We used to eat a lot of homemade sourdough bread. Remember back when bread was good for us? Susan always kept some sourdough starter in the icebox. She would feed it some sugar and mix it with flour and let it rise a couple of times.
Sometimes it was my job to put the loaves in to the oven when they had risen high enough. Sometimes I would forget and find the dough much later, no longer so much rising as evolving into a giant gluttonous amoeba trying to cover and devour the whole kitchen.
Imagine Bill Cosby doing a routine about the bread dough that ate Manhattan…
It’s surprising how much that yeast can do. Something so hidden that gives such unexpected and big results. More than was hoped for. Out of nowhere.
God’s Kingdom.
Or as Matthew likes to say it, “the kingdom of heaven.”
We hear five little vignettes about what the kingdom of heaven is like.
Jesus gives five surprising brush strokes to a painting of God’s kingdom.
And it is not what we expect.
The surprise of the mustard seed is not that such a small seed grows into a nice sized shrub. It is a fast growing annual with a small seed. The surprise is that Jesus then says it becomes a tree with birds nesting in its branches. Mustard does not grow on trees. What Jesus says is impossible. The Kingdom of heaven is that kind of surprise.
It’s like planting two tomato seeds, little bitty things, and next year swinging a hammock up between the two plants. I’ve seen vine tomatoes and bush tomatoes, but I’ve never seen a tree tomato.
God’s kingdom is like a tomato tree. Just don’t park under it.
The parable of the woman making bread is just as crazy.
“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened.”
It is a nice and domestic picture until we learn that three measures of flour is our modern equivalent of ten gallons. One women making bread for 150 people. Ten gallons of flour being leavened by one person!
Can you hear Bill Cosby talking about the bread dough that ate Manhattan?
It is that kind of crazy.
We do a double then a triple take.
We see it and can’t believe it, so we look again, and then again and again.
What is going on? That is what the kingdom is like.
Then there are the two parables of the pearl of great price and the field with the hidden treasure.
The merchant was looking for fine pearls, but he was surprised at how fine a pearl he found. He sold everything to get it.
The man plowing the field wasn’t even looking, just minding his own business, and he digs up a great treasure. He sold everything to buy that field.
The Kingdom of heaven is like that, whether we are looking for it or not, we give up everything else when we find it.
Then there is that net, cast into the sea. The Kingdom catches up everything and sorts it out, sets it right, in the end, on that day.
Jesus paints quite a picture.
The kingdom of heaven is impossible, even ridiculous. We give up everything else when we find it. We are being caught up into it. It’s the biggest surprise ever. It is small and hidden. It is giant and everywhere. There is no escape.
Jesus is telling us to expect the unexpected, hope even when all is hopeless, dream even when all is dark, dreary and dull.
Somewhere nearby there is a tomato tree.
Be careful parking under it, there’s no telling what might happen.
Because out of the forsakenness of the Cross comes the impossible surprise of the Resurrection.