What is something good that lies deep inside you?
Maybe it is so small that others cannot see it, but you know that it is true.
Through a mustard seed, yeast, hidden treasure, a pearl, and a dragnet full of fish, Jesus asks us (Matthew 13) to pay attention to those small things.
The mustard seed begins as a speck and becomes a tree that is 30 feet tall.
The yeast mixed with 40 to 50 pounds of flour is enough to feed 100 people.
Buried treasure and a sought-after pearl are so valuable they are worth selling everything to acquire.
And a messy net full of fish is worth the time and effort to find what is good.
No matter which life experience the listener comes from, God’s value for small things never changes.
God values what is hidden.
When the seed goes in the ground, yeast is buried in flour, treasure is lost in a field, a pearl must be found, and fish lurk deep within the sea, Jesus emphasizes how the kingdom is not obvious. It works when we do not expect it, and it requires someone to go looking for it.
I once cared for a woman so beaten and bruised by life that hopelessness may have been her middle name. Known as Lil’ Bit on the street, she stood less than five feet tall and weighed under 100 pounds soaking wet. After a horrific domestic incident, she depended on a crutch and lived with a plate in her head. Her “baba,” as she would call the fifth of vodka she often carried, was the only way she knew to alleviate the pain.
“I just wish God would let me die tonight,” she said the night I met her. To the naked eye, hopelessness was all there was. And for years, that’s all I saw as well.
Then there was the day we rode to the store to pick out some things for her new apartment. My back seat filled with purple things, a beautiful smile cracked across her face as she admired her new hat—also purple—in my passenger-side window.
Humanity may have been buried in her hopelessness for a time, but nurture and love brought the best of her back to the surface.
God values disproportionate outcomes.
When the seed the size of sand becomes a tree strong enough to hold nests, a lump of leaven becomes a feast, and a small thing in a field becomes worthy of liquidating assets, Jesus demonstrates how the kingdom is counter-cultural. The reward is often expansive, extensive, and extravagant compared with the investment.
“Some people look like they have it all together on the outside, but they are dying on the inside,” my friend Rachel used to explain to me. “I wear my pain on the outside, and people judge me for it. But there is a lot of good inside of me.”
Tattoos and brightly colored hair may have been the first thing people saw when they met Rachel, but I often thought it kept people from seeing what an incredible person she was.
Rachel, for instance, could go into an apartment of someone who was having trouble keeping it clean without judgment. She’d crank the music and engage the person living there, who often was ashamed they needed help. In an hour or two, the person and their living space came alive again.
While her appearance may have kept the world from appreciating what she was capable of, Rachel could see possibilities where others could not.
God values full participation.
Through a man who finds treasure and sells what he has, and a merchant who does the same to acquire a pearl, Jesus describes a kingdom that is so extraordinary that people are willing to reorganize their entire lives around it.
It has been my life’s privilege to learn what the unhoused community has to teach us about truly being neighbors. I’ve seen them share their boots with someone else when they get a new pair. One of the reasons some of them have so much stuff is because they know so many others who need things.
Overcoming addiction means reworking everything that is comfortable. Moving on from depression means taking on a new state of being. Whatever it is, there is a surrender, a struggle, in becoming something new. But the gain is worthy of all that they have.
The Matthew 13 metaphors emphasize the power hidden in things that seem far too small and insignificant to be important. As I personally like to remind people from my 5’0” view of the world, dynamite does indeed come in small packages. There are no minor things and no minor people in God’s kingdom.
Small things have a way of working, even when the circumstances seem impossible. Yeast, when hidden in the flour, draws our attention to the quiet, invisible way that God is still at work when we are surrounded by things that seem far from the kingdom.
These stories are a recognition that good and bad exist in the sea of our lives together. Our job is to seek the good in all things; to look for where God is at work in the world, knowing that God will take care of all that is not of God.
– Dr. Meghann Cotter
Executive Servant-Leader
Micah Ecumenical Ministries