Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Will you pray with me?
Gracious God, we give thanks for the privilege of hearing from your word this morning.
It is written that all scripture is breathed out by you and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, and that we may be complete equipped for every good work. It embed your word in our hearts this morning so that we may love you more and know more of your love.
We pray in Jesus name together. Amen.
Our scripture this morning is taken from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, verses 131 through 35. And you can find that in your pew Bible on page 795.
Now hear God's word.
Jesus put before them another parable.
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field.
It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown, it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.
He told them another parable.
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.
Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables. Without a parable, he told them nothing.
This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet.
I will open my mouth to speak imparables. I will proclaim what has been hidden since the foundation.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: All right, thanks, Nancy. Good morning, everybody.
So if you haven't heard, I don't know if this got mentioned at the beginning of service today, but on Friday, Matt, our senior pastor, Matt Caldwell, threw out his back so we can be praying for him. He's recovering. He thinks he's going to be okay by next week, but that's why you're not seeing him today. So to start off today, I wanted to jump into a little story about when I was around ten or eleven years old.
When I was a kid, my mom helped me plant an apple tree in my front yard. I don't remember where we got this tree, but it was in its early stages of growth, just this chute coming out of a pot, which we transferred into our lawn. I remember being so excited, thinking, this is going to be great. We're going to get apples whenever we want. And I know it'll take a while, but soon I'll be able to climb this tree, maybe build a tree house in it. I had all these hopes and dreams so fast forward months, years go by, and this little tree is still just a barren stick in the middle of our yard.
So finally, my mom had had enough. We were frustrated, but just ready to call it. So she asked me to go out there and pull that tree up. So I went out, probably, like 13 years old now. I braced myself. I took hold and pulled with all my strength. Nothing didn't budge. So I grabbed the tree, and I tried twisting it to the side, trying to bend it and break it, and it would bend a little, but it never broke. I tried and I tried and I tried, but I could not pull that tree up.
So my mom came out, and she got ready to try. And let me tell you, as a 13 year old boy, there is nothing scarier than the threat of getting one upped by your mother.
I prayed my mom would not be able to pull that tree up, and thankfully, she couldn't. She tried and she tried, but that tree still wouldn't come up. Finally, my dad got home from work. We told him we couldn't get the tree. He kind of gave a sigh and rolled up his sleeves, like, okay, let the man of the house deal with it. And once again, I was like, dear God, at least don't let him make it look easy.
So he went out there, and he took hold, and he pulled and he pulled, and that tree still wouldn't come up. We finally gave up, and we decided, well, we could chop it down, but if the roots are really that strong, maybe it's worth waiting a little longer and seeing what happens.
And you know what?
Out of nowhere, this is a true story. This stupid little stick started sprouting some leaves and started growing apples after years of doing nothing.
It was never a big tree, nothing I could climb. Definitely no treehouse. But in time, it really did bear fruit that we could eat.
So the scripture that we just heard today, Matthew 13, begins with Jesus going up to the sea of Galilee and taking a seat. This is kind of a sign by jewish teachers that they are ready to teach. And the crowds start flocking to him, and Jesus begins telling story after story, parable after parable, about the kingdom of heaven. It's one of Jesus'favorite topics, actually. I wonder sometimes why we don't talk about it as much as he did. But the kingdom of heaven, as Matthew calls it, or the kingdom of God, as the other gospel writers say, it's kind of dangerous language for someone living in a land occupied by the kingdom of Rome. The people hearing these parables would have been used to seeing roman soldiers come and go marching through their towns. They would have known their local tax collectors who took their money and gave it to Rome. Some of them might have been zealots who looked to fight back against Rome. For the past 500 years, the jewish people had been conquered by Babylon and then Greece and most recently, Rome. They had been praying and waiting all this time for a messiah to come and set them free and make them a powerful kingdom once again.
So when Jesus, this miracle worker who's risen so quickly to prominence, amassed large crowds of people hanging on his every word, when he starts talking about the kingdom of God, you have to think there were people expecting an imminent, violent, maybe revolution. Maybe this will be the new Judah Maccabee who will lead their people in armed revolt against their oppressors, just as the Maccabees fought back against the Greeks. Jesus can drive the Romans out of their temple, out of their city, and take back what's theirs.
Yet listen to the way that Jesus talks about the kingdom. Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, the smallest little seed that they knew of, 1 mm in diameter.
The jewish people would have been familiar with images of the kingdom, more like the great cedars of Lebanon that the psalms talk about. Or in Ezekiel 17, when it says, this is what the Sovereign Lord says, I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it on the mountain heights of Israel. I will plant it. It will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. A cedar is a mighty tree. It can grow over a hundred feet tall. But mustard plants, it's more like a little bush. Six, 9ft. Maybe the people listening might have scoffed indignantly or giggled at the seeming irreverence of it. What is Jesus doing comparing the kingdom of heaven to this humble little plant that they see growing all around them on the hillside?
But here's the thing about mustard seeds. They start small, but they grow and they spread uncontrollably. In fact, farmers would typically separate mustard from the rest of their crops to make sure it didn't take over.
Jesus also compares the kingdom of heaven to yeast. Just a tiny bit of yeast that gets worked into 60 pounds of flour. This small amount of yeast, this huge amount of flour. And yet by the end, the flour has yeast. It affects all of it. Have you ever tried removing yeast from bread after it's been baked? As far as I know, it's not possible.
It's so interesting that Jesus chooses to use these images of small, seemingly insignificant things that also grow uncontrollably and permanently, like that little apple tree in my front yard. They put their roots down so deeply they can't be uprooted.
They're at work in a way that is sometimes invisible, sometimes frustratingly invisible, leaving us to wonder, is anything actually happening at all?
And yet there's a persistence in these images. And given enough time, they work their way through the bread or through the soil so completely that all of a sudden, you can't ignore their existence anymore.
The kingdom of heaven is taking over in a way that touches lives at the deepest parts of our hearts and transforms us from the inside out completely. It's not something we can control or manipulate to our own advantages or agendas. It is a kingdom that spreads beyond our control and erupts out to every aspect of our lives and every part of the world around us.
So 2024, this is an election year. The presidential election is still eight months away, but the campaigning has already begun. I've already started bracing myself for it to get ugly. In the past couple elections, there's been a rise of christian nationalism. If you don't know what christian nationalism is, first of all, I envy you.
But essentially, it's an ideology that says America is first and foremost a christian nation and that Christians should use the government to bring Christianity to a position of primacy and enforce christian values on the country.
You see, 2000 years have passed, and we as a human race are still insisting on the kingdom of heaven spreading just like every other kingdom, through force, through manipulation, through coercion, through violence.
We're still expecting Jesus to back us up as we go and overthrow our enemies and fight our way to the top.
But if the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, like yeast, it doesn't start from the top.
It starts from the bottom. It starts from the least of these. It starts from within. Now, make no mistake, this is a kingdom that spreads. This is a kingdom that takes over, but rarely in the way we're expecting.
The kingdom of heaven is peace, spreading uncontrollably.
The kingdom of heaven is love breaking forth, whether you're ready for it or not.
The kingdom of heaven is a contagious forgiveness.
The kingdom of heaven is hope sprouting up where you least expect it.
The kingdom of heaven is refusing to let death get the final word. It is life in the face of death.
You see, so many people who try to weaponize the kingdom of heaven completely miss what Jesus is saying about power, whether it's the roman empire or the american empire. We want a kingdom of heaven that we can point and shoot at our enemies.
But the thing about mustard seeds is their potency comes from being crushed. When those seeds are crushed, that's when the pungent oils are released and the flavor and the aroma are unleashed. The power of Jesus is not in crushing, but in being crushed. And until we understand that, we do not understand the kingdom of heaven.
You don't need to look any farther than the cross of Christ to see what the kingdom of God is like.
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do is an unusual way of defeating your enemies.
But the cross leads to the resurrection, and the breaking apart of that little mustard seed leads to the mustard plant spreading across the hillside.
So often, we think of heaven as this place that we go to when we die, somewhere out there up in the clouds, a divine escape from the world.
But when Jesus talks about the kingdom of heaven, he talks about it being near, colliding with earth moment by moment, as he healed the sick and fed the hungry and shared the good news. If you have eyes to see it, maybe you'll see that the kingdom of heaven, like yeast working its way through dough, is at work right now.
Maybe it's at work in you, slowly transforming you in Christ likeness, if you'll let it, working its way through every single aspect of our lives.
Your job, your marriage, your relationship with your parents, the anger you're holding on to, the hidden shame that you never talk about, your past, your future, your anxiety about your future, your finances, your faith, your crisis of faith, none of it is left untouched. When Jesus brings the kingdom of heaven to earth, it spreads uncontrollably in each of us. And that is a good and beautiful thing, even if it might be a little scary.
Being transformed by the kingdom of heaven, the way of Jesus. That's what discipleship is all about.
But it doesn't stop within us, either.
Once we've caught it, we spread it. We take up our own crosses, and we follow after Jesus, caring for the poor, defending the outcasts, loving enemies, and offering forgiveness, sharing the good news of what God is really like, that we see in Jesus.
There are times when I consider the state of the world with poverty and these wars that are going on and injustices and genocide, and I feel so small. I feel so helpless. Like, what can I possibly do, really, that'll make any difference? What can our little church do, little Knox Presbyterian church, do in the grand scheme of things?
But you might find that the kingdom of heaven starts in the smallest of things.
The things that appear the most insignificant at first glance have a way of spreading and multiplying beyond our imagination.
You might not notice it at first unless you're really looking for it. So open your eyes, lean in, and see what God might already be doing in you and in us. Because the kingdom of heaven is near.
Let's pray together.
Dear God, we are so grateful for the way you show us power, the way your kingdom moves.
God, I pray that we would take hold of that vision. I pray that that would change everything for us. I pray that would change the way we look at our own lives and ourselves, that we can't compartmentalize anymore. You are spread being throughout every part of us. I pray that that would change the way we look at the world and the hopelessness we might feel being so small.
But God, you are so big and you can spread beyond our means.
We trust you to do that.
Help us to be faithful in the small things, Lord. In Jesus name, amen.
