The Roman poet and satirist Horace, who died only a few years before the birth of Jesus, is remembered as saying that “Life is largely a matter of expectation.” [SLIDE 1] We live with the expectation that the sun will come up, tomorrow; we expect a solution to the fuel crisis and the water crisis, and we expect that our Government will govern with our best interests at heart. We live in expectation that this sermon will have a point, and that afterwards we will enjoy another of Julie’s famous mission lunches. Horace said that “Life is largely a matter of expectation.” And then, one thousand, seven hundred or so years later, a French author and satirist by the name of Voltaire, stumbled upon the same realisation and said that “We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.” [SLIDE 2] How often do we managed to live in the now? To actually take the time to experience what we are experiencing in the present, rather than thinking and looking forward to whatever is next. As a kid you want to go to school, when you’re at school you want to go home, when you’re at primary school, you want to go to high school, when you’re at high school, you want to get out into the real world and get a job, and then when you’re working you want to retire...I am living in the excitement and the expectation of the birth of mine and Casey’s first child – and my honest prayer is that I will be able to take the time to live in the now and experience the joy of new life, and not project an expectation of life into the future. [SLIDE 3]

Week three of Matthew’s great sermon of parables, and we find ourselves with what seems to be the dregs. We’ve had two weeks focussed on two parables – the sower, and then the wheat and the weeds. And this week, we have either five or six, depending on whose scholarship you want to buy into. The parable of the mustard seed, the yeast, the treasure hidden in a field, the pearl of great value, the drag net and the disciple scribe. Our expectation of today is to explore more deeply, the parable of the mustard seed and the yeast, and how God can speak to us through it this day, and perhaps through a giant green ogre, called Shrek. [show clip from ‘Shrek’ where Shrek and Donkey have rescued Princess Fiona, end when Shrek says, “You were expecting Prince Charming?” and Fiona responds, “Yes, actually!” ]

How often does our life turn out like what Princess Fiona experienced? Minus the dragon, the green ogre and the talking donkey. But how often do we build up the picture of our future, have in our minds eyes the ‘way things are meant to be’ only to have the experience of it leaving us cold, or disappointed. Those of you who have seen Shrek, or at least who are familiar with Fairy Tales will know that often what accompanies failed expectations like those Princess Fiona’s is a gift of a new and exciting future, in a most unexpected way. I had assumed that this expectant way of living, this living life always with the expectation of something perfect, something other, on the horizon to be a purely modern thing – perhaps a result of the industrial, computerised instantaneous gratification age. But, as we learn from our mates Horace, and Voltaire, and not surprisingly from the Bible itself, the human experience is one which has constantly one foot in the present, and one foot in the future. Whether it be for us like having one foot in our present experience of church, and one foot in our future church which has grown as people have found hope and meaning in God, or perhaps having one foot in the present experience of life, and one foot in the expectant life external, as human beings, and as humans in relationship with God this seems to be our lot. And perhaps it has to do with the very nature of God.

If you have your bibles with you, turn with me to the book of Exodus – it is in the front – and turn to Chapter 3, where we find Moses coming into contact with the Lord our God in the burning bush. Before that happens, the Israelites who were in slavery, has been groaning and crying out to God in hope and expectation and God decides to act in the most unexpected way. [SLIDE 4] Reading from verse 13

But Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you”, and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ ¹⁴God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’

“I am who I am” is the English attempt to make sense of the Hebrew “Yahweh” which in its most basic form is simply the verb ‘to be.’ [SLIDE 5] Some of your bibles may have a footnote next to the name of God, which says something like “I am what I am, or I will be what I will be.” There is a sense in which the very nature of God is becoming, is moving, and is creating. And it is perhaps this creative future aspect of God, which has found its way into our lives and the way we live them in the form of an expectant heart. [SLIDE 6]

The Biblical narrative is filled with stories of the Israelites living in expectation. The nature of the covenant between themselves and God is one of expectation. The people lived with the expectation of the Promised Land, and their experience of that was unexpected. They lived with the expectation that they would be a stable kingdom, a light to the nations, and yet, the experience of that was unexpected. When their land was invaded, they lived in expectation of the Lord rescuing them. When they were taken into exile, they lived with the expectation of God’s deliverance. The Prophets developed the expectation among the people for a Saviour to come, an anointed one of God, a Messiah. These were among the expectations of the people. As Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham says “They (as in the Israelites) had been seeing it as the long story of how God would redeem Israel from suffering, but it was instead the story of how God would redeem Israel through suffering.” The people had lived, and reinforced and convinced themselves that God will act in this expected way, but all the while God was working along a completely different track towards the same end. And this seems to be the way of God, the way of the kingdom – the unexpected activities of grace.

The Jewish people, in whose tradition we stand, expected a Messiah who would come as a great military leader, and as a mighty King. A Saviour who would ride a mighty war horse, carry a flaming sword and destroy the Roman control of their holy places, restoring the kingdom of heaven to its place as the strong, dominant and central feature of society. That is what was expected. What God did, was send a humble teacher, who rode a donkey and whose message about the kingdom caused the Roman occupiers at the point of a sword to crucify him in view of the holy places. Certainly not the expected outcome.

It is very easy and comfortable from our position 2000 years away from these parables – with the benefit of resurrection experiences, and hundreds if not thousands of years of scholarly exploration of the scriptures and their meanings for us to scoff at how often the ancient Jews missed the messages of Jesus and the Kingdom. [SLIDE 7] Eugene Boring – I know, terrible name – comments that “Contemporary readers who tend to respond a bit too smugly to ancient Jews’ rejection of the Christ – Because Jesus did not confirm to their biblical and traditional expectations of what the Christ was supposed to be like – may learn from the parables not to have fixed images of what the kingdom of God must be. The presence of God’s kingdom in our own world may scandalize our own biblical and traditional expectations of where and how God’s kingdom is supposed to be present.[i] “ [SLIDE 8]

Two of our parables speak of the cost and joy of discipleship – selling all that we have, removing all our distractions for the joy we find in the kingdom of God. Another speaks, similarly to the parable of the wheat and weeds, of the nature of the kingdom – containing both good and bad fish, and about the forthcoming judgement. But the two of primary interest today speak to us of scandal. A scandal that is the kingdom of God that failing in every way to live up to the expectations of the people, because both the mustard plant and yeast were commonly used negative images in first-century Judaism. Matthew issues a warning to the disciples about being wary of the yeast of the Pharisees (Matt 16), and passes judgement of the disciple’s lack of faith by comparing them to mustard seeds (Matt 17). In the first century mustard plants were nothing but despised weeds, and yeast was the item, physically cleaned out of the house before Passover, lest it corrupt the unleavened bread of the celebration. So, in what direction do the parables themselves point us? Perhaps towards the defiance of our traditional and comfortable expectations?[ii] [SLIDE 9]

³¹ He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; ³²it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’

I have often heard and perhaps you expected this parable to be used as a basis for arguing simply that from small beginnings the kingdom of God has grown will grow, is growing into something much larger. But let us look at this through first century eyes, and see what it says to us about the kingdom of heaven. As mentioned, the mustard plant was commonly seen as a weed in and around Israel. It grew prolifically when given half a chance. A land owner would certainly not sow mustard in a field. In fact Leviticus 19 strictly prohibits the planting of Mustard in a field for fear of cross contamination which was seen as an abomination before God.

The image of the kingdom being like a tree is not new – we could say that as an image it was expected, as it is part of Israel’s heritage. In the book of the Prophets Ezekiel and Daniel respectively, we read of the nation of Israel and the kingdom of God being likened to the Cedars of Lebanon. [SLIDE 10]

Ezekiel 17:6 On the mountain height of Israel I will plant it, in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar. Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. (see also Ezekiel 31:6; Daniel 4:12 & 21)

Now the Cedars of Lebanon are among the biggest, mightiest tress in the Middle East – [SLIDE 11] they are tall, strong and powerful – a great metaphor for the kingdom. So the tree imagery worked well and was expected, however the mustard plant could be never mistaken for a tree. [SLIDE 12] It is an annual plant, an herb in actual fact and at very best it could be called part of a shrubbery. A bird, any bigger than a sparrow would struggle to make a next in its branches – which for some reason Matthew affirms, contradicting the original parable that we find in Mark’s Gospel. Today the idea would be similar, if we all understood that the Kingdom of heaven is like a Mighty River Red-Gum, with a 6 metre round trunk and I got up here to tell you, that the kingdom of heaven is like a sourer sob. [SLIDE 13]

So in this parable – Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a weed that if we planted it in our fields would make us unclean, and to a shrub that is physically unable to provide safety to the birds of the air. So for first century hearers, and also for us, this parable functions not only to disarm us about our expectations about the kingdom but also as an encouraging and perhaps a threatening image to those weeds and bad fish of the other parables, when the present lowliness of a mustard tree like kingdom is contrast with its potential for greatness and growth. [SLIDE 14]

³³ He told them another parable: ‘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.’

Now before we explore this parable, we need to alter some of the English words so it becomes closer to the original Greek. The NRSV and the NIV and some other modern translation used “mixed in with” to describe the action of the women towards the yeast, when the Greek word is [ἐνέκρυψεν] enkrypto, from where we get words like cryptic and the like, means to hide or conceal in – rather than to mix. And the reason for this distinction –becomes clear when you consider what yeast – or leaven, as it was originally written was.

In the first century “Leaven was made by taking a piece of bread and storing it in a damp, dark place until mould forms. The bread rots and decays, unlike modern yeast, which is domesticated and created in a lab.”[iii] Leaven is a mould, it is created by the decay of something else – which not surprisingly meant that in Jewish law it was unclean. So this parable begins with comparing the kingdom of heaven with mould. It then moves on.

A women is the one who is dealing with the leaven. As I have spoken on before, in the first century women were without rights, voice or power. Because of their biology, for weeks at a time they were considered unclean for society. Whereas men were seen as pure, women were seen as impure. So we have the kingdom of heaven being compared to an unclean product created by the death of something else, in the hands of an impure woman.

We move on, the women then hides or conceals the leaven in three measures of wheat – thus by Jewish standards, corrupting the entire amount. Scholars say that three measure of wheat would have been enough to bake bread to feed one hundred mouths. So to a first century ear, the kingdom of heaven is a strange place – perhaps this parable would have been met with declarations of blasphemy, because rather than as the culture dictated the kingdom being unleavened (like the Passover meal), and male and out in the open, Jesus is comparing it to leavened bread, made by a women with hidden ingredients.

[SLIDE 15] When combined, these two parables provide us with an image of the kingdom of God that is so unexpected as to be disarming, and perhaps unsettling. The kingdom of heaven is like an unclean weed, like an unattractive shrub, it is like someone who is looked down upon working with unclean food. The kingdom of heaven is like all these things and yet produces in abundance – let’s not forget that three measures of flour will feed 100 hundred mouths. The kingdom of heaven is unexpected in its appearance and yet abundant, and generous and will spread like wildfire – like leaven through flour and like a weed across a field.

These parables call into question our expectations of the kingdom of God. Based on these parables, what is the kingdom like? How are we going to recognise it? Perhaps in this day the same questions need to be asked in relation to the church and its role in the kingdom. What is church, and how do we know it when we have found it? Is it here, or is it expectant, emerging? When we consider the history of the people’s expectations of God and how in almost all circumstances God fails to meet them, and yet at the same time exceeds them with abundance, what expectations of ours – perhaps about our church, about our place in its ministry, expectations about our futures, about our mission what expectations are we holding onto, and not seeing where God has exceeded them in new and exciting ways. They say that rules are meant to be broken, but based on our parables this morning, perhaps it is expectations that are meant to be broken. The Messiah we found in Jesus of Nazareth was so far from the expectations that he was missed. To paraphrase Boring again, we who as modern readers tend to respond a bit too smugly to ancient Jews’ rejection of the Christ – Because Jesus did not confirm to their biblical and traditional expectations of what the Christ was supposed to be like – may learn from the parables not to have fixed images of what the kingdom of God must be. The presence of God’s kingdom in our own world may scandalize our own biblical and traditional expectations of where and how God’s kingdom is supposed to be present.