Beyond Measure

Sermon by Pr. Craig Mueller on the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost + Sunday, July 26, 2026

Each of the five short parables we heard are worth a sermon in themselves. In fact, in our Wednesday study we are taking them one at a time. Jesus is using images from his hearer’s everyday lives. And there seems to be something for everyone. Earthy images that involve getting your hands dirty: planting seeds, burying treasure, kneading dough, fishing. From agrarian to domestic to commercial to maritime.

Each parable seems simple at first. Yet they all have radical reversals. Surprises. The kingdom of heaven is not always what you think it is. It is valuable beyond measure.

And that’s where I would like to begin. With measuring. Measuring yeast. How many of you have baked bread? I bake bread from time to time and remember the first three ingredients. Warm water, a packet of yeast, and salt. Let it ferment a bit. Mix in the flour and let it rise.

“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. 

Recently when I was visiting my mother, we watched some clips from “I Love Lucy.” One is this very funny bread baking scene. As Lucy is kneading bread dough, she tells friend Ethel that she needed to go to three or four stores to get enough yeast cakes. Ethel asks how many cakes she used, and Lucy says thirteen. Ethel reads the recipe more closely and tells Lucy it should have been three cakes. Lucy thinks everything will be okay and says she won’t need to bake for a while.

When they go back and check on the dough after it has risen, it is heavy and falling over the side of the bowl. They finally get the massive amount of dough into the oven. When they return, the oven door is open a bit. When Lucy opens the door, an eight-foot loaf of bread comes out, trapping Lucy against a cupboard. All with thunderous laughter from the live audience!

In the parable the woman mixes the yeast, more like what we would know as sourdough starter, into three measures of flour. You think that could equal three cups of flour! Think again. It would be between forty and sixty pounds of flour. Beyond measure. Hyperbole. Extravagance. Like the feeding of the five thousand. And sixty gallons of wine at the wedding in Cana. As one writer quipped, it would make so much dough you would need a 100-quart Hobart mixer with a dough hook as big as your leg to knead it!

There’s something else to measure here. To consider. First, in the scriptures leaven had a negative connotation, often a symbol of corruption. Jesus tells the disciples to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees. Paul talks about cleansing out the old leaven. Second, the woman doesn’t mix in the yeast. She hides the yeast in the flour. The Greek suggests our word “encrypted.” She encrypted the yeast. What is going on here?

Jesus talks about the things of God that are hidden. Hidden from the wise and intelligent and revealed to babes. Martin Luther writes about Christ hidden in the vulnerability of the manger and the weakness of the cross. And of course, just last week the parable of the weeds and the wheat revealed that there is evil in the world.

What could the hidden yeast mean? What is hidden in this parable? Of course, there is no one meaning. But one writer says this is not the Good Housekeeping Cookbook. It is more like Lord of the Rings. Is there something covert here? Is it a double negative? If the yeast is corrupt and the world can be corrupt and evil, to quote one scholar, “the yeast smuggled in by the woman is, like the kingdom of heaven, corrupting the corruption of the world, until the whole world is leavened by the kingdom.”

We certainly know thing or two about corruption. Abuse of power. War. Racism. Injustice. The plight of the Palestinians as we will here more about later this morning.

The kingdom of heaven works like fermentation. Sometimes quietly and invisibly. From the outside it can look a lot that something going wrong before it goes right.

Who would have thought all of this could have come from a one verse parable? Doesn’t it make you want to study scripture more? Commercial: we do have a weekly scripture study on Wednesday mornings. In person and online. I can tell you more about it.

Well, we aren’t going to get to all five short parables. But I do want to mention the parable about treasure. The man first owns stuff and not a field. At the end of the parable he owns a field with a concealed treasure. He relinquishes everything. For a new future. For something beyond measure. Beyond price.

These parables invite us to measure what is of most worth to us. And what is costs.

In a metaphorical way, Jesus is the treasure, the pearl of great price, the wide net, the leavening yeast, the mustard seed. But you are also of great worth, of great value, the treasure of God’s heart. Instead of words of condemnation and self-doubt, God’s measureless grace reminds you that nothing in all creation can separate you from God’s love revealed in Christ.

Like Solomon, we seek not simply a long life filled with riches. We seek discernment. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days. Such wisdom comes from a lifetime of learning and reflection. And a lifetime of Sundays gathering with the people of God around the treasures of Word and Sacrament. Grace hidden in hidden, earthy, ordinary things.

How will you measure what is of ultimate value of your life? I leave you with this story.

During the Communist regime change in China, a missionary family lived under house arrest. One day a few Chinese soldiers came to their house, and said, “You can return to America.”

The family was overjoyed. Then the soldiers told them, “You can take only two hundred pounds with you.”

They had been in China for years. Two hundred pounds? They found the scales. Then started the family arguments. Each—wife, husband and the two children—had an opinion. Must have this vase. Well, this is my new typewriter. What about my books? What about my personal treasures?

And they weighed everything, took each item off the scales, weighed and re-weighed until finally, right on the dot, they had two hundred pounds.

A soldier returned and asked, “Ready to go?” “Yes.”

“Did you weigh everything?”  “Yes.”

“You weighed the kids?” “No, we didn’t.”

“Weigh the kids.”

In that moment, the typewriter, the vase, all the other treasures meant nothing. They knew what was beyond measure.

SOURCES

Fr. Dominic Garramonem, Bake and Be Blessed.
Zina Jacque, Commentary on today’s gospel. Working preacher. Online.
Amy Jill-Levine. Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi.
Thomas G. Long. Proclaiming the Parables: Preaching and Teaching the Kingdom of God.
I Love Lucy, “Pioneer Women, season 1, episode 25, 1952.