Sermon - 8th Sunday After Pentecost (7/26/2020)
1 Kgs. 3:5-12; Ps. 119:129-136; Rom. 8:26-39; Mt. 13:31-33, 44-52
“Have you understood all this?” Jesus asked his disciples. “Yes,” they answered. Have you ever taught a class or had to explain something to people at work? You finish and ask Do you understand? You get blank stares and a one-word answer: Yes. Any questions? No. You know what that means: They do not understand. They don’t even understand well enough to ask an intelligent question. They just hope this won’t be on the test.
Let’s take one: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” The word translated “mixed in” is ἐνέκρυψεν, from which we get the English word “encrypted.” The kingdom of heaven is like the yeast that a woman hides in three measures of flour – that’s 60 cups of flour, enough to make maybe 100 pounds of dough. Which is a lot of dough. What is Jesus trying to say?
For one thing, that the kingdom of heaven is present quietly, almost hidden, in the world. You know the yeast is in the dough when you see the dough rise – but you cannot see the yeast. You cannot find yeast in dough – but it’s everywhere and it’s working on everything. So it is with the kingdom of heaven – you cannot see it, but it is everywhere and it is working whether you can detect it or not.
For another thing, the woman in the parable of Jesus isn’t just making a couple of dinner rolls, she’s making 100 pounds of dough – she’s enough bread to feed an army. The kingdom of heaven is like the yeast that a woman uses to make an abundance of bread, more bread than one person or even one family can eat, so bread that is going to be shared. Just as the woman hides yeast in dough in order to produce enough food for a banquet, so God hides the kingdom in the world so that there will be an abundance for all to share.
I could go on. The way bread is made, the yeast is mixed with the flour to make the dough – meaning there’s no such thing as dough without yeast. In the same way that there was never a time when there was dough without yeast, so there was never a time when the kingdom of heaven was not present and active in the world. Maybe we didn’t know it, maybe we weren’t aware of it, but the kingdom of heaven has always been active and working. So it's not our job to bring the kingdom of heaven into the world, just as it's never our job to put yeast into dough … the baker hid it there from the beginning. We just discover it and enjoy the benefits.
And likewise, there’s no way to take the yeast out of the dough once the dough has been made. I can assure, you, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate” the yeast from the dough. And so it is with the kingdom of heaven, as Paul says in our reading today from Romans. There is nothing that can separate us from God’s love in Jesus Christ, there is nothing that can separate the kingdom of heaven from us. It’s like the yeast in the dough, it’s impossible to separate them.
One more, if this doesn’t go too far. Once the yeast has been mixed for good into the dough, what does it do, how does it work? The yeast does its magic and emits carbon dioxide – the same thing that we exhale when we breathe. The yeast makes the dough rise by its breath. And in the language of Jesus, in both Hebrew and Greek, the word for “breath” is the same word as the word for “spirit.” The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman caused to breath its warm breath within the dough to make it grow. The Spirit of God, Paul says, prays within us, with sighs too deep for words. Even though we don’t know how to pray as we ought, the Spirit is already there, breathing God’s warm breath, bringing the world to life, drawing us into God’s own life.
Have you understood all this, asks Jesus? Maybe you’ll say yes. Maybe you’ll say, thanks Pastor for explaining that. Now I see what Jesus was trying to get across. I see, the kingdom of heaven is like yeast hidden in dough, yes, that’s an image that makes sense to me now. Now I understand.
But do we understand? The disciples of Jesus said that they understood, but I don’t think that they did, and I’m not sure that we really do either. For one thing, we think of the kingdom of heaven, or at least religion, as something that we are supposed to do. We think God is present when we announce the gospel or teach people Scripture or invite people into the church or when we feed the hungry or give to the poor. For centuries the church has sent missionaries to the heathen assuming that we have the kingdom of heaven and they don’t. And yet Jesus told us that the kingdom of heaven is like the yeast that’s always been hidden in the dough. God is already present and working, the gospel tells us the good news of what God has already been up to, the Scriptures teach us how to recognize how God has already been active in the world – and these are all good things, but only because God was there first.
We worry about whether we know how to pray. Am I speaking with God correctly? What am I supposed to say? How do I know anyone is listening? Why don’t I always feel God’s presence when I pray? We worry about these things because we have not yet understood what Paul says today, that none of us knows how to pray as we ought – but God does. God is already a deep and profound conversation that has been going on from all eternity – that’s one reason why it’s important that God is a Trinity, God is not just one person muttering to himself, God is a dynamic relationship among persons and we’re invited along for the ride. And so the Spirit is already praying according to the will of God, with sighs too deep for words – and we don’t have to speak, we can just listen. And like the yeast whose warm breath fills the dough with life, we can be carried along with the prayer of the Spirit and worrying about what we’re supposed to do is so completely beside the point.
Do we really understand that the kingdom of heaven is like yeast hidden in the dough, and for those who know it’s there, for those who have learned to see God hidden in the things of this world, all things work together for good? Do we really understand that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord?” Do we really understand that the kingdom of heaven is like the yeast that is already in the dough and can’t be taken out of it, that God’s loving presence is here to stay no matter what terrible things may happen?
The disciples of Jesus said they understood this, but if they had, they wouldn’t have lost it when Jesus was crucified. Only later, after Easter, did they begin to understand that the kingdom of heaven is so much closer to us than we realize, that God’s presence is hidden in the middle of everything, even what seems like the gravest disaster, that there is truly nothing that can ever separate us from the love of God.