The Absurdity of the Kingdom

I have to tell you that I love these parables and the order of them is fantastic. Before we get to them we need to remember that these parables are teaching us about the kingdom of heaven. First we have the parable of the weeds which as we just heard talks about how a field of wheat was also sown with weeds in it by an enemy. Nothing is to be done with them until harvest time. My question for this parable is why wouldn’t the servants or the master or the harvesters chop the weeds at the roots throughout the growing season? Wouldn’t that make more sense than letting them grow and suck up all the nutrients that should be going to the wheat? I don’t quite understand the need for waiting and allowing everything to be collected at the harvest time.

Then we get the parable about the mustard seed. The parable is probably one of those loved by many people because of the way that it grows from something so tiny and turns into something huge. Which is true. A mustard seed is a small seed, though not as small as the lavender seeds that I put in the soil and passed out two weeks ago, and depending on the variety it can grow up to 12 feet tall. Something I learned years ago when talking about this parable is that the mustard is not just the largest of all the vegetable plants as Jesus tells us in the parable, but it is also a hardy plant as well. Not only is it hardy but it also spreads quite profusely. Which means that if you have a mustard seed in your yard that there is a very good chance that if it is as big as a small tree that it will more than likely mean that your neighbors will likely have mustard plants in their yard as well.

I know the parable of the mustard seed focuses on the size of things, but I also want to add our attention to the fact that it is so prolific. One could even say that a mustard seed, due to it’s ability to just grow in any condition, could be considered weed-like. I would even go so far as to say that the crowds hearing this parable would have had this nuisance thought in their mind. Mustard seeds were also a spice and used for certain medicinal purposes but quite frankly it was more than likely a weedy plan to the average person hearing Jesus’ parable.

That’s why I love the order that Matthew gives us today. Jesus has just told us this very interesting and important parable that the kingdom of heaven is a wheat field that has both wheat and weeds in it and then the very next thing he says is that the kingdom of heaven is also like a person who puts a mustard seed in their field. Now I’m not saying that it’s definitely the same field in these two parables, but I find it incredible that Jesus has criticized the weeds and then in the very next parable compared the the kingdom of heaven to a weed-like plant.

To go even further down the strangeness of all this, we have again, this beautiful image of birds coming and resting in the mustard bush tree and we see that as this incredible image, but who would want to have a plant that intentionally draws birds into their field especially if it is a field intended to grow crops of any kind that the birds would eat. It’s not a smart move. It’s almost absurd.

Then we have our final parable which also seems like a nice parable about the yeast in the flour making dough. But as you look at the parable and you look up what a bushel of flour is you then realize that it’s 40 pounds of flour. Now it’s not unheard of to use 40 pounds of flour to make dough for bread, but there’s two things wrong with that idea in this context. One, it doesn’t tell us that she was making the dough to make for herself, let alone anyone else. Second, it says that she hid the yeast in the flour until it became dough. I asked the Bible Study group and not one of them said that they store or hide their yeast in their flour jar. You don’t just hide yeast in something that you know will cause it to become something else. It doesn’t make sense. To be honest, it is once again, absurd.

It is a good thing that these are parables, becuase if they were direct analogies they would be completely absurd from start to finish. And at the same time I truly believe the absurdity of it all is what we need to hear, especially in our world now. Jesus clearly points out that we are not the harvesters in the parable of the weeds. It is the Human One and the angels who will come at the end. Not 1000 years ago, not today, and maybe not even in another 1000 years. Regardless of when it is, we’re not the one’s doing the harvesting which means it’s not our job to determine or make judgement on what is wheat and what is weed.

Plus who’s to say that a weed can’t become wheat in the time that it was planted until harvest? One of my favorite songs of all time is by a band called Five Iron Frenzy called “Dandelions”. In that song it talks about a boy joyfully giving a bouquet of yellow flowers to his mom, and they happen to be dandelions. The song goes on to say that God sees flowers in these weeds; meaning each and every one of us, then it goes on to ask God to create in me something clean. The song reminds us that we have the capacity to be both wheat and weed at times in our lives or in Luther’s words, saint and sinner.

And if we continue with my idea that a mustard bush-tree is weed-like then God is also saying that we can think of the kingdom of heaven in that way. So not only does the kingdom of heaven possibly come from something small and become something huge, but it also has weedy qualities to it. And even birds and other creatures come to it from other places to be around it. It seems to attract all sorts of random wildlife to it, because as I said, I don’t think that the birds were the intention of the mustard bush. Yet here they are enjoying and being a part of this tree.

Finally, we have the 40 pounds of dough. It is interesting that in a similar way that the mustard tree was small and became a tree, it is equally interesting that what was likely a small amount of yeast was able to transform the bread into dough. What was thought to be hidden for whatever reason eventually took hold and took over the entirety of 40 pounds of flour. Something that seemed so small and insignificant was able to transform something from what it was into something new and useful.

The kingdom of heaven, which is in part here and now, is what we hear about today. It is wheat and weeds, it is mustard seeds growing into trees, it is yeast transforming flour into dough. It is bizarre, it is confusing, and at times it seems completely absurd. At the same time, it has a beautiful complexity to it. It brings surprises by what it can do and who is a part of it. Over time, it can completely transform someone or something into something new. Perhaps the kingdom of heaven in all of it’s absurdity is even greater and grander than we ever thought it was. Perhaps the kingdom of heaven is not for us to fuller understand, but to experience and to welcome others to experience knowing that God is in control and that God in God’s infinite love for us and for this whole world sees flowers in these weeds. Amen.