Citywide Baptist Church

In this sermon we will be looking at Matthew chapter 13 verses 31-35. I’m using the ESV which is my preferred translation, so depending what translation you use some things may be phrased differently.

I’m going to take this opportunity to talk a little about bible translations because I like reminding people about this. There are a huge number of bible translations and paraphrases and most of them are pretty good.

While various versions may have some translation issues in particular sections there is not a right version and a wrong version. That’s because translating things from one language to another is complicated because we use words and phrases differently, and there isn’t always a clearly “correct” translation that means the exact same thing. For example, when we think of “hand” we think of this bit starting after the wrist. The Hebrew understanding of what we would translate as “hand” looks at it from the forearm, so it actually includes more than the English version. The second thing that complicates it is grammar and sentence structure. This results in translators having to decide between just literally translating words the way they appear, which can make reading them a challenge in the new language, and looking at the concept and writing something that conveys the idea, or the vibe of the thing, at the expense of objective accuracy.

Different groups of translators prefer different ways of balancing literal accuracy and readability, resulting in a spectrum of many versions ranging from direct translations through to entirely paraphrased versions, with most being a blend of the two.

Whereabouts on that spectrum you want to choose a bible from will depend on what you are doing, as a paraphrase like the Message is not suitable as a primary text for serious study and a literal translation like the NASB is not going to help kids understand something in Sunday school. My two preferred versions are the ESV, which is up toward the direct translation end of the spectrum, and the New Living which is down the paraphrase end. Part of why this is important is that sometimes people will read a passage and have trouble grasping it, and they’ll assume it’s just beyond them to understand it. Don’t assume something is too hard for you to understand. Try reading it in different translations to see if one of those is phrased in a way that makes more sense to you. For people who are doing academic bible study it would be normal to be reading a minimum of three different translations of whatever passage you are looking at. This is especially easy if you are using a bible app which might have a hundred different translations available just by picking one from a menu.

Getting the gospel isn’t some elite thing only for really educated people, it should be accessible to all people and knowing that you can check out different translations to see if one helps you understand things better is part of that accessibility.

The reason I’m starting there is I don’t really have much to say about it. It’s a fairly clear statement: Jesus spoke in parables to fulfill what the prophets said he would do. The target audience of Matthew was Jews who would have been familiar with the prophets and what they said about the coming messiah, and this statement is reinforcing that that is who Jesus is. Most of us are much more familiar with Jesus as the Messiah than we are with the prophecies about his coming so it’s not going to help us a lot right now to look at this in more depth. There are a few common traps people fall into when reading the bible. One is assuming everything is meant to be taken literally exactly as written. Another is assuming everything is an allegory with deep hidden truths to be pulled out if you dig hard enough. The bible is a collection of writings of various types ranging from historical records to poetry, and those different types of writing need to be handled differently. So we aren’t going to launch in and pull apart verses 34 and 35 since they are a pretty clear statement, not a story or illustration. We are going to get stuck into verses 31 to 33 since they are parables which are a teaching illustration specifically intended to be dug into and discussed in depth.

Who here actually knows what mustard looks like? Not the jars on the supermarket shelf, the plant. This actually gets surprisingly complicated, because we don’t know for sure which mustard plant he would have been referring to. Two possibilities would be black mustard, Brassica nigra, and wild mustard, brassica oleracea. These are not trees. They are annual herbaceous plants, though black mustard can apparently get to about 2.7 meters high so it would get big enough for small birds to rest in, and I know my chickens enjoy hiding nests under related plant types. They are also not technically the smallest seeds, but would probably have been the smallest being planted in the ground in fields at that time and mustard was grown in fields rather than in gardens close to homes.

This is one of those spots where people can get caught up in technicalities and think ”But this is wrong” and miss the actual point. Mustard grows from a relatively small seed to a comparatively large plant quite quickly. People of the time were familiar with it so it made sense to them as an illustration. It also grows very easily to the point it can be considered a weed, and Pliny the Elder said of it, in 78 AD, “ it is extremely beneficial for health. It grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted: but on the other hand once it has been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once”. Obviously, as a Roman around the time of Jesus, Pliny did not use those exact words, but that’s a paraphrase of what he wrote.

There are a few places we can go with this.

One is that it only takes a tiny seed being planted to grow something substantial, and that potential for growth is actually in the seed, not in the person who plants it. While you might plant a seed, it is not you that actually causes it to grow. The kingdom of heaven is not something you directly control the growth of. You can and should do things that will help it grow and nurture it, but you are not personally responsible for whatever the actual results are. One very important thing about seeds is that they can sit and wait until the timing is right to start growing.

Late last year I started re-doing my front yard, cutting out trees and killing the lawn to replace it with a new design using primarily edible plants especially native and uncommonly eaten ones. In the course of that I developed what was initially considered to be a knee injury, then re-diagnosed as sciatica eventually leading to the discovery that I’ve been wandering around with a fractured spine for 20 years or more. Which meant I have not got to finishing and planting out that area yet. But, currently in that yard is a collection of rainbow chard which has sprung up. The last time I had rainbow chard growing in that area was about 10 years ago. So these self-set seeds have been sitting in that area for 10 years, waiting for a good time to spring up. Then, when I poisoned the grass and disturbed the soil, they have thrived. Planting a seed might not get you visible results in the time frame you expect, but that doesn’t mean it’s failed.

One is that the Kingdom of heaven is a bit like a weed, in that once it has set seed somewhere it will be extremely hard to completely stamp it out. Also, like a surprising number of weeds, it’s very good for people’s health, and once you’ve let it get started it will always be around.

Another is that continuing to plant seeds can result in new things. Wild mustard, brassica oleracea, is a plant that all parts are edible. You can eat the leaves. You can eat the stem. You can eat the flowers. Over time, people have kept planting seeds from plants that tase better, or have more of the parts they want to eat, which can lead to having different strains of the same plant that are very different but are still the same species. So I’ve mentioned brassica oleracea as wild mustard, but it’s also brussels sprouts. And Broccoli. And cabbage. And also cauliflower, kohlrabi, and kale. That’s a pretty substantial part of the veggie section at your supermarket that are technically the same plant but nourish people in different ways.

Moving on from gardening, we’re going to look at the leavened bread. [verse 33 slide]“The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened” Some versions say yeast rather than leaven. Now the ESV translation which I am using says the woman hid the leaven in the flour. You don’t hide yeast in flour, you’d get found out pretty quickly because yeast has effects on flour. Especially historically when you instant dried yeast hasn’t been figured out yet, so your leaven is going to be a liquid slurry. Back at the start I talked about different translations going for either direct translations of words or paraphrasing things. This is one of those cases where the ESV is leaning toward literal translation and some other versions which are going for the vibe of the thing will say mixed in. If a verse reads strangely, check some different translations.

Yeast is a naturally occurring organism which exists all around us. During covid lockdowns quite a few people tried catching local yeast to make sourdough. You could cheat and put some instant yeast in a mix of flour and water then keep feeding it, but to do it properly you would start with a jar of flour and water, and then wait for yeast to colonise it. There are more complicated recipes for making yeast, like boiling potatoes in the water first or adding fruit skins which have natural yeast living on them , but flour and water is simple and effective. Then you keep feeding it to make your yeast stronger. Historically this was the normal way to make bread, you would use one of a few methods to obtain naturally occurring yeast and when you caught a good one you kept it alive.

It’s worth noting that I said “when you caught a good one”, because there are many different strains of yeast around, not all of which are good for baking and not all of which will thrive in your climate, so it might take several goes to create a sourdough starter that will be effective.

Once you have your yeast caught and happy, you add it to dough as a leavening agent, causing it to rise and adding some flavour and nutritional benefits. A relatively small amount of yeast can create a lot of dough. The ingredients that make bread if you add yeast or another raising agent make hard tack if you don’t. I’ve heard there is still hard tack in the US from the civil war which is as edible today as the day it was baked. While bread made with yeast doesn’t have that sort of storage life it is arguably better than hard tack for several reasons, the core one being people actually want to eat it.

In both of these parables there are some common themes. The obvious one is that the kingdom of heaven is being compared to a small thing that makes a big impact wherever it is. Things that by their very nature grow and nourish.

Less obvious is that yeast and seeds both require patience to see the outcome. You can’t keep on poking and prodding and fiddling with them and get good results. You have to plant the seeds and let them do their thing. You mix the yeast into dough and leave it to sort itself out for a while. While you play a role, you don’t actually make anything happen. You can introduce the seeds or yeast, you can make their environments as supportive as possible with nutrients, moisture and even modifying temperatures, but you don’t make them grow. If you fiddle too much you will reduce effectiveness, or even kill something.

You also can’t confine them to a single neat little space without giving them room for growth. In a small sealed jar they will either not reach their full potential, or they will break out of the jar to do what they are supposed to do.

A third point is that they are always all around us, and will find a way to grow. In these parables Jesus talks about intentionally planting things to see benefits, but those are things that were well known in the area to also be naturally occurring. As Pliny the Elder said, mustard grows wild, but benefits from transplanting, and readily self seeds. Leavening was known to be a naturally occurring phenomenon, to the point that when unleavened bread was required for religious reasons rabbis have actually worked out how long it takes for dough to start rising from the natural yeast that generally exists around us. If you are making unleavened bread you have 18 minutes to get it cooked. After 18 minutes some leavening has happened and the dough starts to rise whether you intend for that to happen or not.

This doesn’t mean you should just wait for the kingdom of heaven to do it’s own thing instead of actively doing something. In both of these parables there is a person actively doing something with an end goal in mind. They have prepared the field, and ground the flour. They have introduced the seed and the yeast to what should be ideal environments. They have done their best. But what we shouldn’t be doing is stressing about the results. Maybe it’s not the right time for that particular seed to grow. Maybe it’s not the right environment for that particular strain of yeast and there’s a different one waiting for an opportunity. Maybe that particular seed is one that’s the start of a different adaptation so when it grows it won’t look like you were expecting. It’s not your job to make the kingdom of heaven be successful the way you expect it to be. Your job is to prepare the way for it to grow and flourish the way God has intended it to.

What I would take away from this is: Sow seeds of the kingdom wherever you can but don’t poke and prod and obsessively check in to see if they are growing yet. Work to create fertile areas, but be patient and wait to see what will come in Gods timing, and when the time comes accept the nourishment, comfort and shelter of His kingdom. Don’t smother it and try to keep it confined to a neat little designated space. Stand back and allow room for growth, for the kingdom will grow. Do your best but don’t stress about it.