Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“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.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Thursday, June 13, 2024
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Jesus tried to help us understand what God’s reign is like. In the series of parables here in Matthew, he seems to be more concerned about helping people understand that the reign of God is desirable above all else and spreads through the people than he is about explaining what things will be like in some eventuality when God is in charge. In other words, he doesn’t say what the reign of God is, just how it behaves. It assumes, I think, that the people have some idea of what God’s rule will be like—or at least that they know how they’d like it to be. And maybe that’s because his audience was so oppressed and downtrodden—the least and the lost, the hungry and the marginalized. They knew that in God’s reign, they would be made whole. But what they needed from Jesus was hope that this was actually going to happen—and soon! He told them that the kingdom had arrived (in him) and was rapidly growing up among them. When we pray “Your kingdom come,” we can, in part, be grateful that it already has—any time we see love and justice winning out over hatred and oppression.
Where do I see evidence that the reign of God is already happening?
