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Welcome today. My name is Jeremy, and we are in the middle of a series called the world as it could be. The whole idea here is to start this new season together by grounding ourselves in Jesus' imagination of the kingdom of God. And to be honest, right now, that feels like it's kind of important work because so much of what Jesus is doing is working to upend our expectations of what's possible for us. And I think all of us have been ground down a little bit by these past two years and this ongoing pandemic that continues to haunt us.

Certainly, we have to give attention to that, and to choose well, and to choose each other in the midst of that, but the kind of compassion, and the grace, and the welcome, and the other centeredness that we need right now for each other really can only be grounded in hope. And so to speak of the world as it could be, not as an escape from what the world is, but in allowing Jesus to inform the ways that we hope and then act in the world, how we participate in the larger story around us that feels important right now. And so we've looked at two parables so far. We're actually gonna look at two parables today, and then we have two parables left in this series. So a bit of symmetry there.

Last week though, we saw this really neat parable where Jesus talks about weeds and wheat growing together in the same field. And the workers in that story want to immediately rip out the weeds and start all over again. And I know that instinct on a very basic level because I like things to be exactly the way that I like them to be. And so I would often rather just start over completely again from scratch, than do the hard work of correcting a mistake. This week was the first day of national truth and reconciliation.

And hopefully, you were able to spend some time listening and learning from stories of pain and resilience that surround us. But our family, we bought some orange shirts from indigenous businesses to wear. We could not, however, find a proper baby jumpy for our daughter. Now our daughter is Cree, and so our son was not going to settle for this, and so he and his mom came up with this brilliant idea of just finding an orange jumper for him to decorate for her. The thing is, as he was working on this, he made a mistake in Sharpie.

And so there were some tears and some frustration and some threats to abandon the project wholesale, but we sat and we talked about how we could fix things and how we could adapt his design to include these mistakes, how we could repair things even if it wasn't going to be perfect or what he imagined, and how sometimes that could be beautiful too. Here he is working on it right now. But I love this part of Jesus story. This reminder that perfection isn't the objective, goodness is. And that sometimes we're called to tend the fields knowing that there is a mix of wheat and weeds in the world, understanding that all of that same complexity exists within each of us at the same time.

And yet trusting that we are all of us still loved and cared for regardless. But I think the real beauty of this parable is hidden in the details of it, because Jesus references two very specific plants here, sitos and zonin. And sitos and zonin had a very specific relationship in Jewish literature. There were rules that said that two seeds could not be planted together in the same field. That's gonna come into play again today, so hold on to it.

But there was an exemption for these two seeds. The reason was because citrus or wheat, and zonin or rye grass, were almost indistinguishable for each other until they formed a head and produced a crop. However, since they were so hard to distinguish early in their growing cycle, Jewish literature, specifically in the Mishnah, taught that they were the same plant until the harvest. And so what Jesus is doing here by taking this Jewish teaching on agricultural practice and pushing it upside at his imagination of the kingdom of God. He's saying that you and I and our neighbor our enemy, our friend, we are all of us the same plant in God's eyes until our story is finished.

And, our job is not to label, it's not to distinguish or discard, it's not even to make assumptions about where anyone's story will head. Our job is to hope that every crooked story can be made straight, every corrupt root can be healed, every person that we encounter anywhere throughout our lives can become as beautiful as they were intended to be. And so the surprising beautiful image that Jesus gives us is that he is so confident in the strength of a kingdom without walls. So convinced of the power of invitation and love that weeds and enemies and evil ones are not even really a concern for him, they can't hurt this kingdom anyway. The only thing that can are well meaning religious peoples who miss the intent of God's kingdom and instead of extending grace, start drawing lines and ripping out weeds where we see them.

That's where the risk is as far as Jesus is concerned. Now, today, it's mustard seeds and a little bit about leavened bread, but first, let's pray. The God who continues to surprise us with grace. Would you remind us by your spirit that we are not your protectors. That we are the ones found safe in you.

We're not here to guard access to you, but only to welcome others into your home. We are not called to write each other's stories, but simply to look for you in each other. Where we have been too zealous, would you forgive us? Where we have slipped into apathy, might you reignite our passion for what could be? Help us to engage in your world with the grace and peace that you offer to us every single morning.

And as we speak today, would you help us to engage these stories with purpose and excitement. To see the ways that your imagination of what could be, can be experienced today in our lives. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Okay.

Here we go. Mustard seeds and leavened bread. And on the agenda today is a sermon flow, horticultural notes, callbacks, and the upside down. But before we jump into Jesus' parable here, I think the way that this parable is structured in Matthew is important for us to make a note of. In the last two weeks, we've seen explanations for each of the parables we've looked at.

And since we're two for two so far, you might start to think that that's normal, it's not. In fact, very rarely does Jesus ever explain his stories. More than that though, those explanations are after the fact. So if you read through Matthew 13, you see that the parables are offered on their own to the crowd and the explanations are then given later specifically to the disciples. And so a sense, if you want to really understand not just a parable, but the flow of Jesus sermon, what he's building in this sermon here, you almost want to go back and you want to read the parables as they would have been heard back to back, building on each other without the interruptions.

And so we have the parable of the soils. And Jesus tells us that God scatters grace everywhere regardless of ROI. And then you have the parable of the weeds. Jesus telling us that in the kingdom, no one is ever written off because no one's story is ever finished. Now, have Jesus telling us about mustard seeds and the unexpected things that can grow from them.

And that's important because all of these seed stories are not just thematically related, they're building on each other as they go. Think of it this way. Jesus, God spreads grace everywhere. Isn't that incredible? Crowd.

Yeah. But what about those who don't accept it? Shouldn't we gather them up and toss them away? Jesus, no. No.

That's not how it's gonna go. The story is still being written. Your job is simply to tend the field. Crowd. Okay.

Sure. Fine. But God's gonna get them in the end. Am I right? I mean, someday, someone has to get punished for all of this.

Jesus, let's try again. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air will come and perch in its branches. Now, just a note here, in the NIV, it does not say birds of the air. I threw that in just for a little pizzazz.

And actually, it is there in the original language, and we're going to talk about it later, so I'm just going to include it now. Anyway, next verse. He told them another parable still. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about 60 pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough. Matthew 13, it's verses 31 to 33.

Now, remember, there's no explanations for these stories given. And so today we're on our own. We're listening much as the original audience did, as the stories might have been told. We've got good soil, bad seeds, and now mustard seeds. So, let's talk about these seeds because there's a lot going on in this image.

And already, there's a few problems here. One, I'm sure you know this, but technically, the mustard seed is not the smallest seed, and technically, it does not grow into a tree at all. Now, my son is at the age right now where he savers the opportunity to correct anything you say that is not precisely correct. And so I'm sure there was some guy in the audience, and let's be honest, we know it was a dude, who put up his hand and he was like, Jesus, well, actually, tobacco seeds are considerably smaller than mustard seeds. And I'm sure you know that the seeds of the epiphytic orchid are actually the smallest in the world.

Over a million of them fit in one tiny seed pod. I was just reading the Wikipedia article this week, by the way. Except, of course, this hypothetical gentleman here in the crowd has missed the point of the story. This isn't designed as a scientific explanation of seeds. It's meant to come alongside the audience.

Right? And with any reasonable expectation, the mustard seed would have been one of the smallest seeds that anyone here ever dealt with on a fairly regular basis. Now, same thing as last week when Jesus talks about sitos and zonin. They are not technically, scientifically the same plant until the harvest. But for the lived experience of the audience, and for the assumed religious teaching of the day, that was the reality.

In fact, it does appear that a mustard seed had become sort of a proverbial reference in the ancient world to tiny things that grew into large things. So later in Matthew, Jesus uses this again, right? If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to a mountain, move and it will, and that would be amazing. And there's references outside the Bible too. Antigonus of Charistus and Diodorus Siculus, these are both ancient philosophers and they both use mustard seeds in their stories as examples of things that are small.

So no, it's not really a problem here that Jesus gets his facts wrong. This is a conventional story where Jesus contrasts a well known example of something small, but grows in surprising ways. And by the way, this is a good point to make a note, a little reminder here, that it's important to take the Bible on its own terms. Treating the Bible as if it is a science textbook or if it is an unbiased historical source. This is always going to disappoint you sooner or later somewhere down the road.

Approaching the Bible on its own terms, embracing it as this fascinating collection of stories and poems and histories and wisdoms, it speaks to something more true than the size of weeds. Then we encounter a story that points us to God's definitive word in the world, which is Jesus who walks with us through the world. Like our point as Christians is not to follow the Bible. The point is to follow the Bible as it points us to Jesus, who then teaches us the way of peace in the world. And here, Jesus' most basic point is that the kingdom of God begins in ways you can barely even see.

Right? A smile for someone who has felt ignored or a kind word for someone who's had a rough day. There's a thousand different ways that small gestures transform our experience of the world and invite us into something divine. Now understand, your smile will not change the world. That's not Jesus' point.

That's not what I'm saying. It's a very nice smile by the way. But I am saying that small things grow into bigger things, grow into life changing things if we let them. And so, as willing as we have to be to open ourselves to the small thing to really get the parable, we also have to be willing to allow that small thing to open us to bigger possibilities as well. However, it's actually the second problem here with this parable.

It's far more interesting to me. And this one is almost surely intentional on Jesus' part. Because what Jesus says is that a tiny mustard seed, yet when it grows, becomes the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree. So the birds of the air come and perch its branches. Now, a mustard plant, as large as it is, is decidedly not a tree.

In fact, they were actually these sort of unruly scrubby bushes that had a tendency to sprawl out all over the place and take over the garden rather than growing up like a tree. And if you've ever had a lilac in your yard, you have an idea of what these plants can do. At our last house, it was overrun with these lilacs, which were beautiful but also a menace, Kind of like my kids. But I spent years trying to kill them, the lilacs not my kids, because they were planted on one side of the yard and they had taken over the house. So they had sunk their roots into our yard, and they would pop up these hard little stalks through the grass.

If you walked on the grass and bare feet, it was really uncomfortable. At one point they'd even come up near a tree that was in our yard, and they were choking out the roots of that tree. Eventually I just had to sell the place and move. The lilacs did smell nice for about two weeks a year, so there was that. However, over time, mustard plants, and lilacs by the way, will develop these very thick trunk like bases.

And mustard plants will even lift themselves up off the ground a couple feet, but they are decidedly not a tree, at least not the kind of tree that's intended by the Greek word that Jesus uses here, dendron. Now last week, I mentioned the rules about zonin, but the same section of Mishnah, it's called Zeder Zereim, which means the order of seeds. Right where the rabbis make an exemption for zonin in a wheat field, they also strictly forbid mustard seeds from being planted anywhere in your garden. And the problem was, these plants were so unruly, and they grew so fast, and just like a lilac, they would spread everywhere that they would inevitably end up creeping across your garden lines and unintentionally leading to mingled seals, which was a no no from Leviticus. So the point being, mustard plants were kind of a menace, and they had to be segregated off away from other seeds.

They were not particularly noble, kind of scrubby actually, and they were certainly not trees. So it would have been kind of surprising to hear Jesus compare the kingdom of God in its glory to a scrubby mustard plant. Except he's not done. Because he says that when a mustard seed grows, it becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches. And what we have to understand here is that none of this is a mistake.

It's a callback that Jesus is making. You see in the Hebrew scriptures, Israel is referred to using this specific language. The image is a prophetic one, and it says that the people of Israel will become a place of refuge for the nations when God's kingdom comes to pass, and it's used several places. So Ezekiel 17 says that this is what the Lord says, I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it. I will break off a tender sprig and plant it on high and lofty mountain.

And it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it and they will find shelter in the shade of its branches. Note the imagery here, something very small, a tiny sprig that grows into something large and enormous cedar and provides shelter for the birds. Familiar, right? Okay.

How about this one? Daniel chapter four. I looked and there before me stood a tree in the middle of the land. Its height was enormous. This tree grew large and strong and its top touched the sky.

It was visible to the ends of the earth. Its leaves were beautiful, its fruit abundant, and on it was food for all. Under it, the wild animals found shelter and the birds of the air lived in its branches. From it, every creature with need was fed. So, these are beautiful images of the kingdom of God.

Images that were embedded in the Jewish consciousness, images that shaped their hope of what the world could be. By the way, it's also why I don't like that our English translations drop birds of the air. And that sounds redundant to us, he's not talking about ostriches, we get it, but it's not redundant. It's part of his call back here to the language of the prophets. So what Jesus is doing is taking this image of a mustard seed.

He's very intentionally appropriating an image of national pride and mashing them together. If you've ever been to Vancouver Island and you've driven across the island to Tofino, you know how immense cedars can become. These enormous trees full of shelter and strength. And Jesus takes that image of Israel and flips it upside down. And he says, yes, the kingdom is remarkable.

Yes, it starts very small and it will grow unstoppable and yes, it will provide shelter and safety to all who come, and if you choose to be a part of it, it will be glorious. But guys, I've got to tell you, it probably won't look like you're expecting it to. And this is a pretty remarkable moment. Especially for a parable that we've heard so many times it's become a little bit innocuous for us, but these images that we often attach in our imagination and the pride that we learn to take in them, slowly what happens is over time, those images become more important to us than the thing we first valued. Slajov Zizek tells the story of caffeine free diet coke.

Right? How there was a drink once called Coca Cola that was made with sugar and caffeine and cocaine and sold as a tonic for quote, most ailments. Now, it tasted awful, but had a certain obvious appeal to it, mainly because of the cocaine. But slowly, we realized that cocaine was not good for you, and so that was removed. And then we realized that massive amounts of sugar weren't good for you as well, and we took that out, and later we began to consider our caffeine tea cake, and that was removed as well.

Today, people spend billions of dollars drinking soda that has nothing to do with the drink that started it all. If you like caffeine free diet coke, that's great. Enjoy yourself. Knock yourself out. But, the point is that over time, we have a way of replacing everything but the name in our imagination of things.

If you go back and you read the prophets again, you'll see them describing the kingdom of God as a cedar on a mountain that provides shelter and safety to all. You'll see God envision abundance that provides nourishment and care for anyone who needs it. And yet slowly over time, that image of welcome and well-being had been repurposed as an image of self preservation and justification. That seems to be a very human thing. And so what Jesus does is tells a story that we've all heard before.

He reminds us of its purpose by telling it with new language this time. Essentially, it's this. The kingdom is everything that you've been hoping for, everything you've been told, but it won't look anything like you've imagined. Here, strength looks more like weakness. And power looks a lot like sacrifice.

And cedars, sometimes they end up looking like scrubby little mustard bushes and a regent, well, that looks like getting down on your knees and washing the feet of those who are most in need. In other words, the kingdom of God is scruffy and scraggly. It has a tendency to show up in the places you least expect, sometimes even the places you least want it to be. But it will still inevitably accomplish its divine purpose. See, this whole idea, this image of God, this image that Jesus gives us here is a little bit mischievous because it's the kind of thing that you plant on the side of your house hoping to contain and look nice, and then all of a sudden it's over there in the front yard and it's past the boundaries of your well manicured garden.

It's showing up in places where quite frankly it shouldn't be. And not only that, you find it making room for the ones you don't want there. You see birds of the air makes sense in the prophet's language. Right? It makes sense in a cedar, birds and trees and all of that.

But as soon as Jesus takes that image and he brings it into a garden, a protected space, and all of a sudden birds of the air take on a different meaning. Right? They become those nuisances that disrupt all your hard work. Look, don't know much about farming, but I've seen a scarecrow. I know what those things are for.

And birds are fine out there in the trees, not here in my cultivated manicured biome. And Jesus says, that may be nice for a garden, but it is not the kingdom of God. Remember, we are well in the realm of farming and seeds in this sermon. Right? Look, there are weeds in the field.

Let's talk about divine patience and the willingness to take the long view. Look, there's a farmer going out to sow. Let's talk about soil and the wasteful grace of God. Look, a mustard seed. Let's talk about how everyone that you shoo away and everyone you secretly hope will turn out to be a weed in the end.

That's who the kingdom is actually built for. So, two short verses, Jesus has told us that the divine footprint in the world starts so small you barely notice. It grows into something you barely recognize, and it welcomes those you barely even want to acknowledge. Then he says this, The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that the woman took and mixed into about 60 pounds of flour until it worked all the way through the dough. Don't worry, we're not going to explore this one in detail.

We're running out of time, I know. But know this, 60 pounds of flour is not a small amount. Look, I love bread. Gluten is delicious. All apologies.

But this is not a dinner Jesus is describing. This is a party. Right? It's an image of extravagant, loving, inviting, welcoming grace that has more than enough for everyone no matter who shows up at the party. In fact, it's the kind of party that you might need if you actually went out and scattered your invitations everywhere you could find.

And the thing about yeast is, at least what I learned from Bobby and her sourdough experiments this year, that as long as you keep it going, it actually never runs out. And if you keep it alive and growing, can keep baking, you can keep giving, you can keep feeding for as long as you want indefinitely. Because that's what this image of the kingdom of God is about, that no matter how many people get invited to the party, no matter how much soil God covers in possibility, or how long God waits for those plants to mature, there will always be shelter in the garden, there will always be room at the table. So, the hope is that you and I might be surprised by where the Kingdom shows up this week. And that once we see it, we might learn how to celebrate it.

And that once we celebrate it, we might figure out how to participate in it, and once we begin to participate in it, that it might continue to grow and expand and show up for someone else in the spaces where they least expect as well. Because that's kind of the kingdom's thing. Let's pray. God, for all the ways that we have tried to hem your imagination in, Manicure it and protect it. Ensure that those who might pick away at it or threaten it or shoot away and pushed aside, that the weeds are ripped out and garden out, and we tend the whole thing to make it look perfect.

Would you remind us that our images of grand cedar sometimes need to be replaced by scruffy scraggly scrubby bushes. That your imagination of how the world might be is not defined by the same grandeur and scope that ours is. It's defined by the ways that goodness pops up all around us in unexpected places. Sometimes even making us uncomfortable, but inviting us into an imagination of the world that continues to grow and expand everywhere. God, might you help us by your spirit to see your kingdom pop up outside of our walls and past our boundaries.

And when that happens, might we begin to see it more and more everywhere. To grab a hold of it, to participate it, to welcome others into it. And in that, might we follow your way in the world. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.