The first parable, that of the grain and weeds, at first seems a little off-putting to me. At first it sounds like it is threatening judgement day. The image used is that of a man who sows good seed, and his enemy who sows weeds among them. And I immediately wonder: what am I? Good or bad? Harvested or burned? But God knows we humans are almost never wholly one thing. We have within us both: the potential to bear fruit and the potential to waste our energy and talents. And for most of us both happens during our lifetimes.
So maybe it is worth a closer look: the translation does not show it, but the weed the story refers to is called darnel. When young it is impossible to distinguish from wheat. And by the time you can tell them apart, their roots are entangled, so that pulling the weeds would mean losing the harvest. Thus, the man decides to wait for the plants to fully grow and then take away the poisonous weed and burn it while the grain is harvested. That means this parable is a promise: God will wait for things to grow and bear fruit, in us and in the world. Judgement is wholly up to him, and he will never risk what is good and precious about us in order to throw out what is bad.
In the second parable the image for the kingdom of heaven is the mustard seed, the tiny seed that grows into a large bush that draws birds to nest in it. I don’t know if you have ever seen a black mustard seed. They are really tiny and it’s easy to mistake them for a speck of dirt. That even a seed this small holds the potential for so much growth is simply amazing. And like this mustard seed, the kingdom of heaven starts out small, almost invisible. It is not something created by the great and powerful, it grows tall and draws people to it, because they can feel God’s love.
The third brief parable uses yeast as the image. I love this image, because I like baking bread. When I was little, I used to do that with my dad. And I love how in a yeast dough the mushy mess becomes something else in my hands. Something solid, something that feels almost alive and that smells amazing. It only takes a tiny bit of yeast, some work and some time to transform the whole thing. In today’s terms: if we manage to start somewhere, acting as if the kingdom of God is already here, the ripple effect will begin to change the world, will bring it together and create something wonderful and nourishing.
These are beautiful images. They speak of so much hope, they are there to encourage a community that feels small and helpless, like many early Christian communities did.
--Ruth Fehlker
Image source: https://www.bethlehemhampden.org/blog/darnel
Quotation source
Quotation source
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