DAILY BYTE
This week we’re reflecting on the phrase from the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Your kingdom come.’ To deepen our understanding of the kingdom and to give richer content to our praying of this prayer, over the next few days we’ll explore different parables of the kingdom that help us to grasp its true nature.
The parables of Jesus are a bit like a good joke – either you ‘get’ them, or you don’t. One of the difficulties that we have ‘getting’ the essential point of Jesus’ parables is that we are far removed in terms of time, culture and geography from the original setting in which the parables were told. And so it’s easy for us to miss nuances of meaning that would have been obvious to Jesus’ first-century audience.
The two parables in Matthew 13:31-33 – the mustard seed and the yeast – are an excellent case in point. It seems obvious to us that the point of these two parables is that from something very small – a mustard seed or a little yeast – big consequences can flow. And the conclusion we draw is that this is true of God’s kingdom. From small, seemingly inconsequential beginnings – maybe a little faith, maybe an act of kindness, maybe a shaky testimony offered in vulnerability – big things can flow. And this is true! It’s part of the wonder and the miracle of God’s kingdom, for which we can give thanks.
But this is only half the story – maybe even only half the truth. And as we know, half truths are really not much help to those serious about seeking the whole truth. Think about it – to simply say that the kingdom starts from small beginnings and achieves impressive proportions is really saying very little at all, because there are many things in this world that exhibit this same pattern that have nothing to do with the kingdom of God.
The largest multi-national corporations can usually be traced back to fledgling business ventures. The industrial-military might of the USA began with a handful of founding fathers and a declaration of independence. The monstrosity of Nazi Germany started off with the twisted thinking of a man by the name of Adolf Hitler – who would have thought that such unimpressive beginnings could end in such wholesale destruction.
Starting small and finishing big isn’t a value of God’s kingdom per se. Sadly, this is something that many churches forget, thinking that so long as they’re getting bigger and bigger it’s a sign of the coming of the kingdom in their midst. But what’s far more important is what kind of small you start with, and what kind of big you end with. And that’s the point that these two parables of Jesus drive home with radical force. It’s something that his first hearers would have instinctively ‘got’ because of the particular images that Jesus chose.
Tomorrow we’ll explore these two parables in greater detail to ‘get the point’ that Jesus was making, to help us reassess our obsession with bigness and hopefully grasp in a fuller way the impact of the kingdom on our world.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord, we live in a world that is obsessed with size, with the mistaken belief that bigger is always better. But the nature of your kingdom is so different. Yes, it is impactful for sure, yet its influence operates in subtle, and often subversive ways, which our world often fails to recognise. Release us today to allow our seemingly insignificant lives to be planted like seed or hidden like yeast in this world, and may your kingdom come, even through us. Amen.
SCRIPTURE READING
Matthew 13:31-33
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”
He told them still 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 was leavened.”
