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Matthew 13:31-35
The Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Yeast
31 He 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 your 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 a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable.35 So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet:
“I will open my mouth in parables,
I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.”
These two little metaphors are pretty familiar to us – especially the one about the mustard seed. So it’s a little surprising for us to read commentaries by the learned New Testament scholars, who say that what Jesus had to say here might have been startling to those who heard these teachings from the lips of Jesus in the first century.
In the ancient Hebrew world, most people were living in a state of expectation of the coming of the Messiah who had been promised through the prophets hundreds of years before. In fact, that was considered to be a mark of a faithful Jew – living in expectation of the Messiah. But as we’ve said before in these Reflections, the Messiah they expected was a powerful warrior-king. It had been foretold that the Messiah would be a descendant of King David, so it’s probably natural that a lot of the Jewish people assumed that he would be a great military leader, just like King David. After all, it was during the reign of David that the Israelites reached the high point of their power and influence, and the prevailing hope was that the Messiah would make Israel great again.
The great hope of the Israelites was that the Messiah would follow in the footsteps of his ancestor David, and would raise an army to drive out the Romans and all other gentile intruders from the promised land. Then, they expected the Messiah to re-establish the kingdom of God as an independent Jewish state. So that meant most people would expect that the arrival of the kingdom of heaven would be accompanied by great warfare.
That’s why most people would fail to recognize Jesus as the Messiah when he showed up. Jesus was a small-town carpenter-rabbi who walked around with some peasant followers and told people they should turn the other cheek and pray for their enemies. And it’s also no surprise that people would be confused by what Jesus had to say about the kingdom he had come to establish “on earth, as it is in heaven.”
Of course, people were also surprised – even shocked – that Jesus would hang around with outcasts and people who were considered unclean or sinful. They assumed that part of re-establishing a righteous kingdom would be driving out all the un-righteous people.
But the kingdom Jesus had come to announce wasn’t the kingdom the Jews had in mind. And in these two parables that make up our reading for today, Jesus offers two very different (and surprising) perspectives on the kingdom of heaven – the kingdom he had come into the world to announce.
In the first, he says that the kingdom will be like a plant that grows from a tiny seed, but then grows into a surprisingly large tree, one big enough to provide welcome and shelter. In the second parable, Jesus says that just as yeast spreads through a lump of dough, the kingdom will come into the world and will eventually spread almost unnoticed until it’s everywhere. These are kind of peaceful domestic metaphors for a kingdom people hoped would arrive in a glorious and spectacular style.
With the benefit of our perspective after 2,000 years of church history, we can see that things have happened just as Jesus foretold. The church historians say that at the time Jesus ascended to heaven, he only had a handful of followers — about 120, according to the Acts of the Apostles. But from that tiny “seed,” the kingdom has grown into a worldwide movement – the greatest movement in human history. Today, that movement includes almost a third of the human race.
And what’s more, the ‘Jesus movement’ has provided more peace, comfort, healing and nourishment than any other movement in history. And although there have been many sinful episodes in the history of the church – times when leaders of the church have pursued their own power and influence instead of being truly Christ-like – the plain truth is that no one has done more to help the poor and the oppressed than the followers of Jesus Christ. And for the most part, the faith has spread steadily from person to person as believers shared their faith with their neighbors. As Jesus foretold, the spreading of the faith has been a lot like yeast spreading through a lump of dough.
It’s a little startling that even in our time, lots of Christians still make the mistake the ancient Jews made; They expect to see Jesus returning at the head of heavenly armies to crush the enemies of the faith. That seems a lot like “wishful thinking” based on a mistaken interpretation of the book we call the Revelation.
On the other hand, we need to remind ourselves that worldwide, the kingdom of God is still growing, still spreading through the world like yeast through dough. The scholars say 2,000 people a day become followers of Jesus. Our calling is to do what we can to advance the kingdom – by telling the story of Jesus and bearing witness to what God has done in our own lives, and by serving others in Jesus’ name so the world encounters his love through us.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for the surprising way you have worked throughout history to establish your kingdom and bring it to fulfillment. Show us day by day how we can play a part in the mission you have begun, and how we can help to make that kingdom known everywhere. Amen.
Blessings,
Henry
(The listed readings for today are Psalms 69 and 70; Nehemiah 6:1-19, Revelation 10:1-11; and Matthew 13:36-43. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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