Wednesday night, in our study through the Gospel of Luke, we found ourselves in chapter 13, where Jesus tells two brief parables that are easy to overlook, especially for modern people.

In the first, Jesus says the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that someone plants in a garden. That might sound harmless enough—until you realize mustard was considered a weed in the ancient world. Pliny the Elder, writing around the same time, described it as a nuisance: once it takes root, it’s nearly impossible to remove. Why would anyone plant something so invasive?  It's almost like comparing the kingdom of God to a bacterial infection. 

And then Jesus says the kingdom is like yeast that a woman mixes into 60 pounds of flour. This isn’t instant yeast from a packet you buy at the grocer, but barm—fermented, rotting starter, a symbol of corruption. And yet Jesus praises its quiet power to work its way through the whole mass of sixty pounds of dough, more than enough to feed one house but an entire neighborhood.

These aren’t quaint metaphors but intentional, even subversive provocations. The kingdom of God, Jesus says, doesn’t emerge with fanfare. Rather, it infiltrates. It disrupts. It sneaks in and takes over what was clean and tidy and predictable, and remakes it from within.

So perhaps the question isn’t whether we’re doing “big things for God,” but whether we’ve allowed the kingdom to unsettle us. Has it gotten into the corners of our lives we prefer to keep clean and controlled? Has it challenged the tidy systems—religious, political, personal—we’ve arranged for our own comfort? The kingdom doesn’t ask for permission. It spreads like a weed. It ferments like yeast. It refuses to be contained or humanly managed.

Jesus is not offering an inspirational image. He’s warning us: God’s reign will grow, with or without your consent—and it may not look like anything you were expecting.

Maranatha,

Jordy