Daily Lesson for November 6, 2014

Today's daily lesson is from Luke chapter 13 verses 20 and 21:

20 And again he said, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? 21 It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.”

The kingdom of God always begins small, hidden, and a little subversively.

When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God he used the image of leaven. What a shock that must have been to his hearers as throughout the Scriptures leaven is always used as a negative image and something to be avoided --"A little leaven spoils the loaf."

But Jesus intended to shock his hearers into thinking in new ways -- to see the coming of the kingdom of God in new ways. So, he said, it is like a little tiny bit of leaven that a woman hides in a loaf until the whole thing is leavened.  I was in a Bible study with some seminary students not long ago and we were reflecting on the meaning of this image. "So let me get this right," one of the students said, "so Jesus is saying the kingdom of God is like a passive aggressive baker?"  It certainly gets us thinking.

Jesus wants his hearers to know that even though it may not be big or extravagant or even respectable the kingdom of God is among us. Even if it has to be small, hidden, and subversive right now.  And one day, it will grow to be large, impossible to ignore, and even beautiful.

When I think of this text I always think of the little black boy in the ghettos of Sophiatown who in the 1930s saw and was stunned when the white Anglican priest Trevor Huddleston doffed his hat to the boy's mother.  The act was small, yet subversively defiant  of the Apartheid racial cast system of the day. And seeing it, the little boy -- who would grow up to be Desmond Tutu -- later said you could have knocked him over with a feather; his people, black Africans, were a people worthy of having whites doff their hats.

The Kingdom of God may be small, it may be hidden, it may even have to be subversive; but one day it will leaven the whole world.