Jesus now compares the kingdom to yeast added to dough.
Matthew reports, "Jesus always used stories and illustrations like these when speaking to crowds."
This should tell us something about how we communicate with people about religious faith.
Referring back to the Os Guinness post below, in question and answer time with Guinness, he commented that science fiction and fantasy stories can be powerful ways to talk about Christianity because these stories are not locked into a particular time and place. In some ways they are more universal, he said.
Indeed, stories engage the imagination and pique the curiosity in ways that sometimes a direct presentation does not.
I sometimes wonder what kind of parables would Jesus have told if he were teaching in an era that was industrial instead of agrarian.
Or is the kingdom best illustrated by organic and biological images?
Would it sound appealing to describe the kingdom as a locomotive? The kingdom is like a big train that is powerful and it brings people along and it has a destination.
Is it appealing? More important is it accurate?
I suppose it is accurate?
If comparably accurate then the aesthetic appeal would be important.
I think there are advantages to agrarian images. The strength is that they are living things. Inherent to biological systems are the concepts of growth and change and expansion and multiplication. Mechanical systems do not have any of those traits.
In any case, the images so far in Matthew 13 have all been agricultural... seeds and soils, wheat and weeds, mustard seed and now yeast. And these little things can yield big results.
Image source: http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040816/images/yeast.jpg
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