The Kingdom of Heaven is like ...
Why Parables
Why not just tell it like it is? Why do we always have to wrap everything up in stories? There are a number of possible reasons. The truth is often quite are to convey directly, but by reference to something else, some of the truth can be uncovered.
How would you describe an Elephant to a blind man? Or how would you tell him about the colour yellow? That is the type of problem that Jesus faces when he tries to tell us about the kingdom of heaven. He’s trying to describe something that we start off with only the vaguest of ideas about – and they may even be wrong. When blind men were asked to describe what they were feeling this is what they came up with:
leg is like a pillar;
tail is like a rope;
the trunk is like a tree branch;
the ear is like a hand fan;
belly is like a wall;
the tusk is like a solid pipe.
... but that doesn’t give me a picture of an elephant and neither would it much help another blind man -- perhaps if we started with a horse?
The colour yellow is in the visible spectrum and has a wavelength of 590–560 nm and a frequency of 510–540 THz. It’s the truth, but it doesn’t help us or especially someone who is blind get any sense of what yellow is. Perhaps we should have started by talking about the sun.
Hidden Meaning
When Jesus was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that,
" ’they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
and ever hearing but never understanding;
otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’"
Parables are used to help some people understand and to make it impossible for others to understand.
Surprise Usage
The way parables are told often contains something to make the hearer startled in some way. Its a technique for getting someone’s attention and trying to help them to think differently. It also serves to make the saying memorable.
Sketch from life of Brian at the sermon on the mount.
Brian and his friends are on the very edge of the crowd listening to the sermon on the mount. They cannot hear properly. “What’s he saying?” someone asks. “Blessed are the Cheese makers”. “Why the Cheese makers?” and the listeners immediately try to understand it as a parable, “not just the cheese makers, but anyone who works with dairy products”. This, of course isn’t a parable, just a misunderstanding, and it shows us how easy it is to ’get the wrong end of the stick’ from what we hear.
Over interpretation – missing the point
You will often hear sermons and talks on parables that go into great depths about the detail in the parable and all the possible meanings and imagery that goes around it. In preparation for this talk I read and listened to a number of other sermons based on this passage. One was an exhortation to evangelism and one was about the apostate church. Both had entirely missed the main point of what Jesus is saying. As I take a look at some of the detail and the surprising things that can come from these parables I will do my very best not to miss the main point.
Background / Setting Series
In Matthew the parables describing the Kingdom of heaven are in one section that take most of Chapter 13. In Mark and Luke they are spread more widely. Matthew has helpfully grouped the parables together to give us a wider view of what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.
You can read the other ones later, but for now we are going to concentrate on the mustard seed and the yeast.
I’m going to talk about the yeast first, because I think it is the easiest one for us to understand.
Yeast 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.”
Summary of Message
It seems fairly obvious what this parable is trying to convey. A small amount of yeast added to the dough makes an enormous difference to the resulting bread. It must of course be well mixed in other wise the bread will be uneven, hard is some places and full of holes in others.
Surprising Elements
To Jesus’ hearers there would have been some surprising elements to the story.
Yeast was normally associated with evil. Later Jesus would say to his disciples "Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees." (Matthew 16:6). In Exodus, whenever the Jews are to celebrate God they are always told to bake unleavened bread – bread without yeast. You can imagine the reaction – “What! The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast”. Jesus would not have got the same reaction if he had said “The Kingdom of Heaven is like the drop of milk that a woman put in her tea.” Although the spiritual lesson would be similar the impact is completely lost. You wouldn’t react, so the saying would not be memorable. (OK, I know first century Jews didn’t have cups of tea – but I hope you get the point!)
In the English Standard version and the Amplified Bible we read that the woman took “three measures of flour”. That’s about 22 Litres, 13 kilograms or nearly 30 pounds of flour. That’s the same amount that Sarah prepared when God visited Abraham in Genesis 18. It is the most bread dough that could be kneaded at a time.
Mustard Seed
Mustard Seed joke
A company sent out advertising with a mustard seed attached to a card which read “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed in our products you are guaranteed to get excellent results and be totally satisfied.” A few months later they received a letter “Dear Sir, You will be interested to know that I planted the mustard seed you sent on your advertising card and it has grown into a very healthy bush producing wonderful tomatoes”
The mustard seed is less straight forward, and brings with it some intriguing questions. The parable is told slightly differently in Mark and Luke.
Mark 4:30-32.
Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.”
Luke 13:18-19
Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? i What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air perched in its branches.”
Summary of message
A simple seed – in Jewish thought at the time proverbially the smallest thing – planted in the garden – becomes one of the tallest crops. The seed is not actually that small at 2 to 3 millimetres (tenth of an inch) in diameter, but bit holds that image. The Kingdom of heaven planted in a world, or perhaps in a person grows to become the greatest thing in the world, or the person. It seemingly came from nowhere and yet Christianity is the largest religion on the planet, so it seems to work.
Surprising Elements
The mustard plant is both a crop and a weed. It was grown in gardens for mustard, but could also easily be found in the wild. There are birds that build their nest amongst mustard plants because of the shade that they provide. Apart from the dove, birds were considered dirty pests, and it would have been surprising for them to get a mention. Jesus seems to be saying that the Kingdom of heaven, when it is grown, provides shelter for the world.
In Matthews parable the plant is described as a tree. So, if Jesus was trying to find an image of something small that grows into something big, and provides shelter, then why not the Cedars of Lebanon. That was certainly common imagery – for strength and protection. Our own saying “From little acorns grow mighty oaks” sums up that part of the message perfectly. A tree though comes from a clearly defined seed, and here the imagery would fail. To make his point Jesus must use the smallest of small things – the mustard seed. The mustard seed image is also used in Luke 17:4-6
If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, b you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.
Jesus also seems to be picking up on Nebuchadnezzar ’s dream in Daniel 4, where he describes an enormous tree, and Daniel says “The tree you saw, which grew large and strong, with its top touching the sky, visible to the whole earth, with beautiful leaves and abundant fruit, providing food for all, giving shelter to the beasts of the field, and having nesting places in its branches for the birds of the air. O king, you are that tree”. The tree is to be destroyed by God. Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon – Babylon was later used as a synonym for all that is evil.
Jesus’ hears would have found that profoundly shocking.
To get some sense of what he is saying perhaps we should start the modern day version of the parable with “The Kingdom of heaven is like a cutting of Japanese Knotweed that a man planted in his garden ...”
Japanese Knotweed has an amazing ability to regenerate from a tiny piece of rhizome, stem or even leaf material.
Application
Kingdom of Heaven
Place
The Kingdom of heaven is not a place. Well, not a physical place, although there are places that feel like they are in the Kingdom and places that feel like they’re not. Have you ever been somewhere where there is a sense of peace and a sense of holiness. Some old churches have that feel. Jo and I recently visited Coventry Cathedral. The new Cathedral was almost empty, it is huge, spacious and quite dark. You can hear your feet move on the floor, even as you take a step. The building certainly speaks of the awesomeness of God, but I didn’t sense God in there. Then we went outside. ’Over the road’ to the old cathedral – the one destroyed in WWII. There had been a wedding there only a few minutes, before and it was crowded with young people taking photo’s and chatting. As we walked around looking at the walls and thinking there was a definite sense that we were in a different place. This place belonged to Kingdom of heaven somehow, in a way that the new building didn’t.
Of course it is us, not the building that belongs in the Kingdom of heaven. We become part of the Kingdom of heaven the minute we accept Jesus as Lord and saviour.
Becoming part of the Kingdom has effects on us and on the world around us.
Corporate Kingdom
We can see, if we take even the most rudimentary glance at the world that the parable is also a prophecy. Jesus – the mustard seed – was planted in the world 2000 years ago. We read in the Acts of the apostles the initial sprouting of the Kingdom of Heaven. As we look at the world today about a third of the population – 1about 2.1 billion people are part of the Kingdom of Heaven. In many areas there is still phenomenal growth – particularly in China.
Looking at our own country we can see that the Kingdom of Heaven has had some dramatic effects on Society. Perhaps most notably is the abolition of slavery. Campaigns such as Fair Trade, and Make Poverty History have a Christian background and continue to do good works – changing the very nature of our world.
Personal Kingdom
From the point we accept Jesus onwards we begin to understand what it is like. Slowly, as we spend time with God, as we drink in the Holy Spirit, as we join in prayer and worship with other Christians, the truths spoken in these parables begin to be revealed. Their message becomes clearer and we grow closer to God as a result.
Some of the parables that Jesus told are harder to understand than others. Some are so hard that he has to explain them to the disciples himself. The two we are looking at today do not fall into that category, so it our job to work out their meaning.
They are clearly both to do with growth. The Kingdom of heaven is like a seed – something small, that turns into a 3 meter (10 feet) high plant. The Kingdom of Heaven is like the yeast – something small but it affects the whole of the dough.
In both cases we do not see what causes the growth. Chemical and biological processes occur and as a result things change. In the Kingdom of heaven there are no Chemical or biological processes – only spiritual ones. When we accept Jesus as our Lord and saviour the Holy Spirit is planted in us. When we join with fellow Christians in prayer and worship the mixing process provides us with new ideas and thoughts about God, and how we relate to Him. All of this leads to Spiritual growth. So from being a spiritual baby we can grow into a spiritual giant and take the place prepared for us in the Kingdom.
Planting Seeds
We know that we too must continue plant seeds of faith in other peoples lives. Anyone who has tried to grow anything will realise that not all seeds germinate, and some that do take a very long time before they do. We know that not all seedlings grow to become mature plants, and that not all mature plants go on to produce their own seed. It is the same with us, and with those around us. When I look back at my life before I was a Christian, I can see many many examples of seeds planted. My mum took my sister and I to church when we were very young. I spent a few weeks in an organisation called Sea Scouts – which was affiliated to the church at the top of our road. At secondary school one of my friends became a Christian. All these things – and many more I expect – had no apparent effect on me at the time. Who knows which of those seeds first began to grow?
Is it the same for you? When you look back before you had made your decision for Christ – do you see a number of seeds?
If you see the seeds of faith in your life, how many are you scattering in the hope that they will grow in others?
