I love dandelions. I know the gardeners among you are shuddering right now, but I never have understood why dandelions are considered weeds. Maybe you can explain it to me after worship this morning. When my family and I lived in New Hampshire for the second time, the house that we lived in had about an acre of land with it that would be covered in dandelions during the spring. After a long, hard winter, when everything had been snowy and gray, the bright yellow of the dandelions covering the field would brighten my mood. And I’m not so far removed from childhood that I don’t still enjoy blowing dandelion spores when the flowers grow tall and seed out. Each spring, my dad would make some noise about doing something to destroy the dandelions, but my mother and I would raise a loud voice of protest. And my father, who really didn’t like to do things associated with landscaping anyway, would give in and not do anything about these weedy flowers. Our neighbor, however, did not like us during the spring. He kept his lawn immaculately treated, with the grass just the right length and the right color of green, and the springtime meant he had to work harder to keep our dandelions from encroaching on his yard.
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast. Today we could say that the kingdom of heaven is like dandelions, because that would give us the same kind of imagery and feelings as a mustard seed and yeast did for the people of Jesus’ time. The mustard plant was considered a weed in Jesus’ day, and for someone to sow it in his field would give the impression of something sinister going on. The same thing is true of the woman mixing yeast into her bread. Today we get yeast in those nice little packets at the store and we know that without it, we can’t have nice fluffy loaves of bread. But, just about every reference to yeast, or leaven, in the Bible is a negative reference. Leaven symbolizes impurity. At the Passover feast, the most important celebration in the Jewish culture, the people are commanded to remove every speck of yeast from their homes. So why, then, would Jesus liken the kingdom of heaven to a weed that spreads out and overtakes every other good plant, and to yeast, which likewise permeates the whole loaf of bread, “contaminating” it in the process?
The thing with parables is that they can take on many different meanings, and today’s parables are no different. But they all point towards something important about the kingdom of heaven. So today I’m going to suggest three possibilities that these two parables can have, three meanings that are suggested by David Lose. The first meaning is, “Be careful! Those infected with the gospel have been known to do crazy, countercultural things!” The second meaning is, “Hang in there! God’s new reality is closer than you think, already seeping into your life even though you can’t always feel it.” The third meaning is, “No matter what it may look like, God’s kingdom will prevail.”
“Those infected with the gospel have been known to do crazy, countercultural things.” In the 1200s, a young man became disillusioned with the life of wealth that he had been born into, and began laying it aside in order to serve Christ. He had a mystical vision of the crucified Christ who told him to “Go and repair my house, which, as you can see, is falling into ruins.” He understood this to mean literally restoring the ruined church in which he was praying, and when he sold some cloth from his father’s store to help restore it, his father became upset with him. In the middle of legal proceedings before the bishop, this man renounced his father and all he would have inherited from him, including removing the clothes that he was wearing, and he became a beggar, throwing himself solely into the care of God. The man’s name was Francis of Assisi. Like a weed that had taken over the garden or yeast that had contaminated the bread, the kingdom of heaven had infiltrated Francis’ heart. He heard Jesus’ call to “Go and sell everything you own, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” He did the crazy, countercultural thing and followed the command of Christ literally, giving up even the clothes on his back. An order of monks would rise up that would follow him, and centuries later, a bishop from Argentina who was elected pope would name himself after Francis of Assisi and take the world by storm by emphasizing the needs of the poor in his ministry.
What crazy, countercultural thing is God calling us to do? Last week, I joined a group of people from Trinity Lutheran Church in Lancaster, PA, at Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation for a Servant Group. While I only drove seven hours, the group from Pennsylvania flew across the country for this visit. Over and over again, the people on the reservation who we met marveled at the distance that the group from Pennsylvania had come. We might think that such a trip is nothing. But think: how many people would come across the country (or drive seven hours—that was a marvel for the folks from Pennsylvania!) to spend a week of their time in a place with no cell phone reception in order to learn about a group of people that most of us know only from history books or TV or movies? And in the future, I am hoping to work with Trinity Lutheran to organize a group of youth from our congregation to go to Lancaster and experience what it’s like to be a Christian in an urban environment and do ministry with our brothers and sisters there. These servant trips are one modern-day example of how the gospel has infiltrated and infected our lives so that we do crazy, countercultural things.
“Hang in there! God’s new reality is closer than you think, already seeping into your life even though you can’t always feel it.” This month in the community of Powell, we have had two sudden and untimely deaths: first, Kaylee Spomer, and second, coach Jim Stringer of the Powell High School football team. People here in Powell still go hungry, as evidenced by the work of Loaves and Fishes and the Backpack Blessings program that runs during the school year. These and other problems can have us asking God the “Why?” question, and the “How long, O Lord?” question. We can become frustrated and discouraged when we see death still occurring and our efforts to end hunger making little headway. When we experience these low times, and when doubt creeps into our faith, we can look to these parables for reassurance. God’s kingdom is coming. It is infiltrating this world in the least likely places, and one day it will overrun everything like a weed and it will permeate everything like yeast in bread. When God’s kingdom is fulfilled, there will be no more death and no more tears. When God’s kingdom is fulfilled, there will be no more hunger, for there will be enough for everyone and all will eat and be satisfied. And so, these parables encourage us to persevere in the face of our discouragement and to look for signs of the kingdom in the face of our despair.
“No matter what it may look like, God’s kingdom will prevail.” In these two parables, God’s kingdom is pictured as a weedy plant overrunning the good plants and impure yeast permeating a loaf of bread. This is not our expected picture of the kingdom of heaven. We are more comfortable with the image of the sower extravagantly throwing seed everywhere in the hopes that some of it will grow. Or, we are more comfortable with the image we get in the last parable of today’s reading, where the good fish are separated from the bad: good wins, and evil loses. But the mustard plant and the yeast are also pictures of the kingdom of heaven. We have our own ideas of what this kingdom will look like, but I can guarantee you that the kingdom will not look like anything we expect it to.
This becomes a profound promise to us as we look around and see all the evil going on in the world: the Malaysian Air flight shot down over Ukraine. The fighting that has arisen again in Israel. The militant group ISIS arising in Iraq and persecuting and exiling Christians who have lived in that region for centuries. The waves of children crossing our southern border in a desperate attempt to escape violence and death, only to face an uncertain future here. And yet, in the face of these events and many, many other tragedies like them, we can know God’s peace even while we pray for those involved. For even in the midst of those events, we know that God’s kingdom is coming. Even in those events, we will still see signs of hope and signs of the kingdom of God, infiltrating everything like a sly weed and overtaking this world until suddenly, the kingdom has come to complete fulfillment. We can have faith that in the end, Satan and evil do not have the last word. God’s kingdom comes with justice, and God will have the last word: everything will be made right one day, and we will live at peace with one another.
So, we may not see mustard plants growing around here in Powell. But, the next time you see a dandelion, and the next time you make bread with yeast in it, be reminded that the kingdom of God is coming. It is coming through those seemingly crazy, countercultural things that God calls us to be doing. It is coming through the whispers of the promise that death and hunger will not win, and we will be fully satisfied and together again with our loved ones one day. And it is coming when we make any effort to make peace and to stand for God’s justice, and when we see the small glimmers of hope even in the darkest of situations. So let’s not be so quick to kill those dandelions. May God’s kingdom come. Amen.
Moving North 