Of Mustard Seeds And Leaven

Recently I have been reflecting on two events that have boosted my spirits and given me some hope. One was the World Cup that takes place every four years (we just witnessed the men’s World Cup this year and we get to witness the women’s next year). The other event was the Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance which takes place every year in Trumansburg.

The World Cup saw people from all over the world converge on the Americas and, in spite of everything that divides us in this world, come together in ways that just don’t get to happen in everyday life.

The Grassroots Festival is an incredible 4 day music and dance festival that really has a circus and Woodstock kind of feel – offering participants a vision of what life could be like when we let our hearts and bodies unite in music and movement. I have previously written more about the festival as an alternative vision of the world if you want to check it out here.

These were beautiful events that somehow seemed to exist outside of “normal” time and space – and yet they were very real.

Our first reading from Jeremiah 13 paints a picture of the people who have lost their way. God instructs Jeremiah to take a leather loincloth that has been worn and bury it in the ground for a period of time. When it is unearthed, it has rotten, and God says that this is exactly like what has happened to the people. They have failed to listen to God’s decrees and ways and, thus, have gone rotten on the inside. The people now “walk in the stubbornness of their hearts, and follow strange gods to serve and adore them.”

That last line really stands out for me about people following and adoring “strange gods.” The world we live in seems hell bent on following and seemingly adoring the gods of violence and war. The gods of money and wealth. The gods of power and control.

And it’s not looking good for us as a collective.

But that’s not the only reality.

In the gospel from Mathew 13, Jesus says that the “The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed” which starts as a small plant but then grows into a large plant that the birds come nest in. He also says that “The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast,” that gets hidden in dough and causes it to rise. The gospel goes on to say that he spoke to the crowds in parables to fulfill what was said in the Hebrew scriptures (Psalm 78) that he would “announce what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world.”

What I love about this gospel reading is that it reminds us that – even in the midst of the trouble we see all around us – there are subversive and revolutionary forces at work!

Take the mustard seed, for example. While this may not mean much to our ears, Jesus’ agrarian listeners would have known that you never sow a mustard seed in the ground because it grows quickly and spreads indiscriminately – choking out the more valuable crops. If it helps, think about dandelions or mint or English ivy in our context. These plants are feral. Undomesticated. Wild. They spread quickly and take over nicely manicured laws and gardens – kind of like an invasive species!

Furthermore, the mustard plant was not the biggest, strongest or most impressive plant around. It was kind of scraggly, but is spread everywhere once it was introduced and other wild creatures took refuge in its branches.

How’s that for an image of heaven!

Or how about yeast. Leaven was considered unholy and was not supposed to be offered on the altar in the temple. It was also forbidden during Passover. And so Jesus takes this symbol of fermentation and corruption and says that God’s kin-dom is just like that! The Leaven of God gets in the mix and corrupts the world order! What is more is that just a little yeast can change a whole lot of flour.

So the question becomes, “What can we learn from mustard seeds and leaven?”

This brings me back to the World Cup and Grassroots.

No matter what is going on in our world, God’s kin-dom is breaking through – subverting the status quo. And if we learn anything from the mustard seed and the leaven we learn that this subversion does not need to be the biggest, the prettiest or even the most plentiful. A little goes a long way!

Events like the World Cup and Grassroots not only remind us that another world is possible but they themselves set subversive energies in motion that make alternatives more possible in the world. They show us that in a world that peddles scarcity, there can be enough. They show us that in a world that teaches us to divide, we can come together. They show us that in a world that wants us to disconnect from ourselves and each other, we can dance and sing and move and feel together.

Author and activist adrienne maree brown’s work reminds me a lot of today’s gospel as she tries to imagine a different world for all of us to live in. She asks, “how do we get in a right relationship with change that allows us to harness and shape things, towards community, towards liberation, towards justice?” How do we become mustard seeds and leaven for community, liberation and justice?

As Fr. Jim once said, “We are God’s succession plan,” and, as such, we are invited to remember what might lie deeply hidden within all of us – that we are not, in fact, separate from one another and that our destiny is not to dominate or do violence or harm one another.

We are here to dance and sing and move and love and share and grow and we are called to bring this infectious and subversive energy wherever we go. This is energy that once it is introduced starts to upend the social order and break down separations.

Watch out world. The mustard seeds and leaven are coming. In fact, they have already been here for a long time.