DAILY BYTE
Yesterday we starting our reflection on a duet of parables in Matthew 13. It was suggested that the point Jesus was making in telling these parables was not simply that the kingdom grows from small beginnings, but rather it’s how it starts and what it grows into that really matters, for this is what distinguishes God’s kingdom from the kingdoms of this world.
Read these parables again, and then we’ll explore the subversive imagery that Jesus uses in them:
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.” (Matthew 13:31-33)
First, the mustard seed that grows into a tree. In the thought-world of the Ancient Near East, a great tree was a common metaphor for the imperial might of a nation. Firmly rooted, standing strong and tall, with branches reaching up to the heavens – this was the picture that was commonly used to describe the great kingdoms of the world.
But Jesus radically subverts this picture by using a bushy garden herb to describe the kingdom of heaven. His hearers would have got it – you would NEVER find a mustard plant on an imperial coat of arms of the Persians, Greeks or Romans. Clearly, this kingdom was radically different from every other. This distinction was seen in a multitude of ways in Jesus’ own life and ministry. Think, for instance, of him riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, rather than a majestic war horse. Or stooping before his disciples’ feet with towel and washing bowl in hand. Or being raised up, not on a great throne, but a cross.
To drive the point home Jesus tells another parable, this time using the image of yeast. Yeast that is literally ‘hidden’ (this is the meaning of the Greek verb that is used) in a massive quantity of flour, where its subversive influence quietly goes to work. The shocking thing about this image is that yeast was almost always used as a symbol of corruption in Jewish tradition, even by Jesus himself later in Matthew’s gospel. (“Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees” he said in Matthew 16:6.)
This is not to suggest, of course, that the kingdom itself is corrupt or lacks integrity. But it is to suggest that the traditional categories of understanding what is right and wrong, what is acceptable and unacceptable, what is included and excluded are turned upside down in the kingdom of God.
We see this being lived out by Jesus again and again in his ministry. Those whom the religious establishment dismissed as impure or unworthy were consistently embraced by Jesus, and many who were regarded as outsiders in the eyes of the scribes and Pharisees found that with Jesus they had a place.
“The presence of God’s kingdom in our own world may scandalize our own biblical and traditional ideas of where and how God’s kingdom is supposed to be present.” (Eugene Boring)
PRAY-AS-YOU-GO
Truly Lord, yours is an upside-down kingdom, that stands in such stark contrast to the kingdoms of this world. A kingdom that affirms that the impact of undefended vulnerability is ultimately greater than the exercise of domination and might. A kingdom that rejoices in the disarming power of forgiveness and the subversive influence of compassion in a world awash with vengeance and callous indifference. Help me to seek today your kingdom, and your righteousness. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
