Jesus asked, “What is God’s kingdom like? To what can I compare it? It’s like a mustard seed that a man took and planted in a garden. It grew and developed into a tree and the birds in the sky nested in its branches.” Again he said, “To what can I compare God’s kingdom? It’s like leaven, which a woman took and hid in a bushel of wheat flour until the yeast had worked its way through the whole.” —Luke 13:18-21
“What is the kin(g)dom of God like?” Jesus asks, rhetorically. “How can I help people understand this Reign of God—this upside-down, alternative reality, where God is working out the agendas and priorities of God? How can I help them recognize where God is at work in the world?”
So he tries mustard seeds and yeast. A couple observations:
First, though they are very short sayings, these are parables—which means that they are stories, not merely metaphors. Notice, Luke doesn’t say only that the kingdom is like a mustard seed; he says it is like a mustard seed that a man takes and plants in his garden—and now it’s a story.
The kin(g)dom of God is also like yeast that a woman takes and hides in a huge pile of flour, and then that whole, huge, 50-pound mountain of dough gets leavened. A story.
In these short stories, the ordinary man and ordinary woman who do their everyday tasks are crucial to the pictures Jesus paints of God’s in-breaking reality.
First observation: The Kindom of God is has something to do with people doing simple everyday ordinary tasks.
Second, both of these short parables have shock value.
With the man and the mustard seed, the twist at the end is that a mustard seed becomes—not a mustard plant or bush—but a tree! Everyone would have know that mustard seeds become rather average-sized plants (3-6 feet tall) in fields. They don’t get planted in gardens, and they certainly don’t become huge trees for birds.
And yeast—well, yeast was never really a good thing. (Beware the yeast of the Pharisees!) To be clear we should be picturing not so much granules of yeast, but more like a sourdough mother culture of fermented dough. And this is the stuff Jews were to get rid of before Passover.
But Jesus snatches this metaphor away from its usual connotation and now pictures God’s reign as a woman hiding this fermented starter dough in a huge, 50-pound pile of dead, lifeless wheat flour dough—which is soon brought completely alive by that little leaven.
The point of these paradoxical twists? The kindom of God is not built on our common sense notions that great outcomes require heroic acts.
What I hear in these parables, then, I think, is really good news. The reign of God is made up of ordinary people faithfully doing seemingly small things—and in those ordinary things, God accomplishes unimaginable kindom purposes.
It’s worth noting that in the flow of Luke’s story, Jesus has just healed a woman bent over (“bound”) for 18 years. On a Sabbath. This upset people because they wondered why healing this one random woman couldn’t wait until Sabbath was over so rules wouldn’t be violated.
Luke’s Jesus answers with these shorts parables, as if to say, yes this was one unnamed woman, on one ordinary Sabbath—but it was no small act, and it couldn’t wait.
Because in this one small act, on behalf of this one unnamed woman, the kindom of God came a little bit more clearly into vision. Even the small and the ordinary are filled with urgency and importance! The dreams of God, says Jesus, are built on one small, faithful act upon another small, faithful act . . . while God keeps on crafting the kindom.
A man plants a mustard seed, a woman leavens some dough—ordinary acts by everyday people . . . Except that through them, God is crafting God’s kindom.
Vaughn Nelson is Pastor for Discipleship and Nurture at La Sierra University Church.