Section 87

Section 87 

SABBATH HEALING 
MUSTARD SEED AND LEAVEN 
(Probably Peræa) 
LUKE 13:10-21 

Overview:  When Jesus is teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath, he heals a hunched-over woman suffering from a "disabling spirit" for 18 years.  She immediately praises God, but the ruler of the synagogue is "indignant" because Jesus healed her on the Sabbath.

When individuals organize into religious organizations, the result is that some are attracted to the prestige and power at the expense of the mission. Here, the synagogue leader gets hung up on the technicalities of the healing (and probably his own ego issues) instead of praising God himself and rejoicing for this poor woman. Our highest mission is never "the church" but THE Church, and the mission of THE Church is healing, liberation, and love.

"But the words hold a wider truth, applicable to our conduct. The relief of human sorrow is always in season. It is a sacred duty which hallows any hour. ‘Is not this the fast [and the feast too] that I have chosen . . . to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?’ The spirit of the words is to put the exercise of beneficence high above the formalities of worship."  -MacLaren

And as he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame: and all the multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him.  Luke 13:17

"The people rejoiced not only in the miracle, but in that wisdom which silenced the narrow-minded rulers. The triumph which they rejoiced in was but a slight foretaste of the victories to come, and to point out the nature of those victories the Lord spoke the two parables which follow." -Fourfold Gospel

Parable of the Leaven
Sir John Everett Millais (British, Southampton 1829-1896)

"Jesus pointed out that a person is much more important than an animal, and His enemies saw nothing wrong in helping their animals on the Sabbath (cf. Luk_14:5)."-BKC?

This healing is followed by two parables---that of the mustard seed and yeast. In another context, the mustard seed equates to small but significant amounts of faith.  Here, commentators debate whether these two (the tree that grows and the yeast) symbolize evil or good.

Jon Courson views both in this context as symbols of evil, which to me makes sense if the conversation and context is linked to this Sabbath Day healing.  This seems the case, with this "therefore" connecting the two:

"He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it?" Luke 13:18

"Because mustard seeds don't grow into trees large enough to support birds, and because flocks of birds in Scripture are often symbols of evil (e.g., Gen_40:19; Mat_13:4), in this parable, through this analogy, Jesus is saying that the kingdom of God will grow in an unnatural way that will allow strange people to hide out therein. All you have to do is watch religious TV to see that this is so, for there are indeed some strange birds roosting in the name of the kingdom of God."-Courson

I've met plenty of odd birds--the Kingdom attracts both the spectacularly evil and the spectacularly goofy but not evil.  Sometimes it's a challenge to sort between the two, and again, our goal is to keep our eye on Him and His reconciliation.  God is always for people---for the best in people, for the best for people. This is modeled in Christ, as he heals some and confronts the sin in others.

Other scholars believe these parables point to the slow, subtle, but ultimately profound growth of true faith in Christ:

"Be this, however, as it may, the drift of both these parables of the kingdom distinctly points to a slow yet a progressive development of true religion. Very different, indeed, was the Jewish conception of Messiah’s kingdom. They expected a rapid and brilliant metamorphosis of the then unhappy state of things. They never dreamed of the slow and quiet movement Messiah’s coming was to inaugurate. One thing is perfectly clear—the Speaker of these two parable-stories never contemplated a speedy return to earth. With strange exactness the last eighteen hundred and fifty years have been fulfilling the conditions of the two similes, and as yet, as far as man can see, they are not nearly complete." -Pulpit Commentator

Either way, it's clearly teaches the Kingdom is growing in strangely wonderful and/or dangerous ways---it can manifests itself in both true and false regards in this season on earth. That we can legitimately disagree about the meaning of the parable in itself points to the mysterious nature of this Kingdom.

I find this interpretation (though less definitive) also compelling:

"And this is quite consistent with the fact that the gospel grows by a life of its own—that though man’s labour is needed to apply and diffuse it, he neither makes it nor puts life and fruitfulness into it—that he receives it with these in itself, so that if he cast it into the ground it will spring and grow up of its own Divine energy, and according to its own Divine laws...

The Parable of the Mustard Seed, Kevin Christman 

Growth implies increasing divergence and definiteness of parts and functions. It is a separation of the one into the many, a change from the simple to the complex, from the vague to the distinct...

Wherever growth takes place, this is the process traceable. It is what we see in every herb, in every animal, in civilization, in government, language, science, and art. Different as all these are in themselves, there is only the one way in which they can grow, in which they can truly progress. The kingdom of God conforms to the same conditions. Its history has consisted throughout in the evolution of doctrines, institutions, and modes of life, out of a very simple germ...

Those who say, “Let us cast to the winds our creeds, our systems, our definite dogmas, and return to the primitive simplicity of apostolic men,” forget that God has not left it to the world’s own will to return of a sudden, or to return at all, to the point from which it has taken eighteen centuries for it to advance. They might as well counsel us to throw off all the laws and institutions, all the countless arrangements of the elaborated civilization in which we live, and retrograde to the rude and simple life of the earliest dwellers in Asia and Europe. We are where we are, where long ages of thought and toil have placed us, and, even if ungrateful enough to desire it, there is no going back for us now...

There is still another truth involved, and it is one which we must not despise because it is simple. Growth requires time. God has everywhere placed that as an inevitable separation between germination and maturity, between the seed and the perfect tree. Let us conform, then, to the condition. When we are despondent or angry because our labours in a Christian cause are not crowned with immediate success, we are no wiser than the little child who deposits a seed in the ground and is grieved not to see it springing up on the very day it has done so." -R. Flint, Biblical Illustrator

There is no way to put the Genie back in the bottle.  God designed the process this way.  So often, like the religious community of Jesus' day, we quibble and contend over the particulars instead of rejoicing in the act as it unfolds.