Jesus was quite a storyteller. Not all of his parables – those open-ended stories that are designed to make you think – are original to Jesus, but he liked to put his own twist on them. One way to tell where a parable ends and commentary added by the editor who put the Gospel in its final shape begins, look for the question. It may be stated or even implied. A parable, like the geometric figure with the same name, invites us into the infinite view of God. It is meant to expand to as far as we can follow.
In the Gospel of Luke (Luke 13:18-21) Jesus tells two very brief parables that convey a united message: the mustard seed and the yeast. A mustard seed is tiny, yet in the right environment, it can grow into quite a large bush. Yeast, for anyone who bakes with it, is a powerful agent of transformation. Think of the difference between flat bread and a fresh from the oven loaf or steaming rolls.
What is Jesus trying to get across? He compares each of these (the tiny seed and the bit of yeast) to God’s Kingdom. The sense that I pick up is that whatever little action we take that builds up God’s Kingdom (and makes our world better for everyone) has a potential way beyond what we might expect or imagine. Any act of kindness, compassion, integrity, reconciliation, peacefulness, love has a lasting and powerful effect, because God is with us in the doing. And we may not even know how people have been touched, or how our world has been made more human.