Wednesday, October 28

He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”  - Matthew 13:33

The common interpretation of this parable is very similar to that given for the parable right before it, the parable of the mustard seed: that the kingdom of God starts out small and seemingly insignificant, but eventually grows in importance and in impact. While this is certainly an accurate understanding, some commentators have suggested that this parable has a much more radical -even subversive- edge to it. 

In this view, a parable’s purpose is to challenge the religious status quo, such that the core meaning of most of the parables is: “God is not like you thought.” The parable of the yeast would have been especially disturbing to his first century audience. All three of the elements of the analogy - the yeast, the woman, and the amount of flour - would have challenged the theological common sense of the day.

In fact, one of the oft-missed surprises of the parable was the analogy of the activity of God being compared with the domestic tasks of a woman. Women in first century Jewish society may have been better off than in some other cultures of the ancient world, but they were still second-rate citizens, considered weak, prone to sin, and in need of the guidance and protection of a father or husband.  

Throughout the gospels, Jesus is portrayed as treating women with extraordinary respect and compassion. But the parable goes further in depicting the woman as an agent of the kingdom, in her own sphere of influence. This more positive view of women is expressed most fully in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

We have already seen how yeast was often considered a symbol of corruption and decay in Jewish tradition, so it would have been shocking for Jesus’ audience to hear the kingdom of God to be compared to yeast. His implication seems to be that the new principles of the kingdom of God will challenge traditional views about what the kingdom of God is really like.

In John 6:30, Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees to prove that He is indeed the Messianic King they have been waiting for: 
So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”  Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.   - John 6:30-35

This point is placed squarely into the parable of the leaven: The LEAVEN gives LIFE; the flour, or the world, is lifeless. Jesus made this clear in John 3:6: "Flesh gives birth to flesh, but Spirit gives birth to spirit." So now we see a clearer and truer picture as to the real significance of the Parable of the leaven: The Woman is Jesus Christ, the Leaven, his words his teaching, and the lifeless flower, is us, the whole world, in the flesh, and of the flesh, spiritually lifeless. We are lifeless lumps of dough until Christ places the life-giving leaven of His gospel into our lives!

Jeff Frazier