Anybody
here ever planted a seed? How about baked a loaf of bread? Well, then, these
parables should resonate with you, just a little anyway . . . But there's one
big difference between what we do here in the21st century and what they did in
Jesus' day, the 1st century. In ancient agronomic societies, planting and
baking weren't recreational activities. They weren't a matter of want-to, but a matter of have-to, a matter of need.
Oh, I know ...many people who garden eat what they grow, and what other reason
but to eat it would somebody bake bread? But most of us don't have to do those things, we
can just run out to Kroger's for some veggies or bread. And if we want
something a bit fancier, well there's always Panera Bread to do your baking.
But
when planting and baking are necessary for survival, it becomes work, it
becomes drudgery . . . It involved a lot of bending over: in the hot sun to
fold seed into the ground, and in front of the gaping maw of a hot,
manure-fired oven, with no air conditioning in sight. So that's the first thing
about these two parables: they described foundational activities, planting and
baking, baking and planting foundational to 1st century life. If you wanted
wheat, someone in the family--usually the men--had to put the seed in the ground
the self. If you wanted bread, someone--usually the women-- had to bake it
themselves.
The
second thing to notice is that together, these parables are are aimed at a
broad cross-section of people. They have men covered--they're the ones doing
the planting--as well as women, because they're the ones doing the baking.
Again, it's different today: it's not nearly so cut-and-dried.
Seed-planters--gardeners--are at least as likely to be women these days as men,
and there are some fine, male bakers who. In 2010, all of Great Britain was
shocked--shocked, I tell you!--when a man
won the first Great British Bake Off, and last year, there were as many male
contestants as female . . what is
the world coming to?
So
we have "women's work" and "men's work" covered, and
they're both, backbreaking activities crucial for survival, and that would seem
to be the extent of the parallels between the,. After all, there's not a lot of
similarities between planting and baking, except for the fact that without the
first the second would be impossible. So why are they back-to-back, and more
importantly, in what way is God's reign--called by Jesus here the Kingdom of
Heaven?
Well,
one interpretation is suggested by the text itself: the mustard seed "is
the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of
shrubs and becomes a tree." And this is certainly true: if you google
middle eastern mustard plants, you'll see be-turbaned individuals standing in
front of towering plants that spread riotously behind them. Indeed, a little,
tiny seed yields big plant-dividends, providing all kinds of room for birds of the air, and
most anything else.
As
far as the bread-making goes, we are handicapped just a little by our
translation: the Greek word translated here as "yeast" is actually
"leaven:" a baker would save just a little of the dough from the last
batch to leaven the current one. Exactly like with sourdough today, dough would
be saved from day to day," but the analogy between mustard seeds and leaven
is the same. A tiny pinch would be folded into the bread--like the seed is folded into the
soil?--making a large amount of bread, capable of feeding whole family, giving
them a way to live just as the mustard plant gives birds a place to live.
That's
one layer of interpretation, and it has certainly been preached that way: I
belief I did it here the last time this passage rolled around. The kingdom of
heaven is like planting a mustard seed and folding yeast into dough because
from extremely small beginnings--just a tiny nudge, a near invisible presence, great things, surprising things, take
shape.
But
here's the thing: in the ancient Middle East, mustard plants were noxious
weeds, and nobody would be caught dead
planting one in their garden. In fact, rabbinic law--the Law of Diverse
Kinds--prohibits planting mustard. Why? Because if you do so, the mustard
quickly jumps rows, mixing with the other plants, violating prohibitions in the
Torah about mixing things of different kinds. Thus, mustard plants were
considered unclean, or at least leading up to it.
In
a similar way, leaven was considered evil, and perhaps unclean: everywhere it
is mentioned, with the possible exception of this parable, it has evil
connotations. In Leviticus, a person who eats leavened bread during Passover is
to be cut off from the fellowship of Israel. Perhaps this is why in this
parable--again contrary to our translation--the Greek original says the woman
"hid" the leaven in the dough.
So:
here you have a couple of bad actors which, if not actually unclean are on
speaking terms with the concept, and like Jacob--the little weasel who founded
Israel--their disreputable presence
creates great and wondrous things. And that's another layer of interpretation
of these two parables: what is considered unclean by the religious
establishment--and I'd expand that to polite society in general--what's often
unacceptable by the establishment is often just what is used to further the
kingdom of God. In fact, God--the author and creator of all--is the one who put
it there, who hid it in the dough, who buried it in the soil of the universe. The
Bible is full of examples--Abraham himself, the uber-patriarch of both the
Hebrews and the Muslims, doesn't act particularly honorably much of the time.
The prostitute Rahab saves the day by keeping Joshua's spies safe from the King
of Jericho, and the woman at the well, who had had five husbands, becomes the
first evangelist. Over and over, God uses the most fragile vessels, the least
of these to sew
the seeds of the kingdom.
But
wait--there's more! In Christian metaphysics--metaphysics is the study of the spiritual,
unseen structure of the cosmos--the realms of the divine are said to be
perpendicular, at right angles to our our horizontal existence, our existence
in the worldly plane. We live out our lives on solid, horizontal ground--this
is before the invention of flight, a time when living in the vertical plane
meant falling of a cliff--we live out lives in the horizontal, and a tree
reaches upward, symbolizing the vertical dimensions, the realms of the divine.
Scholar
Lynn Bauman tells us that image of a tree is universal across cultures and
histories . . . Depending on the culture, the image of the Tree varies by
species, but the upshot remains the same: at the heart of the universe is a
living entity which, like a tree, has grown from something small. And we are
all--not just the birds of the air but all of creation--shielded by its leaves.
We move in and out of its branches and are nourished by its fruit. We build our
nests in its boughs, and raise our young in the shelter of its limbs.
The image of the Tree of Life is a metaphor for--it represents--the immense,
magnetic and universal pole around which all cosmic reality is structured. Just
like warm, abundant bread, it grows from the smallest thing, hidden by God in
the dough, in the warp and weft of our lives. Where is that abundance breaking
out in your life? Where do you see the kingdom exploding out, shockingly, excitingly breaking into
your daily grind? And where in that daily existence do you feel sheltered,
nurtured by the sun-dappled leaves of the universal Tree? I challenge you, I
challenge us all,
to seek it out. Because only if we seek it shall we find.Amen.
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