Thursday, Nov. 7

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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

At first glance, there is really not much to this simple little story.  However, when you really begin to dig and to reflect, there is an amazing amount of spiritual truth packed into this short little parable that Jesus told.  It was certainly a surprising thing, and perhaps even a bit shocking, for Jesus’ first century audience to hear Him compare the Kingdom of Heaven to a woman baking bread.  

When you really stop to think about, this parable is just as strange to our ears as it would have been when Jesus first told it.  When we think of a great kingdom, we generally think about power; military power, political power, economic power, etc.  So, comparing the kingdom to a great mountain, or a massive tree, or a mighty wave on the sea, etc. that makes sense to us, but how on earth in God’s long awaited Kingdom like leaven in bread dough??

I think one of the keys here is for us to understand that Jesus is telling that God’s Kingdom is not like any earthly kingdom.  It does not operate according to the same principles, because it does not have the same kind of purpose.  Therefore, we cannot compare the Kingdom of God to the kinds of things we usually associate with kings and kingdoms. 

So...why leaven?

At the time of Jesus, women didn't simply go down to their local grocery store and buy a package of yeast.  In fact, the active ingredient, yeast, was not well understood until modern micro-biology came along.  Leaven works its mystery internally, hidden within the dough, not externally to be seen by others. How it is done, was a mystery, although they could see the dough coming to life, growing, becoming consumed and enriched by the unseen forces within it.  

The crucial point here is that, like leaven, the Kingdom of God works from within.  All earthly kingdoms operate from the outside-in, but the Kingdom of God works the other way around, it works from the inside-out.  This is why leaven is so illustrative of the mysterious internal spiritual growth that is compared the Kingdom of Heaven. 

In the ancient world, when a conquering king or ruler brought his army to your city, he was coming to break down the walls and invade, to take over, from the outside-in.  Even in our day, systems of government or political regimes are attempting to rule by convincing, coercing, and cajoling the masses, from the outside-in...but then Jesus comes along and says “The Kingdom of God is within you.”  

The Kingdom of God is not on the outside trying to force it’s way in, it does not come by coercion or oppression.  The Kingdom starts small, inside of you heart, like a tiny seed, or a little lump of leaven and it slowly begins to transform your life from the inside out!

Even by today's standards a better example would be difficult to imagine. Leaven is not just yeast. Yeast is merely the agent. But until just a very few years ago, when a woman baked bread, she would always set aside a small portion of the leavening, to be used with the next days bread. As that leavening grew, it too can be mixed with the dough, a portion for baking, and one small portion for leavening for still another day. The leavening, though it be the tiniest of portions grows and causes the entire batch of dough to become as it was.  And that is the beautiful picture of how the kingdom of God starts small within us and grows, soon to consume our every thought, our every action. If any portion of you is held aside where the leaven cannot get to it, your pride and those earthly things which you hold precious, then God's leaven cannot grow to its full measure.

Jeff Frazier