There are five blocks of Jesus’ teaching in the gospel of Matthew.  Chapter 13 occupies the middle position, which seems significant.  In chapter 13, Jesus tells seven parables which describe what the kingdom of heaven, or the reign of heaven, is like.  The kingdom or reign which is both here and to come.  The reign in which we live, the king by whose light we are called and enabled to see.  The reign which will one day be known in its fulness. 

When we get to the 13th chapter of Matthew, we have heard the Sermon on the Mount (5-7) and Jesus’ talk on mission (10).  We have heard how Jesus had been moving around Galilee, healing and forgiving, announcing the Kingdom of Heaven in what he’s saying, what he’s doing.  We have heard about how many have rejected him.

This is the issue at hand.  There is a lot of unresponsiveness going on.  Jesus’ followers may have well wondered what kind of Kingdom this was exactly as they looked around.  They were a motley crew which included the poor, the dispossessed, the occupied, the labourer.  As Paul would put it in his letter to the church in Corinth – “…not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.”

The question was – “What kind of Kingdom is this?”  The question for those who would come after was – What kind of Kingdom is this?  The question for us today is – What kind of Kingdom is this?

What is going on here exactly?  We’re a few people gathered amongst tens of thousands who are living within a few square kilometres.  We live in a culture that is, at worst hostile and largely politely indifferent to this Kingdom in which we live and which we are called to proclaim in word and deed.

What do we do with this? Particularly when we like bigness and why not?  If something is big, it must be good, no?  If something is drawing a lot of attention, it must be worthwhile, no?  I’m not saying of course, that anything that is widely or wildly popular has no value.  It was the same thing in Jesus’ time, of course.  They liked bigness, they liked spectacle.  “Do something big” was what the tempter told Jesus.  Throw yourself down from the highest point of the temple and emerge unscathed.  Can you imagine the crowds and their reaction?  Then everyone will believe you!

We like big crowds.  I don’t mind a crowd.  We have a book at the back of the church that we’ve had for years, and thank you to the faithful people who fill it out each week with a report on the weather and the number of people who were here.  You know what?  I look at that book every week to see the number.

It’s good to know the number.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with a crowd, is there?  We’re not told to seek numbers, however.  We’re told to seek something else first.  It can, however, be really hard to walk by faith. Helmut Thielicke was a German theologian and pastor of the 20th century.  His book on parables is called The Waiting Father, has informed a lot of my thinking of them.  Educated in the best German theological tradition, he became a pastor in his homeland in the 1930s.  He writes of his beginnings as a pastor like this – “When I became a pastor and conducted my first Bible-study hour, I went into it with the determination to trust in Jesus’ saying: ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.’ I said these words in order to assure myself that even Hitler, who was then in the saddle, and his dreadful power machine were merely puppets hanging by strings in the hands of this mighty Lord.  And in this Bible-study hour, I was faced with two very old ladies and a still older organist.  He was a very worthy man, but his fingers were palsied, and this was embarrassingly apparent in his playing.  So this was the extent of the accomplishment of this Lord, to whom all power in heaven and earth had been given, supposedly given.  And outside marched the battalions of youth who were subject to altogether different lords.”

What do we do when things are not working out the way we expected?  We turn to the promises.  We ask the question, what exactly is this Kingdom supposed to be like? And so he put before them another parable.  The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field.  Now Jesus could have used any one of a number of plants here.  If we wanted something stately, he could have used the cedars of Lebanon – THE tree of the time and place.  It would have been something close to saying the kingdom of heaven is like an acorn that grows into a mighty oak.

The mustard seed of Jesus’ day turned into a shrub.  In Mark’s telling of the parable, he leaves it as a shrub.  A plant of not much account.  Doesn’t even sound good.  Shrub.   Matthew talks up the plant somewhat by saying it’s the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree.  It’s not much of a tree, though.  Eight feet or so at its largest.  A wild shrub.  Not one you would grow in a garden, as they were known for taking over.

There’s no talk about taking over here, though.  There’s an element to this parable, I believe, which speaks to the growth of Jesus’ church beyond its beginnings.  I don’t think there’s a lot of triumphalism here, though as in “This thing is going to take over the world like a mighty tree.”  It’s an unusual plant for Jesus to choose.  It was considered unclean – not kosher – and so this story is taking us beyond the realm of what was thought possible.  Who would speak of such a thing, this shrub that grows from a mustard seed?  From whom could such growth, such transformation take place?

The answer is, of course, such growth can only come from the one who’s telling the parable…

We can lament our lack of sway in the public sphere.  The political sphere.  We can lament that the days are gone in which going to church on a Sunday was the thing to do (though was that ever really what this was all about – going to church because it was the accepted or done thing?) or the days that the church was the tallest building in town (and again I ask is that what it was really all about?).  Change in the kingdom is from God.  Salvation happens through what is to all outward appearances insignificant.  From a carpenter’s son from a village of no account in a Roman Empire backwater… comes deliverance.  One writer puts it like this – “How are we to understand this deliberate use by Jesus of the unclean and insignificant as images of the kingdom?  It suggests that God’s greatest works are not done on a grandiose level.  Not in cathedrals, big buildings, or large mausoleums.  Cathedrals can become museums rather than sources of inspiration for the Christian community.  The kingdom is in everyday life with its ups and downs and, above all, in its insignificance.  Such is where most people live their lives.”

I would change this somewhat, modify it to “seeming insignificance.”  Things of the kingdom, no matter where they are found, are surely the most significant things in the world. The kingdom is in everyday life, and truths of the kingdom are made known in our everyday lives.  Speaking of seeds, every day when I come home, I see the result of a lettuce seed.  Lettuce seeds are not that much bigger than mustard seeds.  Somehow one made its way into a crack in front of our mailbox.  A little red oak lettuce growing right in front of the mailbox.  The kingdom of heaven is like a lettuce seed.  One little tiny seed and it can change the whole character of a sandwich!

Speaking of the character of something being changed, the next parable tells of a woman baking bread.  The kingdom of heaven is like yeast.  It changes everything.  When it does, people are fed.  The kingdom of heaven is among us not simply for our own benefit but that the very nature of our environment (wherever we find ourselves) might be changed.  When the mustard seed comes to maturity as a shrub, the birds of the air find a nesting place in its branches.  It’s still “just” a shrub.  It was never about having the tallest building in town, though if that happened, ok.  I should say it was never about seeking to have the tallest building in town, or the most members, or the most programs, or the most…..whatever it is we want the most of because if you have the most, you must be best.

It was about seeking the kingdom first.  To what result?  So that rest might be found in its branches.  Psalm 104:12 goes like this “By the streams, the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches.”  The kingdom of heaven is this image coming to fruition.  Parable and poetry tell us what might be.  Parables reveal things in the everyday.  Parables like this one help us to see truths in our every day.  So that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.  The most everyday thing.

The kingdom of heaven is like a chaplain holding a worship service for 15 people in a corner of the nursing home in which they live.

The kingdom of heaven is like a woman delivering sandwiches to a place of shelter downtown.

The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who stopped on her way to work to mourn with her recently widowed neighbour and cry on the sidewalk with her.

The kingdom of heaven is like…

So that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.

We’re talking about life.  Life that is really life.  The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds.  It turns into something else.  The Kingdom of Heaven is something we’re called to stake our whole lives on.  This was Jesus’ invitation when he called out, “Follow me.”  This is our invitation, and it’s before us every day.  What does it mean to stake our whole lives on this thing that’s like a seed?

It means at least partly – nurture the seed.  It is indeed God that brings growth.  It is God who brings change.  This change is, to begin with, each and every one of us.  As Jesus himself put it, the Kingdom of God is within/among you.  This seed.  This yeast.  The Kingdom of Heaven is like a woman baking bread – finding God in the everyday.  The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast which changed the whole loaf.

Let ourselves be changed, in other words.  Being in conversation with God daily – beginning our days with thanks and praise.  Talking to God.  Letting God speak to us through his word, because this thing is not just for once a week or once a month or twice a year.  Daily.  Simply.  Letting the seed that is the Kingdom grow in us.  Letting our entire lives be leavened by this Kingdom that is founded on self-giving love.  Thielicke put it like this – “…this real and simple thing consists in our doing nothing whatsoever except to let the Word of the Lord germinate, grow and flourish within us.  Or, to put it the other way around, simply that we grow into ever-deeper fellowship with Christ.”

So that people might find rest with us.  So that people may be fed.  To die to our own desire for spectacle, for bigness.  This is the thing about seeds, of course.  Paul told it to the Corinthians – “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.”  Jesus’ invitation is to die to ourselves – die to the myth of self-sufficiency, self-autonomy, self-will.  There is no way to make this message cool or attractional outside of this great truth – that in dying to ourselves, we find life.

What comes to life is something new – a shrub.  A loaf of bread.  The bread of Life.

Because in the end, we must remember who’s telling this parable.  The one who would die and return from the dead transformed into something imperishable.  Our living Christ.  The one whom we follow.  The one in whom we have found life.  The one who dares us to dream of what might be and enables these dreams to take root.  May these truths become ever more deeply implanted within us.

Amen