Third Sunday after Trinity 2024
Preacher: The Very Rev'd Dr Paul Shackerley
Date: Sunday 16th June 2024
Service: Cathedral Eucharist
Text: Mark 4.26-34
The Mustard Seed: God’s invasive weed to bring in the Kingdom and disturb injustice, poverty and comfort
Jesus used everyday agriculture, scenes from everyday farm life, to communicate the coming of the kingdom. He used many other images in story after story; a good tree doesn’t produce bad fruit…a Sower went out to sow…consider a grain of wheat…, Jesus used to illustrate His points about the gospel and the kingdom of God. This shouldn’t be too surprising. Most of Jesus’ listeners would have been peasant farmers. Today’s gospel about a small mustard seed is much more complex than first read or understood. The mustard seed was known for its smallness but was not the smallest seed in Palestine. The seeds of the orchid and cypress were known to be smaller. We have a magnificent redwood tree in the Cathedral grounds, planted 160 years ago, the tallest of trees that is grown from the seeds of their acorns, that are the size of a tomato seed. The mustard plant is a shrub, and not a tree and its branches are not sturdy enough to support birds nesting in the trees. So, what lurks behind this parable of Jesus, is interesting.
There are two side of the coin. Firstly, the plant has a very pungent taste, and oil derived from the plant was used as seasoning in food. It was also known to have healing properties and used for medicinal purposes. Yet, in spite of these properties the mustard plant was not popular in Palestine, because it grew very rapid and aggressive, and spread like a weed or invasive shrub. The distinctive difference between Mark and Luke’s account of this parable is, Mark’s story plants the mustard seed in a garden. Someone is looking for trouble, for two reasons. First, the planting of a mustard seed in a garden was prohibited according to the purity rules of the religious temple religion. In an ordered society, like a garden, everything had its place and there was a place for everything. Not everything is alike, but different. And under the religious law mixing is prohibited. ‘Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed, do not wear clothing woven from two kinds of animal. Do not mate different kinds of animals’ (Lev 19:19). Separation leads to order and purity, while mixing things not alike meant chaos and pollution. The purity rule is clear: the mustard seed constitutes a mixed kind. Don’t put it in your garden.
What we have now is, an ordered kingdom of God that has been replaced by a chaotic and polluted kingdom. It’s not only replaced; it has been taken over by a unclean "mixed kind" that grows wild. It is invasive and difficult, impossible to control. Jesus appears to be saying that the kingdom of God is dangerous and deadly. In time that which is different will take over the ordered and unpolluted garden of ordered society. By that Jesus means the institutions and farmers he was addressing in this story. The Temple and Rome, the religious and the state. Order is turned into chaos; the kingdom of God is taking over the kingdom of the Temple and the kingdom of the state. It will be a mixed, difficult, and invasive and seen like an uncontrollable weed in a garden of worldly order. The mustard seed is taking over the Temple and Rome. This is the surprise in the parable. It’s not a parable about growth of the Church, as many interpret.
The mustard seed does not grow into a garden of order, as a shrub/weed its branches would not support a nest for birds much less offer them any significant shade. The weed’s branches disrupt the other ordered comfortable plants in the garden, who didn’t want other birds nesting who were different. They didn’t want a tree where those different can make a home and be safe. We see this in a nation’s reception or rejection of immigrants, migrants and asylum seekers. And what do these intruder birds do? They are seen as annoying intruders to be exploited, the excluded who take jobs and homes in the ordered gardens. They are seen as feeding off the land by plundering the cultivated fields, instead of neighbours to be welcomed, and who do jobs others will not take.
The mustard seeds will disturb the religious respectability of the Temple kingdom as well as undermining the imperial interests of the kingdom of Rome with their imposed high taxation of the poorest peasant farmers. This parable tells of a kingdom where God is associated with things unclean and excluded by society, where boundaries are porous, and where separation cannot and should not be tolerated or maintained. The Kingdom of God comes in the form of a disturbing mustard seed. It takes over and rightly pollutes the comfortable with difference, bringing its inhabitants that subverts the kingdoms of the Temple and Rome. Yes, the mustard seed was indeed used for its medicinal properties: it can heal the causes of exclusivity, exploitation, and domination by the kingdoms of religion institutions and civil powers. Typical of Jesus’ parables, it cuts against the grain of the exploitative world of first-century Palestine. It resonates with Jesus’ attitude towards the temple purity system (exclusivity), and the negative impact imperial Rome had on the lives of the peasantry farmers.
It will grow wild, spreading rapidly, it cannot be stopped, it is a nuisance, and it takes over the neat and boundary gardens. Those hearing this parable would know its meaning and they would be uncomfortable with it. Who does this Jesus think he is, saying God is inclusive and we are exclusive? What was Jesus thinking? Simply, their comfortable neat world that keeps people out, will be messed up by an invasive weed called God’s Kingdom. So, each one of us is a person with a mustard seed in our Christian hands. When we drop our mustard seed into other people’s lives, God will grow that seed and others will be welcomed to come and nest in the Church to be accepted and loved. We have permission from God to invade our society and communities like a mustard seed. The Church, this Cathedral, is the place where all sorts come to nest, feed and find safety for their souls and feed on the Bread and water of life.
But not only is the Church in the business of welcoming all sorts to come and nest here, especially the migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. So are our institutions and governments of the UK. May this also be in manifestos of all political parties and ideologies as we move to the election in July. That they will include and care for the excluded and poorest employees exploited by some in today’s Britain. What Jesus said about the mustard seed was absurd to the Temple and Rome. It is what the kingdom is God like. It’s like a small mustard seed being planted in a neat, enclosed exclusive garden, messing up the comfortable theological, political and social lives that want to exclude people. To make matters worse, by putting a mustard seed in a garden, you attract all sorts to nest and find a home in the Church and nation. We must all be in the business of welcoming all sorts to come and nest in our nation and church because this is how the kingdom is rooted.