During part of my high school years I worked at a Hardee’s restaurant in my hometown in NC.  Back in the eighties it was a favorite place to grab breakfast biscuits and biscuits and gravy and cinnamon and raisin biscuits.  The thing they had in common?  Biscuits.  Lots of Biscuits.  I learned to be a biscuit maker and was instructed by a biscuit maker and some assistant managers.  They pushed for fast and the logical conclusion was to make multiple recipes at once, up to 3 times.  That meant trying to mix 15 pounds of flour, buttermilk, shortening and seasoning in a single bowel.  Some biscuits came out huge, some flat, some burnt and some underdone.  It was pretty much par for the course.  Then came the moment that became a foundational principle for me in my life.  It has served me well in my work career.  The lesson was taught to me by the general manager, who was, in my opinion, very good at his job.  One day he asked me  if I would like to do an experiment with him and maybe learn something.  Sure.  He went to a shelf that had the binders with all of the policies and procedures of Hardee’s and he pulled down the volume that would contain biscuit making.  He said that corporate had spent a lot of money in R&D to produce company policies and procedures.  He wanted to walk with me through the procedure line by line, step by step to see what happened.  And then practice for a while.  The thing that I remember that really stuck out was that you only made 5 pounds at a time, touched it as little as possible, and get this… thirded it to work it on the biscuit table.  Oh and he mentioned the roller cost several hundred dollars and to never put it in water.  Everyone thought the way I was doing it was ridiculous.  It didn’t take long and I was the fastest biscuit maker, left cleaner, made less of a mess, and had biscuits that were all the same size and cooked and browned evenly.  It wasn’t me, it was the procedure and following directions.  This is what flew to my mind as I began to study Jesus’ parables.  The reason it came up is because of the woman with the three measures of flour.  The pretty much one sentence parable doesn’t seem like a big deal.  The simpler it sounds, at least in English, should probably stand as a warning for Jesus’ parables.  The omer might have been a more expected volume but Jesus uses 3 measures or sata in Greek.  The equivalent is pretty much a peck and a half.  That registered better, but still unclear, so I did some conversion.  Now, I’ve made biscuits for a restaurant and I have worked in a college cafeteria and I will say that this lady was something else.  In the parable she mixes 63 pounds of flour and that’s not counting the water.  I’ve done 15 and it was an incredible struggle.  It would need to be done by mechanical means.  The biggest industrial bread mixer I could find runs on a three phase motor, requires 6 drive belts and only holds 66 pounds of flour and requires water for a dough ball that weighs 110 pounds. Oh, and it costs $19,000 but you can get it on sale for 11 if you act now.  Do you know how much yeast is required?  A quarter cup, and you can go less but you have to wait longer for it to rise.  That’s 0.1% of the volume of the flour.  This is not something you would do.  Jesus is doing a wonderful hyperbole or exaggeration here.  He goes way overboard, but in doing so he is describing the Kingdom of God.  That little bit of yeast can leaven a massive dough ball, and the cool thing about leaving is that it pushes the dough ball beyond its bounds.  It causes the dough to rise or expand.  The rule of thumb for bread dough is to let it rise until it doubles in size.  That yeast causes a change within the dough and causes it to expand.  In bread it is causing fermentation and the release of carbon dioxide which causes the dough to develop volume and flavor. It occurs when yeast converts sugars present in flour into carbon dioxide and ethyl alcohol.  With yeast, it becomes Living Bread.  Before we go further with this aspect, there’s one more interesting thing with this very short, one sentence parable.  In our translation it says that she “mixes in” the yeast.  Actually, the Greek word chosen here is not the normal one that would be used.  The word that is used is “encrupsen”.  That word might sound a little familiar to us, at least if we have a smartphone or use email.  It means “to hide,” like “cryptology”, “cryptogram” or “encryption.” The same root word is used elsewhere in Matthew and the Gospels, where it often references something that is hidden but should be and will be uncovered.  In Matthew 5:14, Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden.” And right after the group of parables in today’s Gospel says “I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world”.  Elsewhere in the Bible the idea of leavening has connotations of an invasive evil, a little evil, hidden and spreading.  It’s kind of like our saying, a bad apple spoils the whole bunch.  However, Jesus likes flipping things.  Think about his ministry and reaching out to the outcasts, the overlooked, the rejected and the forgotten.  Here the kingdom of God is like yeast and it has a massive impact. It’s beyond human reason and wisdom, in the realm of what we might consider ridiculous. The same interesting flip happens in the mustard plant parable.  Mustard was grown, but you had to be careful with it because it too, like yeast, was pervasive and spreads hard core, but Jesus isn’t careful.  God is not careful.  God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s kingdom is extravagant.  An interesting thing is mentioning the birds.  Around a garden, and around plants you are hoping to get a yield off of, aren’t birds and a place for them to live and seek shelter the last thing that you want?  We hang pie pans, put up scarecrows and all other sorts of anti-bird methods to keep birds away from our gardens.  We do that but Jesus envisions a place of shelter for the unwanted.  Jesus uses these parables to tell us that this is what the kingdom of God is like. Have you ever felt like one of these birds?  If you have or if you are seeking to work in the kingdom we need to know that Jesus was not speaking of the kingdom of God as a sweet by and by or a far away shore.  Remember he prayed for God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.  Like the hidden yeast, we may not always see the kingdom at work, but that does not mean that it’s not there.  Quite the opposite, it’s there regardless and it is living, growing and acting.  It is spreading and bringing life.  That’s the point in Jesus’ choice of words.  One thing I did read was that more yeast can cause a quicker reaction.  As we participate in acts of love, mercy, and justice we acting within the kingdom, to build the kingdom, to grow the kingdom, participating in Christ’s mission.  63 pounds of flour.  The idea of any single person trying to mix a 110 pound dough ball without that mixer is really funny, but here’s the thing.  We may think the task is impossible, but Jesus said the kingdom was like the yeast and yeast will work its way through the dough.  I think yeast and the mustard plant were chosen for that idea of inevitability.  It will grow.  It will spread despite us.  That’s a powerful reassurance to the birds of the world.  That inevitability rings out in the second lesson where Paul writes, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor malicious legislation, nor inflammatory rhetoric, nor disinformation, nor fear, nor prejudice, nor bigotry, nor racism, nor homophobia nor ableism, nor hardship, nor distress, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword, nor anything else in all creation  will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Not even Jesus being beaten, being crucified and dying. You can’t stop this train from rolling.  The evil one could not keep  Jesus in the grave.  The 110 pound dough ball will rise and yield Living bread that will feed a hungry world with justice and equity..  The mustard will spread and the bird’s will rest.  Lord, you feed us, in you we have rest.  Make us yeast and help us to bring life to this world and spread your kingdom that your love and your light shall be revealed to the world that all may be fed.  Amen. Come Lord Jesus.