The Parables of Jesus
The Mustard Seed and The Yeast
Matthew 13:31-33
September 20, 2009
This week we will return to Matthew and look at two small parables that are connected together but give us two varying perspectives of the kingdom. These are the parables of the mustard seed and yeast. If you remember when we began, we examined the parable of the seed and sower where we uncovered why Jesus used parables (because he was speaking prophetically to challenge people and to put the kingdom challenge in the simplest terms possible). We also saw that while some outright reject the kingdom others respond to the kingdom favorably but do not stick with it. However, a few have deep, rich soil that allows the kingdom of God to take root. Jesus challenges us to be the kind of soil that allows the principles of the kingdom to flourish.
We come back to these little parables because we needed to see some other aspects of the kingdom (for example that the kingdom is presenting working in the midst of an evil world that has not yet be destroyed but will ultimately be completed some day in the future when Jesus comes). With these two little parables we have both the present kingdom and the future kingdom depicted. We have the seemingly insignificance of the kingdom and the obscure beginnings that have all-consuming consequences. Speaking of insignificance…
The story goes that the animals at the National Zoo all got together to play a football. Each animal played the position that was geared to the way it was designed. Since the giraffe had a tall neck to see well, it was the quarterback for the one side. But the defense for the other team was tough with elephants and gorillas. The first team advanced the ball gaining a first down at the fifty but was stopped and had to punt. A zebra came who kicked the ball into the end zone where it was received by a huge grey rhino. The ball stuck on it’s horn and it ran straight ahead. The gazelles and the lions and chimps and the pandas all tried to tackle the rhino but he kept those legs churning straight ahead to a touchdown.
And that is how it went the entire first half. No matter what the first team threw at the rhino, they couldn’t bring it down. At half time they went into the locker room demoralized losing 56 to nothing. Unfortunately, they had no answers but to keep trying. Since they received the ball at the opening half, they had to kick off at the start of the second. Boom! They ball sailed down the field caught by you know who, the rhino. Straight ahead he plowed through every animal. At the twenty and then the ten and at the five yard line, all of a sudden the rhino flipped upside down and landed with a crash.
“Who did that?” the animals called to one another. The lion said, “Not me.” The zebra said, “Not me!” Everyone denied it and was quiet for moment, when a little voice said, “It was me. I did it!”
“Who said that?” asked the chimp looking around.
“Me.”
“Me who? Where are you?”
“Down here,” said the voice. They looked very carefully and saw a little tiny centipede.
“You mean to tell me that you took down the rhino all by yourself?”
“Yeah, it was me. No problem! It was easy.”
“And you can do it again?”
“Yeah, sure. Any time. He’ll never see it coming.”
“Well where were you in the first half when we were getting killed?”
“Where do you think? I was putting on my shoes.” Ok, let’s read.
He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 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 of the air come and perch in its branches."
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."
Two short parables the Jesus uses to describe the kingdom of God. The first analogy is that the kingdom is like a mustard seed. A mustard seed is a minuscule seed. Yet when it grows and flourishes, becomes a huge plant that if left in a garden untended could take over a small garden.
Yeast is even smaller. Yeast causes the bread to rise. Usually the women in the community came together once or twice a week make bread dough for the week. One did not go to the store and buy a package of Fleischmann’s yeast. Instead, they would cut off a hunk of dough to be saved for the next time bread dough was made. That piece of dough would be worked into the fresh batch supplying the yeast for it to rise. So what is Jesus trying to tell us about the kingdom?
The Kingdom
• Starts Small
God doesn’t need much to do great things. God doesn’t need a big budget to accomplish his purposes. The kingdom starts small but God multiplies more than we can imagine.
It begins with just a word. A spoken word. Something really small. A word. Just a little word. Because the word was with God. The Word was God.
The big… the flashy… the attention grabber… None of these are the way of the kingdom. It starts small and it grows and grows and grows and grows. If it’s a Hummer then it probably isn’t the kingdom. A Hummer says look at me. Look how big I am. Look how important I am. But God doesn’t need His ego stroked. We do. But God doesn’t.
The religious leaders wanted God to come in a big way. They wanted everyone to see so that everyone would know how important they really were. But Jesus says, “No, the kingdom starts like a mustard seed. It starts with the normal every day person where God takes root. It starts with the mom of two kids. It starts with the high school student who feels insecure around the jocks and the cheerleaders. It starts with a child who says, “I just want to everyone how much I love Jesus.”
It starts with a centipede that tackles a rhino. The kingdom comes in a small way on earth with 12 men who never made the cut as disciple to a rabbi. Some of whom were fishermen. One at least was someone that was considered to be traitor to his people as well as God: an unredeemable tax collector. There is no way one can be a good Hebrew and be a tax collector. One even betrayed his master leading to the master’s crucifixion.
As one man on the Jewish counsel said, “If this Christian stuff isn’t from God, then it will die in obscurity. But if it is from God, then who can stop it?”
• Seems Insignificant
A little bit of yeast worked in the dough. A microscopic organism that infiltrates and spreads through the entire batch of dough. With time and doing what yeast is supposed to do, the dough is consumed by the yeast. And all it takes is a little bit of dough with that yeast in it to be added to unleaven dough to work it’s way through the entire new batch.
The kingdom and the ways of the kingdom seem insignificant. Love God and love one another. Love your neighbor as yourself. So simple. So insignificant. But we know all about it. We think we do. Yet we find ourselves saying, “Ok, Lord, I got that. Now what else? Let’s get to the real stuff, Lord. Let’s get to the deep stuff.” But that is the deep stuff as well as the milk. It is loving this person and that person. And when we finally get it figured out how to love this person, then God challenges to love that person.
Love the least of these. Love the insignificant. It probably won’t build a big religious organization. I see the yeast of kingdom working down at the Upper Room. I see the yeast working in recovery programs. I see the yeast working when some kids use puppets to spread a mustard seed of the gospel. I see the yeast when someone calls another to ask about them. I see the yeast at work by the card or note sent to someone you haven’t seen for while.
And yes, sometimes the yeast keeps working when we make these efforts into a program and call it a ministry with a specific name. But most often it is yeast when it happens because we have been listening for God, hear his prompting and having God’s loving eyes to see what the next right thing to do is.
Implications
• Never under value what God values.
No matter how small, no matter how insignificant it seems, no matter how unnoticed it is, if God is in it then the value is limitless. As an old song proclaimed, “Little is much when God is in it.”
• See what God is saying.
An new song says, “Lord, gimme your eyes.” Let me see the hurting, the least of these, the insignificant, the poor, the cast offs. I am increasingly convinced that this is the focus of gospel. This is the meat of the gospel in terms of loving your neighbor.
It is one thing to know about it. It is one thing tell others to do so. It is one thing to give to this mission. But it is quite another to fill your nostrils with the stench of broken. When you have to force down an involuntary wretch, your love is put to the test.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery in The Little Prince wrote, “It is with the heart that one see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Gary and Mary Jane Chauncey were totally devoted to their eleven-year-old daughter Andrea. Andrea was confined to a wheelchair because of cerebral palsy. Andrea was pretty insignificant to practically everyone except her parents.
The Chauncey family were passengers on an Amtrak train that was traveling through Lousiana. Earlier a barge had struck a bridge that unknowlingly weakened the structural integrity. The result was that the weight and vibration of the train caused the bridge to collapse as the train was passing over it.
The train cars tumbled into the swirling river. As often happens around bridges, the water was very deep. Between the debris of the train, the swirling river currents, and the escaping air that rushed from the sinking train cars, it took incredible courage and luck for people to survive. Andrea’s parents had one thing on their minds as the water rushed into their car: save Andrea. They managed to push Andrea through a window to rescuers just before the car sank to the bottom where they perished.
Stricken with such a debilitating disease, Andrea would probably never make any significant contribution to society. A parent’s love doesn’t consider the logical outcome. Love doesn’t consider the life of anyone insignificant. Neither does God.
The next time that you are tempted to wallow in self-pity or tell someone who pathetic you are or beg for forgiveness for some you did that was totally blown out of proportion, remember that the way of love and the way of the kingdom is not about that at all.
A mustard seed doesn’t need people to see how great it is or even how small it is. It just does what it is supposed to do. Yeast is the same way. Yeast doesn’t say, “I am so small and so insignificant that I can’t be of any use.” It does what it is supposed to do. As long as it does its part, the whole dough is affected. As long as the mustard seed does its thing, the whole garden is affected. And not just the garden but the world because it benefits everyone else as the birds roost in it.
Undervaluing the kingdom comes in two ways: undervaluing the contributions of others and undervaluing ourselves. Neither are appropriate for God nor the Kingdom.
