The Kingdom is in the Small Things!

Last Updated on: August 1, 2026

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field… The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour…” (Matthew 13:31–33)

My father used to refer to these short stories and the ones accompanying them as ‘the MacDonaldtown Parables’. MacDonaldtown Railway Station was the closest railway station to my childhood home – a tiny station, tucked in alongside some of Sydney’s major stations like Central and Town Hall. It was originally built to service the rail repair yards, which were relocated long ago. Few people get on or off there now. You blink and you’ve passed it.

This parallels our journey through Matthew’s gospel, where we’ve stopped off at some major parables – the Parable of the Sower, the Lost Sheep, the Prodigal Son. These tend to be major stopping points on any journey through the Gospels. Not so with the Parable of the Mustard Seed or the story of the Woman Making Bread. Not many pilgrims get on or off at these stops.

In all of my pastoral visits to the sick and dying, I am yet to have anyone say to me, “Father, before I die, read to me again the Parable of the Mustard Seed!” No. Few of us get on or off here, and I think that is to our detriment.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown, it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Matthew 13:31-32)

I’ve never planted a mustard seed, and I think part of the humour of this story is that, in Jesus’ day, no one ever did deliberately plant mustard seeds. Mustard bushes were noxious weeds. As Pliny the Elder complained, once a mustard bush takes root, “it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it.” (Natural History 19.170) Farmers didn’t cultivate mustard; they tried to keep it out.

Jesus says the kingdom is like this seed – something tiny, unimpressive, and frankly unwanted that suddenly erupts into a sprawling, disruptive shrub. Birds of the air come and build their nests in the branches of this overgrown bush – small birds, at any rate, and probably the birds you’d hoped your scarecrow would keep away. Even so, the mysterious way in which this tiny seed suddenly sprouts into an enormous disruptive shrub is quite bizarre, unruly, and strangely hopeful.

I do love mustard, of course, though last time I picked up a jar of Keen’s mustard I had a sudden case of Dijon Vu – that experience where you could have sworn you’d had that mustard before! (Jesus’ parables were intended to make us smile).

“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” (Matthew 13:33)

Unless you’re a baker, you’ll miss the joke here. Jesus is talking about an absurdly large amount of dough in this parable – the equivalent of 40 kilograms of flour!

Interestingly, it’s the same amount of flour Sarah apparently used when she baked for the divine visitors in the story in Genesis 18. This woman is baking enough bread to feed between fifty and one hundred people! We’re talking a lot of dough, a large woman, and an enormous amount of bread!

If you’ve ever made bread, you know how it works. You rub this small amount of slimy, flaky stuff into the dough and then you ignore it. You walk away, and somehow the whole thing transforms from a soggy lump into something enormous that feeds and sustains! The process is mysterious, and the magic ingredient – yeast – looks and smells and feels radically unimpressive in its raw form, but somehow it transforms itself and everything around it into the stuff of life!

If we had more time, we could journey through the rest of these MacDonaldtown Parables, but let’s pause our journey at this platform for the moment.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed or like a woman making bread – Jesus gives us images of a force that is quiet but disruptive, small but unstoppable, hidden but transformative. A kingdom that works beneath the surface, overturning the natural order – bringing down the mighty and lifting up the lowly.

That doesn’t sound a lot like the church, does it? Since Constantine, the church has had power and wealth and visibility. Perhaps the kingdom Jesus describes is a force at work within the church and outside of it – challenging, disturbing, and generally causing holy mischief.

Certainly, the images Jesus gives us here resonate with my experience. You pour so much life and energy into something that you believe is worthwhile and that serves God and the community and, for the most part, all you have is a mustard seed, and then, suddenly … WHAM! A huge bush full of galas!

It’s a bit like a fighter who gets his shot at the title and takes nothing but punishment, round after round after round, until suddenly … his opponent slips and hits his head, and you’re the heavyweight champion of the world! If Jesus had boxed, I’m sure we’d have that parable too.

I think about the problems we confront in our lives and the problems we confront as a global community. How will the war against Iran and Lebanon end? Will the good guys win some glorious battle, or will God do what God so often does and work through relatively powerless and unknown people to disrupt the corridors of power and transform things in ways we can barely comprehend?

The seed will become a bush, and the dough will rise – that’s the promise!
We don’t know exactly how or when this will happen. It’s all quite mysterious, even magical. Even so, we trust the process, and so we keep planting those little seeds and kneading that dough because we know that one day … when we least expect it, the Kingdom comes!

Our Sunday Eucharist

We celebrated another wonderful Eucharist last Sunday. Thank you, Jake Pyeatt, for sharing your wit and wisdom, and a big thank you to Rob Gilland for coming back again to cover for Scottie Minchin, who will be back with us soon. I’ve included our discussion on Genesis 28 at the end of today’s newsletter – Jacob’s discovery of the stairway to Heaven! We discuss two very contemporary issues there:

God’s promise of the land of Israel to Jacob and his descendants.
Finding God places we did not expect to find God.

It’s less than twelve minutes in total and well worth the listen.

As ever, I’ve added directly below the two most popular short video extracts from the last broadcast. If you’re wondering why these two two were so popular, we have a goodly number tuning in from Syria. Catch all our short videos on the Sunday Eucharist Instagram page and all our videos (long and short) on Rumble.

This coming Sunday I’m very much looking forward to having Costandi Bastoli and Brynn Reese back with me on the panel. I’ll try to leave some space for AI Saint Paul too as he may be feeling neglected after not being called to join us last Sunday.

Join us please at midday on Sunday on Rumble. You can, of course, also join via Facebook, Twitter (X), LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia, and StreamYard.

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I’m winding up quickly today.

I’m out in the middle of the bush (Binacrombi)
It’s gone 1 am
The power has shut down.
My phone internet signal is not strong
There’s not much battery power left in either my phone or my laptop.

So … in as much as I’d like to conclude today with a lengthy reflection on the nature of the world and our role in it, let it suffice to say again that the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. Our efforts may seem small and inconsequential at the moment, but … the Kingdom comes!

Your brother in the Good Fight,