Smallness does not always mean inferiority or powerlessness. Our two parables today on the Mustard Seed and the Yeast show that seemingly small or insignificant entities do have a powerful inner dynamism that propels them to incredible growth. Some things, like viruses, are “small but terrible.” So also with the Kingdom of God. It can begin with just a tiny thing but can grow into something extraordinary—out of little kindnesses, little hands joined together, small but constant initiatives. Some present huge companies are reported to have started with only a handful resources. But the potential and dynamism of the enterprise was huge and, true enough, it propelled the endeavor into extraordinary heights. We do not always need big “investments,” we do not always need to start big in order to experience growth. Just like the mustard seed, just like the little yeast in a dough. But they are capable of propelling something into incredible growth. That is how it is with the Kingdom of God. What little “capital” do you have now that has the potential to build the Kingdom of God? Invest it.

The Lord said to me: Go buy yourself a linen loincloth; wear it on your loins, but do not put it in water. I bought the loincloth, as the Lord commanded, and put it on. A second time the word of the Lord came to me thus: Take the loincloth which you bought and are wearing, and go now to the Parath; there hide it in a cleft of the rock. Obedient to the Lord’s command, I went to the Parath and buried the loincloth. After a long interval, the Lord said to me: Go now to the Parath and fetch the loincloth which I told you to hide there. Again I went to the Parath, sought out and took the loincloth from the place where I had hid it. But it was rotted, good for nothing! Then the message came to me from the Lord: Thus says the Lord: So also I will allow the pride of Judah to rot, the great pride of Jerusalem. This wicked people who refuse to obey my words, who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts, and follow strange gods to serve and adore them, shall be like this loincloth which is good for nothing. For, as close as the loincloth clings to a man’s loins, so had I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord; to be my people, my renown, my praise, my beauty. But they did not listen.

Jesus proposed a parable to the crowds. “The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the ‘birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’ ”

He spoke to them another parable. “The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened.”

All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables. He spoke to them only in parables, to fulfill what had been said through the prophet: I will open my mouth in parables, I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world.