7 minute read
Warning! The Kingdom of Offensive Inclusivity
By Major Mat Badger
Jesus knew there would be resistance to the wider inclusiveness of his kingdom, yet with very little warning, and for the good of us, he chose to offend anyway. In the first part of a new two-part series, Major Mat Badger takes Matthew 13:33, The Parable of the Yeast, and brings us the good news of the inclusiveness of the kingdom of God.
Recently, memes have appeared online of protesters holding signs—the original messages altered. Very serious slogans were changed to ‘stop killing ducks to make duct tape’ or ‘stop killing alligators to make Gatorade’.
People today are easily offended. At some point, I’ve been offended. You’ve been offended. We have all been offended. As philosopher Mokokoma Mokhonoana says, ‘you can be hurt, not by what others think of you, but by what you think of what they think, or you think they think of you’.
But what does it mean to take offence? What drives this pervasive phenomenon? Language researcher, Tahmineh Tayebi, writes:
The taking of offence—or feeling offended—often involves an experience of negative emotions caused by a word or action which conflicts with what we expect and believe to be the right, appropriate, moral and acceptable behaviour. Feeling offended or describing something as offensive is deeply rooted in those expectations that govern our daily interactions.
The revolutionary Christ
This means our judgements are informed by our beliefs and values, and they become the measure by which we evaluate others—including people we don’t know very well. Therefore, we might easily take offence at a comment posted on social media or in the news that makes fun of or challenges something that is important to us, such as our identity, our political view, our nationality or our religion, and our place within these belief systems. It was these very belief systems that Jesus challenged in his day—and his content most definitely offended!
As the Old Testament era concluded, the hope that God would manifest his rule on Earth and bring peace and happiness continued as a major theme in Jewish eschatology (end times prophecy).
Life was hard for the Jews under Roman rule. Their expectation of a prophesied messianic figure who would usher in God’s promised kingdom and throw off the yoke of the Roman Empire endured. Naturally, they were looking for a militant leader to accomplish this and alleviate their suffering—roles would be reversed with Rome becoming subject to them. We now know, of course, that Jesus was a revolutionary! But he wasn’t the type of revolutionary they were expecting at the time. Jesus recognised this tension and that it would eventually pave his way to the cross.
Christ’s offensive inclusivity
So, one afternoon while a large crowd listened to Jesus, he shared the following parable. ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough’ (Matthew 13:33). It was a calculated move that should have carried the following disclaimer: Warning—some content may offend!
Who doesn’t love fresh, fluffy, thick bread a little too much—as a society we love our leavened bread! Our unfamiliarity with unleavened bread means that when we read this parable today, we can miss the point of what Jesus was getting at entirely. However, these words completely challenged the worldview of his audience. The silence in the text following this parable is deafening and you can almost sense the uneasiness amongst the listeners. Jesus’ words here brought even more uncertainty to an uncertain time and some listeners would have heard it as a direct insult. It was incredibly offensive! But how?
We must never lose sight of the fact that Jesus was a Jewish rabbi, a teacher, speaking to the Israelite community around 32–33 AD. His listeners would have understood immediately that yeast, or ‘leaven’ (in the King James Version), is always used as a symbol of sin in the Old Testament. The annual Feast of Passover for the Jews was based around the use of unleavened bread (without yeast). Yeast was forbidden by Moses in everyday cooking as it was symbolic of the original sin—pride. The origin of sin was found in Lucifer’s attitude when he thought that he was like God (Isaiah 14:12–17). So leaven, or yeast, symbolically came to represent the original sin, pride, as it corrupts by puffing up. So, no lovely fluffy thick bread for devout Jews! Pride can be defined as self-sufficiency away from God, which in the Jewish mind was unacceptable. This is the first thing that offended Jesus’ audience.
Adding in the yeast
The second, and more offensive point for Jesus’ listeners, was that the only time Moses allowed yeast to be used was during the Feast of Pentecost, as recorded in the Old Testament. It was at this feast that the Holy Spirit fell upon the disciples, paving the way for non-Jewish involvement in the kingdom of heaven (Acts 2). So today, many Christian scholars are agreed that yeast, or leaven, was something that slowly over time became symbolic of the Gentile race, which is anyone who isn’t a Jew. For a devout Jew, yeast represented the combination of Gentiles’ sin, pride and ceremonial uncleanliness. And yet here in this parable, Jesus was talking about yeast being mixed throughout the dough! Jesus was hinting that God’s plan of salvation was not just for the Jews, but that people from other nations would also be included in the kingdom of heaven. Gentiles would be brought to the fellowship table, and they would be ‘mixed in’ with the Jews. Both Jews and Gentiles together—one wasn’t replacing the other.
This was not the kind of messianic message that the Jews were expecting. It was upsetting—offensive! Jesus clearly wasn’t going to be the one who would rise with violence and throw off the Roman oppressors. At that point in history, he was not going to establish a kingdom where nations would be subject to the Jews as the people of God. The last thing the Jews wanted was to entertain even the possibility that Gentiles, especially the Romans, could become part of God’s redemptive plan. Jesus offended their sense of entitlement so deeply that he left town, as we read at the end of Matthew 13.
Recognising our internal ‘offensive’ mechanism
I believe that this parable should cause us to ponder a couple of things. First, Jesus offended his listeners and he did it intentionally. Why? To cause people to stop and think about their beliefs, assumptions and their sense of entitlement—to reflect and evaluate, and maybe even allow their minds to be changed. For those of us who are Gentile Christ followers today—which is all of us who are not Jewish—it’s just as well Jesus’ content was so offensive! I am incredibly grateful that Jesus’ message was so offensive because it led to my inclusion in the kingdom. When Jesus put everything on the line, he had you and me in mind.
The challenge for us when it comes to our faith today is to always think about others outside our comfort zones and not fall into the same trap as Jesus’ listeners did. There is also a deeper invitation to consider when someone offends us. What might it cost for us to change our minds? Jesus knew there would be resistance to the wider inclusiveness of his kingdom, yet with very little warning and for the good of us he chose to offend anyway.
