“Parables of the Kingdom” Matthew 13:24-43

 A little bit goes a long way. 

In seminary, I had a bit of an untraditional field placement. Instead of serving a local church, I was part of a retreat center’s team, writing liturgy around these elaborate meals that we would prepare called Biblical feasts. After I was done crafting what was to be prayed and said around the traditions of each meal, I would go into the kitchen. We were often cooking for thirty or more people, so the pots and pans that were on every burner industrialized sized. But even with how large the pots looked, I had to be reminded that a little bit of seasoning would go a long way. 

This is one of Jesus’s most famous parables. Parables are stories that are told using examples of items that people would understand in order to explain a deeper truth. Jesus often spoke in parables in order to help connect people with Kingdom principles. And also to say hard things that would make people react instead of ponder if they truly understood the depths of what was being communicated. 

This particular parable is unique to the Gospel of Matthew. It’s trying to teach folks that the Word of God is going to go forth and spread to places seen and unseen - but that does not mean that it is always understood or even noticed at all. 

I often describe God to people by asking them to take off their diamond ring (or imagine one if they don’t have one at the moment). I ask if it is possible to see every side of the ring at the same time. The answer is no. There are parts of God that we cannot see or are beyond our knowing, but just because we cannot see them in our humanness does not mean that they are not there.

A similar principle applies to the Kingdom of God. Jesus is speaking about the Kingdom from three different perspectives (or three different views of the ring) because the Kingdom of God is so emmense that it is beyond our human understanding. We catch glimpses, but those glimpses aren’t the totality of its reality. 

So Jesus starts off with a question that has plagued humanity from the beginning of time - what are we to do when we are faced with that which we do not desire? What do we do with evil or sin or unbelief? 

Jesus is talking to folks who farm. Folks who would have known what it was like to have to deal with weeds and weeds in abundance. So Jesus tells the parable of a farmer who had put only good seed in his field. The seed that was known for producing a hearty crop. Seed that was the envy of all other seed. Only one night, someone snuck into his field and decided to sabatoge that good seed by throwing that which would produce weeds all around. You can imagine this person going up and down, up and down throughout the field, throwing these other seeds that would produce weeds.

Some time passes, as it is want to do in planting, before the crop started to come up through the ground. And things looked so bad with all of the weeds that the farmers fellows start to come and look at his ground and ask him if he planted the wrong thing. If he planted the wrong type of seed. A bad seed. 

The farmer is able to articulate that no - this was not his intent. But when asked if he wanted others to descend upon his field and pull up all the weeds - he gives a puzzling answer. No. 

No, because if you pull up these weeds which are so abundant than you will surely take the good crop right along with it. 

I’m not going to lie, friends, I struggle with this parable. I struggle because I want all of the bad to be pulled out. I struggle because it goes against everything that I have ever been taught about gardening - that weeds will choke life out of the good harvest so of course you pull them out. 

So I need an explanation to this parable as much as the disciples do. To which Jesus says what we all seem to struggle with at some moments in our lives - its not time yet. Its not time for the harvest where the weeds will be separated from the good seed. Its not time for the end of all time yet. 

Maybe, just maybe we need to hear from Jesus that a little bit of time goes a long way.

When asked about the end of time, I often tell people that I’m not one to be praying for the end to come swiftly, first, because Jesus says that even he does not know the time,  but also because I think of all of the people I know and love who have not yet accepted Christ. Maybe they need a little more time. I would never want to rush into something as powerful as what Christ is proclaiming here, if it meant that even one would be lost. 

Jesus then shifted the perspective a little bit and talks about the Kingdom of God another way - comparing it to a mustard seed. Just like the seed that it represents, this parable is tiny - if fact its the shortest parable that Jesus ever told. But here is is saying that a little bit goes a really long way. That there is an inbreaking of the Kingdom into our everyday lives in a way that spur growth and life abundant. In other words, what seems insignificant actually matters a lot. 

The same is true of the woman mixing bread. Friends, I want you stop and actually hear again what was said in this parable. A woman added yeast to sixty pounds of flour. There is lots and lots of flour, the ordinary stuff of life, but this levening agent, even if just a little bit, transformed what the flour could become. Making it enough to feed a whole lot of neighbors. 

So what do we do with these parables today? Maybe we all need a reminder that a little bit goes a long way. A little bit of time gives people who are yet far from Christ time to come and know his as Savior and king. A little bit of hope, even the size of a mustard seed, can grow in our lives and burst forth in a way that shares our ultimate hope in God. A little bit of faith added to the abundance of our lives spills forth in ways that can nourish both body and soul for people we know and do not yet know. 

A little bit is part of the mystery of the Kingdom of God. How are you being called to participate in this mystery in a way that looks to God and proclaims that God is near? Amen.