Proper 12 (17) – Year A
Ninth sunday after pentecost: July 26, 2026
Gospel Lectionary Text
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
13:31 He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field;
13:32 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."
13:33 He told them another parable: "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."
13:44 "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
13:45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls;
13:46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
13:47 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind;
13:48 when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.
13:49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous
13:50 and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
13:51 Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes."
13:52 And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."
Context
Welcome to the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost. Joseph Campbell once said, “If you want to change the world, change the metaphor.” In this week’s Gospel, Jesus seems to be doing just that. He compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a mustard seed and yeast, among other things. Not exactly the stuff of power and glory. More like a pesky weed and a fungus.
We tend to hear these parables as stories about bigness. The tiny seed becomes large. The yeast expands the dough. In our success-driven culture, it’s easy to imagine Jesus saying that the Kingdom starts small but eventually becomes big, impressive, and victorious. But Jesus’ metaphors are much more disruptive than that.
The mustard plant was not a majestic cedar of Lebanon. It was closer to an invasive shrub, the sort of thing gardeners work tirelessly to keep out of carefully cultivated spaces. And yeast, in Jesus’ world, was associated with impurity and contamination. It was unclean. In other words, Jesus describes the Kingdom not through images of control, purity, and respectability, but through things people normally try to eliminate.
We want a Kingdom that looks orderly, predictable, and pure. But Jesus keeps insisting that God shows up through the very people and places we’ve been taught to avoid: the outsider, the wounded, the unclean, the inconvenient. And when we discover that grace is arriving through the “cursed ones,” we begin to glimpse the heart of God itself.
Question
Where in your life do you find yourself longing for control, predictability, and purity? How might Jesus' image of the mustard weed and yeast invite you into a more spacious vision of the Kingdom?
Reflections
The Kingdom’s Cadence
By Jenna Smith |
May we scribes be grateful: we have been formed to welcome, to prepare, to read, to bear witness and after this, to wait for the kingdom of heaven. The wonder expressed at the found pearl or at the treasure in the fields follows only the stillness of the fermentation.
Changing the Metaphor
By Kris Rocke |
Joseph Campbell said, “If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor.” Perhaps Campbell learned this from Jesus who compares the kingdom of heaven to mustard seeds and yeast in this week’s text. In a super-sized, big-box culture where size matters above all else, these parables are easily interpreted as self-congratulating...
Riddles of Grace: The Kingdom of God is Like….
By Joel Van Dyke |
The Jesuit Father, Anthony de Mello wrote that the shortest distance between a human and Truth is a story. In Matthew 13, Jesus tells a variety of stories (parables) to describe the kingdom of heaven. We move from mustard seed (a weed) planted amidst a crop in a field to the image of yeast, to...
Praying Eucharistically - Weekly Homily by James Alison:
Understanding the Bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard.
Poetry
In this week’s lectionary text, Jesus speaks again in parables. Their meaning isn’t immediately clear, but the images and metaphors work on us, over time, like a sliver in the brain. How do you tell someone that the very thing they’ve spent their life systematically avoiding holds the gift they so desperately long for? It’s not easy to speak love in a storm.
Steward Henderson’s poem below speaks to this challenge. Notice that, in the end, the invitation is not to words or even prayers, but to “walking backwards with you into your abandoned years” – which is almost always where the real storm rages.
How To Speak Love in a Storm?
by Stewart Henderson
How to speak love in a storm?
depends on the substance of the voice,
as the trees rage
and roof tiles smash,
where seagulls are grounded
and there is only chaos.
How to speak love in a storm?
is to put up a signpost for the lost,
as on the bitter hillside
you lie murmuring,
‘Why is this happening now?’
Exposure, like a fox,
circling your lamb’s heart.
How to speak love in a storm?
means finding the right inflection.
Not offering words and hollow prayers
but walking backwards with you
into your abandoned years.
Prayer
This week, the call to prayer comes from the Street Psalms Prayer of Discernment
You are Emmanuel—the God who is with us. Nothing can separate us from your love. Ease the fear that binds us and blinds us, keeping us from the truth that sets us free. Give us the courage and compassion to see things as they are: filled with your delight, moving in us and through us and, most joyfully, between us.
Amen.
