The Parable of Slop Bucket
Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-45
Parables of the Kingdom of Heaven.
A mustard seed
A treasure hidden in a field
A pearl worth more than everything…
The Kingdom of heaven is like leavening flour…
Parables are stories. I love stories. Stories hold such a powerful place in my way of seeing the world, stories help me remember history, and stories reinforce a lesson. However, an effective story requires context that brings understanding. I don’t know much about mustard seeds, nor mustard trees, because I have never encountered them. I have learned that mustard seeds are small and mustard trees huge and therefore I know the meaning of the parable, but it isn’t as effective as the leaven parable to me. I know a little yeast goes a long way, because I have my own story about yeast…
One of my favorite jobs of all time was my position as garbage man at a summer camp. One of my duties as the garbage collector was to empty the “slop bucket” from the kitchen. “Slop Buckets” were 32-gallon yellow Rubbermaid buckets usually filled twice per day with kitchen food garbage. When they were full, I would drag up a new empty bucket, snap a lid on the full bucket and haul it away to our garbage dock. This is where the buckets sat until once or twice a week, we loaded them into the garbage boat and disposed of them. The camp kitchen cooked 3 meals a day for 400 people and no surprise, generated more garbage and food waste than anywhere else in camp. I tried to proactively check on this kitchen garbage so that the buckets didn’t get over full, but one day I received an “emergency” call to bring an empty bucket and take away the full bucket. When I arrived, the bucket was entirely full of bread dough. My puzzled look, elicited the admission from one of the junior bakers, “I added too much yeast.” The senior baker laughed, and said, “…by a factor of 10!” They had started over and dumped out the bread dough for 400 into the bucket. I snapped the lid on the bucket and hauled it down to the garbage dock.
I continued my rounds collecting garbage and on my next visit to the garbage dock my lesson on the power of leavening began. The dock was covered with rising dough. In the warm mid-day sun, the dough had pushed the lid off the slop bucket and spread all over the garbage dock. I grabbed a second empty slop bucket, scooping and shoveling the unwieldy dough into the additional 32-gallon bucket. When I returned a half hour later, I needed two more buckets to place the expanding dough. I got distracted for the next hour or so with other tasks and I returned to find a floating island of dough had launched off the garbage dock and was drifting out with the tide; partially covered with seaweed and closely pursued by a flock of hungry seagulls. Some of the gulls landed directly on the doughy mess and relaxed while they had their fill. The island of dough eventually washed ashore a few hundred yards across the inlet, but it was large enough to be clearly visible from camp and not hard to find from the wildlife feeding frenzy on the luxurious “manna from heaven.” I wondered for a time, if the dough might present a hazard to the birds digestive system and if we might begin to see exploding sea birds? The leavened dough eventually filled eight 32 gallon buckets and whatever had escaped in the yeasty floating pizza island. Needless to say, this parable about the Kingdom of heaven has meaning to me. The manifestation of God’s Kingdom may start small and weak in our human limits, but it grows to be large and powerful in the strength of our creator and holy spirit. I believe this is why Jesus taught in parables. I think God knew we would connect our own experiences and better understand the meaning.