“The Kingdom of Heaven is Like…”

(Matthew 13:31-36a)

Jesus put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all 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.”  He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it worked all through the dough.”  Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing.  This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet: “I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.”  Then he left the crowds and went into the house. 

              “Enough with the parables,” you, who have been here the last two Sundays, may be saying to yourselves.  I was actually saying it to myself as I prepared to write this Sunday’s sermon….

              Well, first, let’s remind ourselves that Jesus’ parables function to turn upside down whatever we think we know.  They are intended to stir us up, to humble us, to remind us that there is much that we don’t know for sure. 

Take the mustard seed for example.  Jesus, unlike what we always want to do, resists the temptation to say something profound and important.  Rather, he compares the kingdom of heaven to this smallest thing, this mustard seed.  Therefore, the whole story does not come out the way we expect.  That tiny thing turns into a large thing that has size and great purpose, hence the huge bush in which birds can nest and live. 

              The whole mustard seed thing has become a bit of a cliché, used so much that it can become meaningless if we allow it.  Why it’s even the name of a health food store right in our neighborhood in Akron. 

              So let’s move on to the next parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with a whole lot of flour until it worked all through the dough.”  Now, the first amazing thing about this parable is that Jesus even used this example in which the star of the show is a woman.  Women were not supposed to have anything to do with important things or things that carry so much meaning.  I always laugh about denominations or other religious organizations who refuse to ordain women.  They don’t want us handling the holy things.  So here’s Jesus taking the all-important process of making bread, providing food for families, and making it into a sermon, a parable.

              …So first, let’s talk about yeast.  Today, we can buy yeast in tiny, hermetically sealed packets at a grocery store. The dry yeast is clean and dry, like a fine sand. But in Jesus’ time, people made their own leavening from a bit of old bread.  They left it out to ferment. It wasn’t clean or tidy like our yeast—it was sticky, wet, smelly, and funky.  You can think about it smelling like sourdough, like beer, or aged cheese.  Some of you may like those smells.  Some of us not so much!

This funky stuff is what the woman in our parable takes and mixes with a huge amount of fresh flour.  Interestingly, the three measures of flour that we’re told she used is enough to make bread for 100 people. Perhaps Jesus wants us to imagine she is baking for a whole village or a wedding feast?  Well, she’s doing it, and it takes a whole bunch of smelly, funky gunk to make this gigantic batch of new bread rise and expand to feed a crowd.  Somehow she has to mix this in to spread it throughout all that dough.

So, let’s think about how the kingdom of heaven can be like this yeast.  The bread in which it is placed can grow quickly from what may seem like the stinky gunk of our own lives. But, maybe, just maybe, things are stinky in our lives because they are alive and growing. If that’s how the kingdom of heaven is, maybe we can look differently at our everyday lives, with all the inherent pain, the disappointments, and the inevitable frustrations? What if they are the funky gunk, like sourdough starter or stinky compost: not something to be eliminated, avoided, or neutralized but food to help new life grow within us?

It has never occurred to me that the leavening, the yeast, that ancient people used to make bread was funky gunk.  But it was so necessary to provide, not only bread for our woman’s family, but, in this case, bread to feed a whole bunch of people.  If you’re thinking about Jesus’ feeding stories, you’re not mistaken.  Those thousands of folks gathered were miraculously fed by Jesus, and they all ate and were satisfied.

That yeast we hear about is an example of the way that the kingdom of heaven is, so Jesus tells us.  It’s used until all the flour and water are leavened—so every bit can rise and turn into bread….

Then, in today’s reading, we come to Jesus’ mysterious words about parables.  It says right here in Matthew’s Gospel that he told all these things to the crowd in parables, and without those parables he told them nothing.  All he did that day was tell stories—a long storytelling afternoon. 

To the crowd, this is how he spoke, in parables.  Now, he may have spoken differently to those who were on the inside.  But, what differentiates who is on the inside and who is not?  Well, those on the inside are the ones who hear.  That’s all that is required. 

When Jesus finished speaking to the crowd, he went into the house—the Jesus House, I call it—which, in my mind is another way to talk about the kingdom of heaven, the Jesus House.  The disciples represent for us those in the Jesus House.  Still, they struggled to put the pieces of the puzzle together, as we all do.  They preferred seeing the house as a way to keep people out.  But Jesus has redefined house as the Jesus House.  He has redefined the kingdom of heaven as inclusive.  This Jesus House is not only for the affluent, the upper class, the religious or those who are just like us.  The Jesus House is for everyone. 

And it’s the same with our country.  It’s not only for those who are like us, who look like us, who act like us, who speak like us.  No.  The kingdom of heaven is like a country who welcomes all with open arms: the quirky, the disabled, the rich and the poor, the nice and the prickly, the quiet and the noisy, people of all colors and languages.  All really does mean all, difficult as that is for the people in our nation to absorb.  So, for us Christians, Christ followers, this is church, this is country, this is the kingdom of heaven, this is the Jesus House.  All are welcome.

One last parable.  This is verse 52 which you did not hear this morning.  The kingdom of heaven is like the householder or like the owner of a hardware store who can put his hands on anything old or new, exactly when it is needed, or for whomever it is needed. 

My mentor, Dr. Van Bogard Dunn, known to us as Bogie-, told this story on himself.  This was way back when.  His daughter, who is probably about my age, was in her twenties in those days.  She was involved in a group that was reaching out to needy folk in a certain neighborhood in Nashville, TN.  Now, Bogey was acquainted with that neighborhood.  He knew that she was putting herself at risk.  He said, “you should be coming to Ohio and spending time with your mom and me.”  She replied, “I’m only doing what you taught me to do.”  She was taking the Gospel she learned at her father’s knee and placing it in a new context.  Our challenge is to open ourselves and our community to new people, new ideas, and new ways. 

The guy in the hardware store could pull out new stuff or old stuff, whatever was needed.  The kingdom of heaven is like that.  We don’t get all stuffy or rigid about how we define religion.  We simply reach out in love and concern to all God’s children, using whatever tools, whatever gifts we have for the kingdom of heaven.  Amen.