Small Beginnings Can Yield Amazing Results
Hurricane Irene which is arriving today is just one of many examples of how small beginnings can yield amazing results. All the clouds and wind and rain started small a while ago, but grew tremendously and quickly. A hurricane can develop in a matter of days; most things in life don’t grow that quickly or that obviously.
August 28, 2011
Matthew 13:31-33, Small Beginnings Can Yield Amazing Results
Douglas Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
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Jill and I were talking on Friday morning about how it must have been two hundred years ago when a storm like this occurred – how you could be out in a boat or going about your life with no idea that a huge storm was bearing down on you until the first signs of it appeared. Now the entire storm, which is hundreds of miles wide, can be seen thanks to pictures from the International Space Station and from satellites and we can track it completely, none of it is hidden. Small beginnings can yield amazing results.
Jesus told several parables along these lines about how the kingdom of heaven and how God’s work can start small, in a hidden way, and yet have great results that become visible and obvious to all. Listen to Matthew 13:31-33. “Another parable he put before them, saying,
“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all 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 which a woman took, and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”
One New Testament scholar (Joachim Jeremias) observed, “Jesus never tired of expressing the central ideas of his message in constantly changing images.” In Jesus’ parables about the mustard seed and the yeast we learn that God is at work, even though human eyes may fail to perceive what is happening. The images of the mustard seed and the yeast are similar in describing the discrepancy between the hiddenness of the kingdom at its sowing or beginning and the abundance of its successful development that is easy to observe. The key is the sharp contrast between the initial and final conditions in each case. When I was up in Maine two weeks ago, I went for several runs, and on one route I went by pine trees, oak trees, and even an apple tree. It is something to ponder that each large cathedral pine, every mighty oak, each apple tree with its branches heavy with fruit was once just a pine cone, an acorn, or an apple seed. To the untrained or uneducated eye, one could never imagine that a magnificent tree had such humble and seemingly insignificant beginnings.
By the thirteenth chapter in Matthew’s gospel, almost the halfway point, the disciples were beginning to recognize the reality and presence of the kingdom of heaven; the religious leaders and most in the crowds did not yet perceive it. Some of them never would. These two parables are addressed to the crowds and they emphasize the action or activity of God.
A farmer taking the time to sow a single mustard seed is kind of far-fetched, symbolic reference to God’s action in the world. A mustard plant is an annual herb, whose proverbially small seeds can produce a plant from two to six feet in height, or in an extraordinary case, eight to ten feet, but it does not produce a tree like a pine or an oak.
God’s action in the world, while almost imperceptible at times, as small as a mustard seed or as hidden as the tiny amount of yeast hidden in more than a bushel of meal is nonetheless real and will in God’s own time come to full fruition. From beginnings as insignificant as a garden herb, from Jesus’ little band of followers, God was growing the Kingdom of heaven in power and glory. Jesus who is meek and lowly (Matthew 11:25-30) and rides a donkey (21:1-9) can be represented by a kingdom symbolized by a garden herb rather than a great tree.
Several elements in the parable of the yeast may be surprising. In the Bible yeast is almost always a symbol for corruption or used in a negative way, but here it is portrayed positively. The surrogate for God in the second parable is a woman. This baker hides yeast in three measures of flour; that’s a bushel of flour, 128 cups! That’s 16 five-pound bags. Add about 42 cups of water to make it all come together, and you have perhaps 100 pounds of dough on your hands. She would have bread to feed over 150 people. The focus of the parable is on the surprising, miraculous extravagance of the growing kingdom of heaven.
Jesus says the whole is leavened. The lump of plain, unbaked bread dough stands for the world and Jesus suggests enough of it to make it handle like the plain old world it represents: that is not easily. In its present form it is indigestible, and sure to wear a person out trying to knead it.
The hiding of yeast in a batch of dough is both more mysterious and pervasive than any of the other hidings or images Jesus uses to this point in Matthew’s Gospel to illustrate the kingdom of heaven. Seeds may disappear into the ground, but if you are willing to take the trouble to hunt for them a little later, you could actually find some. And, no matter how many seeds you sow in the field, there is a still a lot of the field untouched or not impacted by the presence of the seeds. Yeast is different. Yeast enters into the dough by being dissolved in the liquid that makes the dough become dough. Once the yeast is in the dough, it is so intimate a part of the lump as to be indistinguishable from it, undiscoverable in it, and irretrievable out of it. So it is with the kingdom of heaven in this world. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast in the dough – it is at work in the world in ways that at the present moment may be indistinguishable or unseen, but it is there.
These parables invite the crowds to faith in the God who is active in the movement initiated by Jesus. They illustrate the progression from the kingdom-in-a-mystery to the kingdom-made-manifest. They challenge us to step out of the world that treats God as irrelevant and to step into the world where God is the primary reality.
These parables about the action of God suggest a response of patience and discernment on our part. Patience to let the mustard seed grow; patience to let the dough rise; discernment to be able to recognize when the yeast in the dough has done the job.
Everyone doesn’t have the patience or discernment to understand what Jesus is talking about or what he is doing and it is interesting to me how the images of yeast and a mustard seed are used in the gospels beyond these parables.
From Mark 3:6 we learn, “Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.” The Pharisees are typical of a type of religious folks – they’re out to eliminate someone who doesn’t agree with them. The Herodians are folks who have sold themselves out to the political establishment of the time in return for the favors they receive. They are linked with the status quo and preserving what they’ve got, even if that means siding with the king who killed John the Baptist. They’re at work throughout Mark’s gospel. In Mark 8:14, Jesus warns the disciples, “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.” Their “yeast” is revealed in Mark 12:13, “Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words.” There are always will be people like the Pharisees and Herodians who delight in catching others in their words, pointing out their mistakes and errors, and using them against them.
In Luke 12:1, Jesus says, “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.” This includes not only our lives, but also the kingdom of heaven.
In Matthew 16:6, Jesus warns his disciples, “Be careful. Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Jesus was warning them about the teaching of these other groups. Jesus describes their teaching in Matthew 23:4, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.”
Jesus uses the image of yeast multiple times warning his followers against being the kind of person who is dishonest in speech, seeks to trap or catch others, or is a hypocrite saying one thing and doing another, or teaching others improperly by laying burdens on them without seeking to lift or ease them.
Jesus on the other hand, doesn’t mind rolling up his sleeves, lifting his fingers and hands and kneading our lumpy lives. Jesus doesn’t tie heavy loads on our backs; he helps to lighten them. Think about this in terms of the yeast and dough. Unless dough is kneaded thoroughly – unless it resists the baker enough to develop gluten and form effective barriers to the yeast’s working – then the gases produced by the yeast will not be trapped in cells that can lighten the lump into a loaf. Maybe even our resistance to God and the messy mass of our sins can be kneaded and lightened by Jesus who is the Yeast who lightens our lumpiness.[1]
I know some people may not want to hear it, but it is hard to believe that school resumes for most students on Cape Cod a week from Tuesday, although some districts go back to class even sooner. It seems like just the other day Jill and I were picking up Nathan and Greg at Eddy Elementary and now they’re going into their senior and sophomore years in high school. I’m sure the parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents in our midst can relate to the passing of time.
One of the things that it is really important for young people to learn and grasp is how important it is to get off to a good start each year in school. It is very beneficial to do well with your summer work and really be on top of things in the first few weeks of school. So much of learning builds on what came previously so the old saying, “well begun is half done” has more than a little truth to it. The more we grow, the greater the impact can be of the diligence we’ve shown when we’re young. Small beginnings can yield amazing results. The good seeds you sow of self-discipline and diligence when you’re young will bless you and others as you grow. For teachers, administrators, and others who work in schools, I believe it is especially important to strive to see the oak in every acorn in each student, to see the potential in the young seedlings in the classroom.
Ultimately, there is a sense in which a seed needs to die in order for it to bear fruit and fulfill its purpose. In 1 Corinthians 15:35-38 and John 12:24, the image used for the resurrection is the seed, the symbol of the mystery of life out of death. Jesus says in John 12, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Parables like these of Jesus in Matthew 13 invite us to have faith in God because even a small amount of faith placed in the right object can have a significant impact. Jesus says in Matthew 17:20, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
Jesus says in Luke 17:6, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”
The purpose of these two parables from Matthew 13 about the mustard seed and the yeast in the dough is to compare the Kingdom of heaven with the final stage of the process being described: the tall mustard shrub providing shelter and sustenance to the birds; and with the mass of dough wholly permeated by the yeast. They invite us to patience as the kingdom grows and is transformed and to discernment to perceive the kingdom of heaven as it is unveiled. These parables suggest that both in our own lives and in the world eventually everyone will see the amazing transformation and growth of the kingdom from its almost imperceptibly small beginnings. They encourage us to hold onto hope and to remember that God is at work, even though human eyes may fail to perceive what is happening.