Gospel: Luke 13: 18-21
Every image and parable Jesus uses to refer to the kingdom of God is something humble and lowly, something common and ordinary. The kingdom is never described in bombastic, bellicose terms. It is not at all described in terms familiar to earthly realms where pride, hyperbole, and exaggeration rule. The kingdom of God is not about any of those things.
Today's images are yeast and tiny mustard seeds - miniscule items that produce immense results for the benefit of others. Yeast makes bread rise and so nourish body and soul alike. The mustard seed produces an abode for the birds as well as spice for human beings. When each accomplishes its work, they vanish from existence, becoming entirely this new creation it helped bring into existence. Their previous identity is entirely swept away into this new being.
That is the kingdom of God - not the object itself but the entire process itself, dying to self and rising to an entirely new being and new identity. In choosing to become a follower of Jesus we choose this path to the kingdom, the dying of one self into the becoming of a new self. Just as one day dies to become a new one, just as a seed dies to become a plant, so we die to one self and become a new creation again and again until we are one with the Lord.
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