Christ the King Epiphany/ Wilbraham

Matthew 13:31-33,44-52

Dcn Michael Hamilton

July 26, 2026

Please pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts may be pleasing and acceptable to God. Amen. (pbs)

As a public service announcement, for the next 6 weeks I suggest you lock your cars when you come to church. This is the season that well-meaning and loving parishioners will be sneaking excess zucchinis into the cars of friends. After all, what does one do with an overgrown 2-pound summer squash that doesn’t store well, has limited applications after being steamed, served raw with dip, made into zucchini bread, or spiralized for fake spaghetti?

I picked zucchini this week, and considering the Gospel we just heard, I was thinking about the seeds. With a little Google research, I found generalized tidbits of information. One plant will yield 6-12 medium-sized immature fruits or 20-30 small squash. They grow quickly at a rate of 1-2 inches per day, and the young squash will contain 5-10 seeds. But in the case of finding that one jumbo squash at the end of the season that you hadn’t noticed, it will have upwards of 500 seeds and is good for saving seeds for the next growing season. So now, doing the math, if I let one plant completely go to seed, I would have 6 jumbo zucchini, each with 500 seeds for a total of 3,000 seeds for next year's garden. Planting 3 seeds per hole as suggested, and letting the plants all go to seed, in one year I would have 1000 plants with 6 squash each with a total of 3 million seeds. All from the planting of 1 seed this Spring. One seed today and three million next year. I like to think of that as “God math,” where the return is so much more than the initial energy that is put in.

If yeast is more interesting to you, one yeast packet contains 2 1/4 teaspoons or 7 grams of yeast. One gram of commercial active dry yeast contains roughly 10 to 20 billion total

cells/CFUs, which means there are roughly 140 BILLION cells in one packet of yeast… to be honest, in my opinion this is God just showing off.

What am I getting at besides being in awe of how generous and silly God is in blessing us with more than we can ask or imagine?

In describing ‘Heaven is like’, each simile starts with something small, something very small, which then becomes something unexpected. One mustard seed growing into a 10-foot plant, one starter of yeast mixed into flour and yielding multiple loaves of bread, a pearl, started by one irritating grain of sand in the shell of an oyster becoming so valuable that a lucky person would sell all that they had to possess it. That is what heaven is like.

As fascinating as all that is, Jesus did not give us blueprints or descriptive details of heaven, and I must assume that is because our human and limited imaginations can not even conceive what lies ahead. We can't imagine how 2 ¼ teaspoons of anything could contain 140 billion cells, let alone the enormity of heaven. But speaking in parables, what was Jesus trying to share with us in relation to a truth we can build upon, or clarity on who God is or how God operates?

To begin, God’s kingdom operates differently than the world does. In the Hebrew Scriptures, Cedar Trees were used to describe empires such as Babylon or Assyria. Cedars were an example of strength, majesty, and power. With Jesus, He is not describing Heaven as an empire like a tall cedar tree; instead, He references the common mustard bush, which was seen as a weed that could grow anywhere and was particularly difficult to get rid of or manage. If Jesus uses the example of an invasive plant in making a comparison between heaven and earth, we could say that heaven, and the nature of God’s Kingdom, by comparison to the world we know, is subversive. Whereas the Cedar Trees of the world value brute force, wealth, and power, the mustard bush of God that Jesus has described, thrives on humility, service, and love.

Although a bit of an exaggeration, the mustard seed does not boast of its size to conquer the birds but rather welcomes them to nest and shelter within it. Using the humility of the mustard bush, we too can learn something. As a church, we are not called to dominate the world like a massive, rigid empire, but instead, to provide a countercultural experience of refuge, shade, and nourishment for the weary.

But how can we do this? Using the example of the smallness of the mustard seed, we come to trust that small acts, small gestures, small encouragements to those who need it, can be (and I believe, will be) magnified with God math. Does my one can of donated Chicken Breast meat make the difference in the dinner of a family of four that is struggling? Does my willingness to listen and attempt to understand how someone feels about a divisive topic that I disagree with lessen the hostility that we are experiencing? Can God or will God use that moment of my respecting the human dignity of another to a greater purpose that I might never see?

We know that grains of yeast work, zucchini seeds grow, and a speck of sand can be turned into something priceless, but all of that is done silently and invisibly. We cannot watch yeast multiply, but we see the final bread. The growth of the Kingdom of God often works silently in our hearts and communities until its impact becomes visible. Notice that Jesus says the woman hid or mixed the yeast into the flour. The yeast doesn’t work by sitting on top of the dough or by shouting at it; it must be integrated to do its work, and we as Christians can model this in how we operate in the world. We are called to be salt, light, and love in the world. If we can blend that into the fabric of everyday life in small ways and allow God's math to replicate and increase what we bring to mix, we truly will make a difference as we watch the Kingdom of God expand on Earth.

This week, in your prayers, ask yourself if your life is reflecting the power of the world filled with cedars, or the humble, welcoming, life-giving nature of Jesus’ kingdom as we take our small energies and allow God math to do the calculations. Amen.