Lent 2 - Thursday - The Mustard Seed: A Revolutionary Tale

Text: Mark 4:21-34 (see below)

The bus dropped us off at the southeast corner of the Temple Mount and our guide, John, led us down a path to the ruins of the ancient City of David. Along the way, we came across a mustard plant. John stopped the group to show us what a mustard seed plant actually looked like. He pulled a pod off of the plant, opened it up and passed it around for all to see. The seeds where so small you could hardly make out the individual kernels. There were hundreds of seeds! And then John quoted Jesus: ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’

Naturally, in a group of clergy, we all got hot and bothered about finding a mustard plant and by the time the group had passed by this particular plant, there were very few pods left on the bush! I still carry my pod with me every day, after eleven years, in my computer bag. The pod has long ago disintegrated but many of the seeds remain in a small plastic bag: a reminder of my time in the holy city of Jerusalem.

The parable of the Mustard Seed is a very dangerous lesson if we know anything about the mustard plant. Pliny the Elder was a Roman author who lived in the first century of the Common Era, He wrote about his experience with the mustard plant in his encyclopedic Natural History: “Mustard… with its pungent taste and fiery effect is extremely beneficial for the health. It grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted: but on the other hand when it is sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once (Natural History 19, page 170-71).

For any of my readers who are from the deep South, this might call to mind the image of Kudzu. This weed comes from the pea family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae. It is a climbing, coiling, and trailing vine native to southern Japan and southeast China. Its name comes from the Japanese name for the plant, Kuzu. It is a weed that climbs over trees or shrubs and grows so rapidly that it kills them by heavy shading. If the parable was placed in the context of today perhaps it would be called the Parable of the Kudzu.

John Dominic Crossan, in his masterful book Jesus A Revolutionary Biography states that “the mustard plant is dangerous even when domesticated in the garden, and is deadly when growing wild in the grain fields. And those nesting birds, which may strike us as charming, represented to ancient farmers a permanent danger to the seed and to the grain. The point, in other words, is not just that the mustard plant starts as a proverbially small seed and grows into a shrub of three, four, or five feet in height. It is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted, that it tends to get out of control, and that it tends to attract birds within cultivated areas, where they are not particularly desired. And that, said Jesus, is what the Kingdom of God was like. Like a pungent shrub with dangerous take-over properties (Jesus A Revolutionary Biography, page 65).

The Kingdom of God tends to take over where it is not wanted.

Wow! Can you begin to understand why the Kingdom of God is such a revolutionary idea? Think about how the power brokers of the Jewish establishment at the time of Jesus and the Roman hierarchy would have been immediately threatened by such a parable. Jesus is saying to the powerful elite in his time and in ours: “Your days are numbered. You cannot stop the Kingdom of God for it grows like a weed and will take over where it is not wanted.” What a threat Jesus was to the principalities and powers of his time.

Think again though about the people who followed Jesus and the multitudes who lived in the margins of society who had their fields taken away from them by the Roman occupation and the corrupt leaders of the Jewish Temple. “The Kingdom of God will take over where it is not wanted. God shall break into this mess and challenge the oppressors?” the peasants must have pondered with one another. No wonder they followed Jesus.

Is the parable of the Mustard Seed a threat to you or a sign of promise? How will this teaching of Jesus bear fruit in your life today?

Love One Another - Brian

Never Lose the Opportunity

Anonymous

“So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.”

Source: ThinkExist.com

Mark 4:21-34

Jesus said to them, ‘Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand? For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’ And he said to them, ‘Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For to those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.’ Jesus also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’ He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’ With many such parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but Jesus explained everything in private to his disciples.