Subtle invasion

This week's verses are Luke 13:18-21:

Thus Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? To what should I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the wild birds nested in its branches.”

Again he said, “To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of flour until all the dough had risen.”

This week, Jesus is talking about the kingdom of God again. He compares it to two natural phenomena which would have been familiar to his farm town audience at the time: The massive growth of a plant from a tiny seed, and the seemingly-unstoppable advance of yeast through dough.

The thing about both of these examples is that they're slow. They're incredibly slow. You're not going to have a tree-sized plant grow in a few days after you plant it. It certainly won't grow quickly enough for you to grab a drink and a lawn chair and watch it do its thing.

And yeast is pretty slow too. I have had more experience with making beer and wine in my day than I do in making bread, but it's still helped me to learn a thing or two about yeast. When you pitch the yeast into the sugar water that eventually becomes alcohol, you won't see anything at first. A day later it's gotten cloudy and has started fermenting, but to get the full effect you have to wait weeks or months. Nobody but Jesus can pull of the thing where you start with water and by the end of the evening you've got a fine wine.

So we have these two slow organic processes that Jesus is comparing to the kingdom of God. And almost to drive his point in, he uses absurd examples to illustrate the fruitfulness of his kingdom. What mustard plant is so big that birds are nesting in its branches? What housewife makes what would have been a sixty pound batch of bread?

So we have slow moving natural processes with super-sized results. They're ordinary everyday things and yet extraordinary examples. People always want God's work to be fast and easy to see, but often it is not.

Imagine you came from a culture that didn't know about farming. Imagine you wanted to the power to create mustard and you asked a farmer to teach this power to you. What would you think if he handed you some tiny grain, told you that you had to bury it and wait, that eventually a plant would come up where the seed used to be, but that plant wouldn't be the mustard itself, even though it tasted kind of like it, that you had to wait some more until it flowered, and only after that, months later, would you get more seeds, which you could then use to make your mustard? You'd think it was a scam! It's too absurd to imagine, if you haven't experienced it. The kingdom of God is the same way.

Or what if someone showed you how to make bread? After they added the yeast and it puffed up hours later, you'd think it was magic. You would have no point of reference to compare it to! It's magic powder! And yet we understand bread, because we've seen it. Almost everyone has made bread before, or has seen it made. But when we're waiting on something God is doing, we don't have that same understanding and experience.

I heard someone once say that a person's kingdom is wherever their will is done. So in that context, if God's kingdom is like a mustard seed or a packet of yeast, then sometimes God's plan will unfold in a sort of slow immeasurable way.  Nothing, then maybe something that might be it, then more nothing, and then you wake up and it's there. Are we okay with that?

If modern Christians rewrote the parable to better fit their view of the kingdom, they might have Jesus say that the kingdom of God is like a Netflix subscription ("You only get quality content if you keep putting money in") or a football game ("If you can't tackle enough unbelievers before the clock runs out, you don't make it to the finals!"). We want it to be now. We want it to be about us. But that's not what Jesus said.

Jesus said that spiritual things sometimes happen like they do in nature. And much like nature, it can be influenced by our act. Do farmers only harvest wild mustard? No they plant some seeds of their own and hope. Do bakers gamble that some natural wild yeast will make it into the dough in time for tomorrow's customers? No, they keep their own supply and are attentive in making sure it makes its way into the dough at the right time.

Sometimes the miracles in our lives will spread slowly like yeast. Sometimes our Christian community or our personal character will grow like a slow garden plant. It doesn't mean that God is not working in our midst, or that we are doing "it" wrong. His kingdom will eventually spread to every corner of the world, just like yeast in dough, slowly but surely, without sleeping, until it is everywhere. His plans will grow to maturity, invisibly, in their own time, just like the mustard plant.

Elsewhere, God talks about our faith being like the mustard seed. In that moment, we're like the guy who is learning about mustard for the first time. His promises seem absurd. The story of death and resurrection seems absurd. "Wait, so we're buried, and then a long time passes, and then we come back better? Scam alert!" And yet nature itself testifies to that not being an outrageous thing.

So what do we do with our mustard seed, knowing that it could take some time? Does the farmer forget about it? Does he do something else with the land when he doesn't see a giant plant right away? Does he just go buy ready-made mustard and give up? No, he waits and he expects. He observes and rejoices as his promise eventually finds fulfillment. He's ready when it is time to harvest.

Just like yeast subtly invades the dough it enters, and just like the mustard seed slowly transforms into a plant and a harvest, with the slow sure power that can sometimes split rocks, God's kingdom is invading even as you read this, subtly and surely producing every single thing it was meant to do.

We're trained in our modern age to expect everything to happen quickly. We recognize miracles when they unfold in front of our eyes, but not when they happen over decades or centuries. We testify to the transforming work of what God does in an altar call or a prayer meeting, but we completely miss things that happen months or generations later.

Maybe it's time we teach ourselves to recognize God's subtle invasion of our world, of our lives, of our inner selves, and like the farmer, rejoice when we see the end result of our waiting.