a hundred pounds. Kneading this lump of dough, shaping it, pounding it. It looks like some scene at the end of a professional wrestling match. Here we have a no-nonsense operation. This is baking at its best. A woman, with her apron dusted with flour, her ten fingers deep into the dough – she’s a combination of Julia Child and Hulk Hogan. “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast...” Jesus tosses out this parable, this one-liner, and he does so for a purpose. Jesus wants to shock His listeners, to get their attention. He wants them to understand Him and what He is telling them, and us. He wants us to glimpse the Kingdom of Heaven, that realm where God’s sovereignty is recognized. Take another look at that huge mass of dough. It’s not just flour any more. The yeast is in the dough, invisible, but permeating the mass, and having its effect. A mystery is bubbling away inside, with much more happening than meets the eye. As this process continues, the hidden will become manifest. There’s no way to stop it! The movement from mystery to manifestation: Jesus presents this to us as the pulse of the Kingdom of Heaven. Here is how God’s sovereignty becomes apparent: it resembles the strange transformation that turns flour into dough. We get to watch the baker woman at work. We’re invited to look at this process and see it for what it’s worth. But if we’re to get a glimpse of the Kingdom, if we’re to look down to the center of this parable, then two things are asked of us: we must be patient, and we must exercise recognize what is happening. Yeast takes a while to work, and its working is mysterious. So, we have to be patient as the dough rises and comes to life. This dough is not a dead lump, a hopeless, shapeless pile, but instead a universe where opportunities become real. The Baker Woman is at work with our lives, our circumstances, and the people around us. Nothing is outside this lump of dough.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
Shocking! Truly shocking – at least to Jesus’ listeners, but not, at first, to us! The mustard seed of ancient times was much tinier than the mustard seed of today, and yet, this tiny invader could take root in a field and destroy a crop. Jesus could have chosen a more appealing seed, like that of a cedar of Lebanon, but He didn’t, because despite the huge tree such a seed would produce, it wouldn’t do what is always done by a mustard seed. After taking root, it wouldn’t proliferate at a tremendous rate.
While the image of yeast in dough may seem fairly benign, Jesus’ listeners would have been appalled to hear the Kingdom of Heaven compared to the mustard seed, to this invader of gardens and fields, this destroyer of crops. But Jesus knew what He was doing, because though the mustard plant was despised by the farming community, it was also nearly impossible to eradicate. Once you had mustard plants spreading in your garden, there was no way to get rid of them.
Treasure in a field, pearl of great price, we like these images of the Kingdom of Heaven, but Jesus wants us to understand that there is more to it. Have you ever watched a TV show where an assistant doctor or nurse hands a surgeon a scapple which is always slapped into the surgeon’s hand handle first? If you were to give a loaded gun to someone, like a scalpel you would hand that over grip first. Jesus is calling the faithful, calling us, to spread the Gospel, the Good News of the Kingdom, but, through today’s parables, He wants us to understand what we He is handing us.
God calls us to love others with reckless abandon. Jesus wants us to know that the Kingdom will spread like the mustard weed, but also that the work may require strength on our part, and that we may not be found acceptable by those who wield power in our society. We are called to spread the Kingdom of God, knowing that once we open ourselves up to it, it settles in and becomes part of our soul.
Do we have a choice? Of course, we do. But, again, Jesus warns us to choose wisely.
The kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Have you understood all this? Let anyone with ears listen.
Let us pray:
Lord, may we never squander the grace You have given us. Help us, even when times are dark, when things move slowly, or when the mystery is hidden, to always work diligently for the upbuilding of Your divine Kingdom. And help us to see it as a joy and honor to do so. Lord Jesus, we trust in You. Amen.