8th Sunday after Pentecost

The reading in Matthew’s gospel provides us with five parables, a rapid-fire succession of examples of what the kingdom of heaven looks like. Different scholars classify the different parables noticing how some of them, like last week’s weeds and wheat and today’s dragnet, end with judgment, while others, like the sower from two weeks ago, focus on what life with God looks like. Four of the ones we heard this morning are known as “kingdom parables.”

Speaking first to the crowds and then to the disciples, with this grab-bag of parables Jesus reminds us again that God’s kingdom is beyond our understanding of how stuff works.

Jesus has entertained us with his images of inept characters like the one who wastefully and extravagantly sowed seed and the farmer who didn’t care about weeds. But he also spoke truth about who God is, what God’s love for us looks like, and how we are to live as a community of God’s people. Now, hearing another series of parables, we must ask,

“What is Jesus really saying?”

In the parable that we have in verse 33, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a woman who hides leaven in three measures of flour, until the whole lump of dough was leavened.

It’s hard for us to hear just how audacious his description is.

But first of all, he describes a woman,
not a man, not a priest or Pharisee.

Most women in the first century had no status — no property of their own, no education or trade, and no wealth. But that doesn’t prevent Jesus from saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a woman.”

Then he continues: the woman hides leaven into three measures of flour. I don’t know about you, but I measure flour by the cup, and when I make the communion bread that we sometimes have, I use three cups of flour, but that’s not the same as three measures. A measure here is the same as a peck and a half, or 48 cups. Altogether, he is describing a massive amount of flour, between 40 and 50 pounds!

And in this mountain of flour, the woman hides leaven.

Our modern translations make that word “yeast”, but it’s really more like the starter one keeps to make bread. If you aren’t familiar with starter; you can make it from scratch, but more often, it is handed down from one baker to another. It’s water and flour that has been mixed together and allowed to ferment, creating a wild yeast. And once it’s active, that is light and bubbly, “it needs to be fed. It asks to be used.”[1]

When the leaven is mixed into the flour, it may look like nothing is happening, but the starter changes everything and something new is being created.

Jesus says this is what the kingdom of heaven is like.

When we create space where God can act,
we will be surprised and delighted, nourished and fed,
by God’s abundant grace and goodness.

Of course, as Jesus knows, like any of us who have tried to double or triple a recipe, anytime you create something in large quantities,
you introduce a degree of uncertainty into the mix.

But the parable shows us that uncertainty, mystery and surprise — an unpredictable change-able-ness — is characteristic of the kingdom of heaven.

Something else I love about this parable is its conclusion. It says the whole lump of dough is leavened. In the earlier parables, you could argue that someone could return and sweep away the seed that didn’t yield a harvest, or even dig up the bad seed before it could take root, but once leaven is introduced into flour, there’s no way to retrieve or remove it; it is all mixed in together.

Also, because all of the flour was leavened, we know that the woman didn’t stop at doing what was “manageable”, making just one or two loaves and reserving the rest for next time. Instead, I imagine a scene like we saw in Disney’s Fantasia when the sorcerer’s apprentice conjured a broom to carry buckets of water to fill a cauldron, but he can’t control it and soon the cauldron is overflowing. At first, he is exhilarated, and then a little overwhelmed, and even a little frightened.

Aren’t we all?
…when we realize that God’s kingdom is bigger and more complex than our understanding, and that we cannot exert control over what the kingdom looks like.

In this one parable, in this one verse,
Jesus urges us here to imagine what life together looks like when we remember that we live under God’s extravagant grace,
to reflect on what about our life with God surprises us and maybe even shocks us, and where, as a congregation,
God may be leading us.

Let us pray…
Gracious God,
Let us delight in seeking your power and presence all around us;
Give us courage to recognize change and creativity as Kingdom building gifts from you;
Guide us by your Spirit, that love, like yeast in dough, will permeate all we do.
We pray in the name of your Son Jesus.
Amen.

[1] Sam Sifton. “Sourdough Starter, America’s Rising Pet.” The New York Times. March 22, 2016.