If you have grown up with any knowledge of scripture and the teachings of Jesus, you almost certainly know that parables were Jesus’ preferred mode of teaching: these curious stories or images that, if we read them at the depth they invite, often leave us with more questions than answers. Or at minimum, open our imaginations to a wide array of inferences and meanings.
The word parable comes from the Greek word parabole, which means “to hold two things together.” It’s where we get the word parabola, referring to the math function that produces two lines going off into infinity. In his parables, Jesus is often holding two things for us side by side. On the one hand: the ways of the world. The common knowledge, the expected path. And on the other hand: the ways of the Kingdom of God. Or the Kingdom of Heaven, as Matthew calls it. The topsy-turvy, first is last/last is first, blessed are the poor, unexpected, inexplicable, often infuriating, finally liberating way of God’s dream for us and the world.
I.
Though we often first hear them as children, parables are not children’s stories, with simple, moral lessons. “[Parables] are meant to change, not reassure us,” writes John Dominic Crossan. “Parable is always a somewhat unnerving experience. You can usually recognize a parable because your immediate reaction will be self-contradictory: ‘I don’t know what you mean by that story but I’m certain I don’t like it.’ To be human,” he writes, “and to remain open to transcendental experience demands a willingness to be ‘parabled.’”1
A willingness to be parabled. An openness to be challenged or provoked. To be affected, we might say. Finally, to be changed. Parable, like any good story, is meant to dislodge something in you that is settled, that “knows what you know”—how the world really works, how people really are. It is meant to complicate our assumptions, to expand our horizons; to humble us in the best way possible, which is to persuade us there is more to this world than we know, there is more to God than we understand, and that the Kingdom of God we wait for is closer to us than we would believe, and it is the nearness of this kingdom that this run of parables points us to this morning.
II.
‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the 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.’
‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’
It’s like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
It’s like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. It’s like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. It will be like that at the end of days when the angels will sort out all that is good from all that is bad.
Jesus is just peppering the disciples here. You get the sense he’s reaching for anything he could think of to gesture toward the indescribable: the love of God in all its fullness, and a world that is fully aligned with it. He has a seemingly endless supply of them—did he keep a notebook with him? A little Moleskine to jot down these parables of the kingdom? Maybe.
As varied as they are, these images come to us in two distinct clusters that help illuminate their meaning and depth, and there is much they all share in common. First of all, in describing the Kingdom of Heaven, none of them are a place. We often speak of and imagine “heaven” or the Kingdom of God as a place—a place we all hope to go one day, a place we hope our loved ones already are. And this kind of locational understanding of the Kingdom can be helpful, but not if we understand it to be some place entirely distinct from where we are now.
The Kingdom, as Jesus describes it here and elsewhere, is to be found—to be uncovered, revealed, stumbled upon—in the here and now. There won’t be bright lights, and it’s not powered with algorithmic precision to capture your attention. You may walk right past it if you’re not looking. Most of us do, most of the time.
It’s like mustard seed—one of Jesus’s favorite images for the kingdom. It’s a small seed—not the absolute smallest; Jesus is engaging in some hyperbole here—but small enough. But when it’s planted, it grows into something much bigger. “The greatest of all shrubs,” Jesus says, which always gets me. Not exactly putting on the hard sell! A bit of understatement, to be sure. There’s plenty of plants Jesus could have chosen to describe something that starts small and grows into something enormous. An acorn into a mighty oak, or really any tree. I read recently that the mighty sequoia redwoods, the largest tree by volume on earth, mammoth trees, colossal trees, start as a seed smaller than an oat flake, that my children spill on the kitchen floor and the dog licks up.
Jesus doesn’t say the kingdom is like a mighty cedar of Lebanon that begins as a tiny cone. He says it’s a mustard seed—a common if unremarkable plant native to the region. A roadside weed that grows into a fairly large shrub, maybe about yay high, and I suppose, if we squint, we can imagine a tiny bird resting in its branches. What’s he getting at?
Then he says it’s like yeast that a woman took and mixed in—the actual Greek says “hid” in—three measures of flour until it all was leavened. Three measures of flour is not the same as three cups of flour; it’s more like 50 or 60 pounds of flour—she’s baking for a crowd. Another nod toward something perhaps extravagant, but certainly not grandiose. The Kingdom of God is not extravagant like a megayacht cruising through the Mediterranean; it’s extravagant like a room full of freshly baked bread. Jesus is recalibrating our vision here, I think. The Kingdom is not found in what is bigger for bigger’s sake, or in opulent, unseemly displays of wealth. It’s found in the simple abundance of creation and the people who stay close to it. “To be satisfied with a little is difficult,” writes Wendell Berry, “But to be satisfied with much is impossible.” Parable.
And yet the focus here is not the end product but how it comes to be. Both the seed and the yeast are these small things that activate this mysterious but entirely natural process of transformation. A process that feels mysterious and even magical. Ask any kindergartner who’s planted a seed in a styrofoam cup and placed it in the classroom window and watched it day after day until finally you come in one Monday morning to find the tiniest shoot of green. Magic—but the most natural thing in the world.
Or you’re baking bread with your grandmother, and you knead the dough and turn it over and work it and then put it in a bowl and cover it with a dish rag, and you come back hours later, and this blob has ballooned. Magic, but it’s just bread—a staple of any kitchen the world over. What’s he getting at?
Is it that small actions can result in much bigger things? Yes. Go and do likewise.
Or is it that there are things in this world that happen without your constant concern and oversight? Yes. Some things just need to be left alone—if you turn over the soil, the seed will never grow. If you fuss with the dough, the bread will never rise. What would it mean to know the coming of this Kingdom in your life is not dependent upon you? We have a part to play, but we are not the ones who make the plant spring up from the earth or make the bread to rise. There are larger forces at play, and they’re all around us. The herb garden on your patio, the kitchen where your mother made miracles happen every weeknight after working two jobs. The Kingdom of God, right there in the yeast rolls she would always leave in the oven.2
It’s not out there; it’s in here.
III.
Or is it out there?
The Kingdom is like treasure that’s hidden in a field that someone found and hid, then sells everything to come back and buy that field. It’s like a merchant searching for fine pearls, and when he finds one of exceptional value, he sells all he has to buy it.
“Seek first the Kingdom,” Jesus says elsewhere, and there’s an element of searching in both these images—or is there? There’s this treasure hiding in a field, but we’re not told someone was looking for it, sleuthing around out there with a metal detector. It’s almost like something they stumbled upon, maybe even while they were looking for something else.
And the pearl, too. This merchant was searching for fine pearls, symbols of great value in ancient times. But in his searching, he finds a pearl even greater than he expected. So great that it changes everything. So great that he sells all he has to acquire it. In other words, so great that he stops being a merchant. So great that he doesn’t have to search anymore. He thought he was looking for this one thing, but then he found something even greater, something he didn’t even know existed, and it changed everything.3 Isn’t that how it is sometimes? We thought we were looking for one thing, or person, or job, or path. And then we find something else, or something else finds us, and it changes everything. “Life is what happens when we’re making other plans,” as John Lennon put it. So is the Kingdom of Heaven.
It changes everything now. The Kingdom is out there now, waiting for us to find it when we’re not even looking, or, it seems, to find us when we’re looking for something else.
And yet he then seems to say there is something of this Kingdom waiting for us out in the distance. When what is good within and among us will be saved and treasured, and all that is not will finally be laid aside. A time when God will finally make things right. When the abundant life we know now in fits and spurts, partially and imperfectly, will find us in all its completeness.
IV.
Have you understood all this? Jesus asks the disciples after telling them all these things.
And I imagine them all looking at each other before one of them, Peter probably, says, Yes?
Good, he tells them.
The one who understands the ways of the kingdom is like the master of a household whose treasure includes what is new and what is old. As if to summarize for them so much of what he came to do: Hold onto the law and the prophets, the wisdom of God passed down through the generations. But keep your eyes and ears and heart and mind open to something new; for the Spirit as it continues to move. In fact, it is this newness that will make all the difference.
And then he gets up and leaves.
And they’re left sitting there wondering what just happened. Wondering what they’ve just witnessed. Wondering if they’d ever see a shrub the same way again, or bread rising on the counter or burnt in the oven. Wondering if what they thought they were looking for was really what they thought it was. And if this was true, wondering how much they’d have to change. And wondering if they were up to it.
And I imagine that after a moment, all of his words still hanging in the air, slowly, one by one, they stood up. And then they found themselves taking one step, and then another, and then another…
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1 John Dominic Crossan, The Dark Interval
2 Amy-Jill Levine makes these observations beautifully in her book, Short Stories By Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi
3 Levine, again.