The Parable of the Mustard Seed

Preaching on Matthew 13:31-35

Last week, we heard a parable about sowing seeds in different places, with different results. The Gospel explains that the seeds are Jesus’ teachings and that the places represent the receptivity of the different listeners. We critiqued the one-dimensionality of both the interpreter’s ecosystem and their ‘seed = idea’ correspondence.

We speculated about the complex experience of those seeds, and wondered how they might opt to communicate theologically – from the haunting scent of frankincense and myrrh to the revitalizing taste of wheat and grape.

Between the Parable of the Sower being offered and explained, Jesus continues to teach using plant parables.

In the first, he refers to the Kingdom of God as a tiny mustard seed, which becomes a giant bush. In the latter, he refers to the Kingdom as infinitesimal yeast, which is mixed with flour to produce a bunch of bread.

Just as the parable of the sower appears to refer to the diffusion of ideas, this appears to be equivalently methodological.

I think about the Kingdom of God as, to some extent, already present; and, to some extent, clearly not yet here. In doing so, I point to this parable as a biblical defense. The Kingdom appears in a preliminary state through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection; and has been – and will continue – to slowly emerge into fruition.

While this can be used to form a theology of history, more often, it creates an implicit framework theology for our own life-experience. The Kingdom is a metaphor for the point at which we will experience fulfilment in life. We seem to inherit a worldview in which, just like the mighty bush, we have blueprints of what fulfilment requires, and believe that, when it comes, it will be decisive and dependable. In the same way, the Kingdom of God arises from the blueprints of Jesus’ teachings, and is becoming all-encompassing, once and for all, dependable and decisive.

According to its intrinsic blueprint, the seed becomes a mighty bush and then the story ends. According to a pre-planned recipe, the yeast contributes to the baking of an inordinate amount of bread, and then its story is over too.

My fear is that our expectation that dependable and static satisfaction is possible disrupts our capacity to manage and celebrate the complex experiences we have.

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In the same way as the seed produces a bush through the genetic blueprints it contains, we inherit a worldview in which fulfilment arises through a predictable set of criteria. The criteria we inherit are different – a stress on job, or home, or family, or gender expression or religious life.

Not only do we frequently find the specific criteria insufficient predictors of fulfilment, binding ourselves to models detracts from our ability to creatively cultivate fulfilment as our circumstances change & focuses our attention on establishing and maintaining our own criteria to the detriment of our community and connection with others.

In the same way that the seed produces a single mighty bush, or the yeast produces a single mighty yield of bread, we inherit a worldview in which fulfilment is singular and all-encompassing. Whatever essential criteria for fulfilment we set for ourselves, or have set for us, we inherit the expectation that fulfilment will be knowable, clear, predominant and unambiguous.

Our quest for fulfilment as such, then, can detract from our ability to appreciate the vague and partial fulfilments we might experience & renders any moment of uncertainty or frustration into an existential threat. 

In the same way that both seed and yeast produce something, and then their story ends, we inherit a worldview in which fulfillment arrives at a moment in time and then stays, dependably. Do we really want stasis to be our goal?

Last week, I critiqued the subject/object dichotomy we have inherited. We understand ourselves as subjects, with consciousness and agency, and the material world as a set of objects, ready to be utilized as necessary. My suspicion is that the apparent possibility of a lasting satisfaction emerges through this subject/object split.

On the one hand, the creation of the subject takes our complex, interconnected and ever-changing bodies, minds and moods, and conjures amidst them, a self – that which, behind all that changes, encounters the world. It is that self, we assume, has a set of determinate needs that is, essentially, unchanging. Likewise, when we render the world into a set of objects, it can begin to seem that if we just arrange enough of them into a precise pattern, they will essentially stay where they are, and we can ensure that our self will exist in a cocoon of ongoing satisfaction.

Because, perhaps, we are ready to assume subjectivity, and subordinate the world into objects, we can, unfortunately, believe that fulfilment can be controlled and maintained.

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While there is no doubt that bushes and bread both come from blueprints, the main takeaway from the Parable of the Sower was that the blue-print is helpful, but the actual bush that is formed is dependent on its environment. The recipe is helpful, but will be adapted by the peculiarity of the cook and the needs of the people who are being fed.

While we might encounter the bush as a singular thing, it doesn't exist on its own, but in relationship with the earth, the water system, other plants, and with the birds that make it their home. In itself, it is a complex system of cells and organs – each leaf and branch a complex thing unto itself.

We imagine yeast is singular, but it too is a complex colony of microbes living together and propagating and dying. Putting yeast directly into flour will do nothing, without giving it sugar and warm water as well. It exists in relation to the strong kneading hand, the hot oven and the hungry mouths.

While we might encounter the bush as static, it doesn't live forever. It will die, and become a home to worms and fungus and bacteria as it dies, and then a source of new life as its nutrients ease into the soil. The bread comes into existence, is eaten, nourishes others, and then is gone. The seed didn't emerge from nothing, but from another bush. The yeast didn't emerge from nowhere, but from other yeast.

It is the case, for example, that his creation in Genesis and new creation, in the Revelation to John, are both gardens. When God appears to Job, in response to Job's accusation that unjust suffering exists in the world, God's litany of concerns - the wild goat, the boar, the ostrich, the horse, the Leviathan and Behemoth, the storehouse of rain - are all more-than-human.

If the Kingdom of God is like a tiny seed that becomes a mighty bush in which all of the birds of the air might land, should we not understand the birds as God's subjects? As God's subjects, what rights might they expect of their Lord? If the Kingdom of God is like a mighty bush, oughtnt we to look to its branches if we seek out God's throne room and presence? Should we listen to the wind through its branches as God's herald? Receive its fruits as God's feast-hall or its flowers as God's ornaments?

Let us imagine stumbling upon the bush teeming with birds in all of its glory.

It is, perhaps, a brief moment of encounter, witnessed out where we least expect it, something that we had not part in and that isn't for us, something larger and stranger and wilder than we could ever conceptualize.

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If we’d like to articulate a vision of our experience of God’s presence in our lives, then, I guess I am trying to say three things.

The first is, I guess, is that our experience of God isn't something that we painstakingly craft for ourselves, and then can dependable rest within.

Nor is it simple, but instead is a complex system, and full of a multitude of smaller pieces. Nor is it discrete, but instead is relational and connected with a multitude of other things. Nor is it permanent, but instead ebbs and flows, is present for a time and then dissipates, and then comes again at another time.

Health, and wholeness, peace, and satisfaction then, might be similar - not a discrete phenomenon, but made up of smaller pieces, woven into the other experiences that make up our lives, and coming and going over the course of our existence.

Perhaps, in so doing, we shift from an understanding of the kingdom of God as a place - something that seems to timelessly exist as an entity unto itself, whose name should be capitalized, to a space - a container encountered by its impact on the formation of the various events and moments that happen within it, threaded with other spaces and remembered by the history it engendered.

The second is that our experience of God, sometimes, at the very least is something wild and other, something not-made-for-us, something strange, a Lord with their avian subjects gazing at us with the bemused hospitality of one welcoming the ambassador of some far-off land.

The third is that fulfilment is probably the wrong word. It feels very once-and-for-all, and all-encompassing with the implication of criteria having been satisfied. Holiness, perhaps, conjures the wildness and otherness of the bush covered in birds.

I went for a hike this week in which I experienced a fair amount of suffering – it was too hot, and I wanted to try out a new water filtration system but the creeks had all shrunk into dribbles, and we were far too bold in trying a side trail, and the storm coming up did a number on my poor brain, and the dog ended up covered in ticks (dog-ticks, I should say, not deer ticks). I had a vision for what the day would entail, and it did not come to pass.

On the way home, I hurled myself into Lake Ontario, brushed up against its wild cool vastness, and experienced a moment of glory.