Hidden Acts of God

Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Do you ever wonder why Jesus used the imagery that he did to make his point? As we hear these 5 parables found in Matthew, I find myself asking that question… the first two especially.

First we hear for a mustard seed that transforms into the greatest of trees… and then we hear of a woman baking bread. Why? Why these?

Why didn’t he use something like the Roman Empire. The Kingdom of God is like the Roman Empire… sprawling across many lands and waters, reaching people across much of Europe, parts of Africa, and the Middle-East. Armies that seemed unbeatable. Monuments that revealed its richness and glory. In Jesus’ time, the might of the Roman Empire would have seemed nearly impervious to being overthrown. It would have been an easy image of power, glory, and splendor for the people to envision… the Kingdom of God is like the Roman Empire…. but filled with grace and mercy rather than control and fear.

Or perhaps Jesus could have directed his listeners’ attention to the sheer power of storms in nature. The kingdom of God is like a powerful storm in the sea of Galilee. It can rile up the waters into 12 foot waves… bringing the very landscape itself under its control to do its will. So too are we called and pushed by the Will of God to move forth in the direction God points us toward.

Why didn’t Jesus use things like that instead of plants and bread?

The people that Jesus was ministering to were folks who were living a pretty hard life. Most of them were living paycheck to paycheck… and the paychecks weren’t much to write home about. Most of the Jews were not slaves to Rome… but they weren’t citizens either. They didn’t have the rights of Roman Citizens. They didn’t have those legal protections. They were tools of Rome to enhance the lives of Rome’s true citizens. It’s no wonder that some 40 years after Christ’s death the Jewish people attempted to rise up against Roman rule.

You would think that folks living in a time like that could really use a parable about the Kingdom of God being like a powerful storm causing all to bend before its will… or to hear that the Kingdom is like the Empire but greater and more powerful in every way. You would think that Jesus might bring that kind of strong image of the Kingdom of God to a people who felt very vulnerable and helpless.

In our own time, as we continue to see new cases of COVID-19 bubbling up and the death count rising… as we see political upheaval and incredible division between neighbors… as we fear for what will become of the economy and wonder what the world will look like in a year or two… it would be nice to hear some nice strong imagery of the Kingdom of God being that solid foundation like we hear from Matthew chapter 7 where floodwaters rise and winds beat against the house built on the solid foundation but it never collapse because it is built on the bedrock of Christ’s teachings. Yeah, that would be great to hear today.

But instead… today, we hear about trees and bread… and not even that, actually… it’s just seeds and dough.

For us today we know all about the mustard seed… even for those first readers of Matthew’s gospel… they probably were already familiar with the stories of the mustard seed. But for the first hearers… Jesus’ choice of parable here would have certainly left some people shocked. It would make sense, perhaps, to talk about the kingdom of God as a great tree… people would expect that. But the meat in any parable is where you see the surprises… and the big surprise in this parable is not that the Kingdom of God is like a great tree… but a tiny mustard seed.

While the end is important… the beginning is where Jesus’ draws his listeners’ attention to. The beginning of the story, even a very humble beginning like a babe lying in a manger, matters… or a lone savior dying on a cross matters… humble beginnings… and yet the journey of growth that takes place between the seed and the great tree matters too. Still… a curious choice of a parable. But an important one as it frames everything for us from here on out. When we remember that the beginning and the journey matters, it shapes how we see the other parables that Jesus gives us.

The next parable follows directly in verse 33 where we hear Jesus say, “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.”

We went from a story from the vegetable garden and made our way to the kitchen. Here we find a woman mixing three measures of flour with yeast until all of it was leavened. Again, this doesn’t seem like the kind of parable that is going to reassure someone of the power and majesty of the Kingdom of God. We’re talking dinner here… not divine intervention. Right?

Now, there’s a couple of things you need to know about this parable.

The first thing you need to know is how much a measure is. Right? Because it said that the woman mixed yeast in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened. So what’s a measure?

Most people guess that a measure is about a cup. Which makes sense, really. If you ever have made bread, you likely know that most recipes call for 3-4 cups of flour depending on how big a loaf you want. A standard 2 pound loaf generally takes 4 cups of flour. So it would make sense that three measures of flour would equal about 3 cups, right?

Well, it doesn’t. In fact, it’s not even close. One measure equals about 13… liters.. or 55 cups of flour. So 3 measures of flour would be 165 cups of flour… or enough to make just over 40 2-pound loaves of bread. Once all said and done, it would have been enough bread to feed about 150 people.

This also means that we aren’t talking a small amount of yeast either. It would have taken about 4 pounds of the yeast that they had available in the day. So, unlike the mustard seed, we’re not dealing with small numbers here.

The other thing you need to know is a translation issue in this parable. Most translations read that the kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took an MIXED in with three measures of flour. The issue is with the word translated here as “mixed.”

The Greek word used here is from the root word Krypto which you might recognize from the word Cryptogram or cryptic. Krypto in Greek means to “hide” something. In the other 18 times that Krypto shows up in the New Testament it is translated as hid, hidden, or hide every other time… except for here where the translators decided to mixed “mixed” instead because… that’s what you do with dough.

This matters. You see, the hearers of Jesus’ original parable would have expected him to talk about kneading the yeast into the dough… mixing it in if you will… but that’s not what he says. He says the woman krypto or hid the yeast within the dough. On top of that, in just two verses we hear how Jesus is fulling prophecy as Matthew quotes Isaiah and says, “I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter what has been hidden from the beginning.” And then, of course, we will hear the parable of the hidden treasure in the field in verse 44… both of these uses share the same root word Krypto.

In Jesus’ parable of the woman, the yeast, and the 165 cups of flour… the yeast is hidden within the flour. All of that yeast is hidden within the nearly 40 pounds of flour.

And that first beginning of yeast being hidden away activates and the dough begins to rise. And it’s interesting… the parable doesn’t end saying that the woman made enough bread to feed 150 people… the parable ends saying that all of the flour had been leavened by the yeast.

And Jesus says that is the Kingdom of God.

As I ponder what sort of message that those first hearers’ of this parable may have carried away from Jesus’ teaching… as I wonder what hidden gems might be in it for us today… that is what I notice. The hiddenness of the Kingdom of God act work.

In Jesus’ time for a people under great oppression and looking for a savior to disrupt the way of things… they found it… Jesus was saying that God was already at work in the world… transforming the very nature of creation in ways that flour on its own cannot understand… in ways that we humans cannot understand.

For us today, as we look about a world where we too often see brokenness, we strain to see God at work in the world. As we or those we love go through hardships, we seek to know that yes indeed God hasn’t abandoned us to our strife but that God is with us. And again, we hear that just because God might seem hidden does not mean that God has stopped working. The yeast transforms the dough when the yeast is hidden within it. And the yeast that Christ hides into the world will not stop working until all of creation is risen with him.

This parable, in all of its ordinariness, invites us to see signs of the Kingdom of God in our day-to-day lives; to recognize God’s work emerging in our midst.

In the parable of the yeast, Jesus takes the ordinary act of bread making and transforms it into something extra-ordinary and it reminds us that God often works in the hidden places. And I believe the use of yeast and flour instead of a might empire or crushing storm for a parable speaks something of the nature of God in that as well. These parables point toward a God that is not focused on lording over the people but instead promising to feed them.

As we gather digitally today to celebrate Holy Communion, may you be fed. Be fed with the promise of God being actively at work in the world. Be fed with the promise of God actively working within your life as well as the life of your friends and family members. Be fed with the promise of God’s work on the whole of creation… that God persists until all of the dough is risen. And when you see God at work in the hidden places of the world, pause… pray your thanks for promises fulfilled… and share the word of God’s ever-engaging and ever-persistent love for all.