HOMILY
Mark 4:26-34, The parable of the mustard seed
June 14, 2009
As the deer longs for
the waterbrooks, so longs my soul for you O God.
Today’s Gospel from Mark actually contains two parables that each focus on agrarian themes. Most who heard Jesus speak these parables would relate to any reference to the land and growing something from the soil. However, it is important to remember that most who toiled on the land were “dirt poor”, eking out a living on land that belonged to some landlord in an arid climate where rain was not prevalent. It was not an easy life, paying rent to the landlord, taxes levied by the temple and the Romans, first harvest taxes, and feeding your family with what little is left over.
In these and other parables, Jesus is attempting to describe the “Kingdom of God” to his listeners. (The term Kingdom of God appears fourteen times in the Gospel of Mark.) When the author of a Gospel was a Jew, as in Matthew, he would choose to refer to the “Kingdom of Heaven” to avoid using the word God. The Greek, basileia tou theou, does not have an adequate translation into English. Someone at some time in the past chose to translate basileia as the word “kingdom”, but, upon further examination, it is closer to “reign” than kingdom. The word kingdom is problematic because it conveys the notion of a place with fixed boundaries. It also implies that God is a king, reinforcing a male, monarchal model of God’s rule. In addition, any reference by Jesus to a kingdom would call to mind the Roman imperial system of domination and exploitation, when Jesus was referring to a time when there would be no more victimization or domination by a powerful ruling empire. As such, reference to a reign of God would still be a subversive threat to the Roman imperial system as evidenced by the crucifixion of Jesus.[1]
The first parable attempts to describe the reign of God via a faith that when seed is sown, “the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how.” Of its own accord the land yields fruit without much input from the sower. In Jesus time, people would have related to the notion that God is the source of all productivity. Man is the sower, but God’s grace does not depend on human efforts. God is at work even when the divine action is imperceptible. Thus, reign appears to fit the first parable much better than kingdom. While this is somewhat straightforward, the parable of the mustard seed is a little more perplexing.
Earlier in chapter 4 (11-12), Mark has Jesus explaining the parables to his disciples. He said to them: “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom (or reign) of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that:
“they may indeed look, but not perceive,
and may indeed listen, but not understand;
so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.’”
Parables have been described as extended metaphors. As you most likely know, metaphors defy literal interpretation; they are common words used to describe something else. Metaphors are therefore startling, inviting the imagination to make the desired connection. I once made the statement to a colleague that I felt there were two kinds of people in the world, those who understand metaphor and those who don’t. I discovered later that this was not an original thought as someone else had made the same observation, but I am convinced that this is true. Those who understand metaphor are able to engage their imaginations and allow unique, unseen associations to be made. Those who can only hear or read words literally are locked into a mindset of certainty where imagination no longer works or functions. I wonder if this is what Jesus is referring to when he said ‘they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand’. In short, some people just don’t get it! Jesus attempted numerous times to convince his hearers that the “reign of God” was already here, but many felt that it was some future eschatological or end-time event to be anticipated. New Testament scholar, C. H. Dodd called this “realized eschatology”, where Jesus was inviting his followers into the reign of God in the here and now, not some time in the future.
Returning to the metaphor of the mustard seed, why did Jesus choose this particular focus? In a brief chapter entitled Who needs a mustard plant? in the book, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, historical Jesus scholar, John Dominic Crossan writes:[2]
“Once again, a word about the Mediterranean mustard plants and nesting birds helps us to understand the startling nature of that conjunction [between the mustard seed and the reign of God].” Crossan cites the Roman author Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE), wrote about the mustard plant in his encyclopedic Natural History: 19.170-171.
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 has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed…germinates at once.
Crossan continues… “The mustard plant is dangerous even when domesticated in the garden, and is deadly when growing wild in grain fields. And those nesting birds, which may strike us as charming, represented to the ancient farmer a permanent danger to the seed and the grain. The point, in other words, …is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted, …tends to get out of control, and attracts birds within the cultivated areas, where they are not particularly desired. And that, said Jesus, was what the reign of God was like. Like a pungent shrub with dangerous take-over properties. Something you would want only in small and carefully controlled doses—if you could control it. It is a startling metaphor, but it would be interpreted quite differently by those, on the one hand, concerned about their fields, their crops, and their harvests, and by those, on the other, for whom fields, crops, and harvest were always the property of others.”
Mustard clearly had some obvious medicinal purposes in antiquity, but if found in a field of grain it was very undesirable. How does this relate to the realm (or kingdom) of God? It would appear that the reign of God springs out of the common, everyday, obvious things that are right in front of our eyes. A mustard seed is something everyone in Jesus day could relate to, but not everyone would necessarily make the connection to the mustard seed as metaphor and what Jesus was trying to relate—that the reign of God is in and over all things. It is so simple and yet so obvious. So it would appear that there were also people in Jesus’ day who were unable to make the connection for lack of understanding of metaphor and productive imagination.
The startling aspect of this parable to those who heard this metaphorical talk in Jesus’ time, would be to ask why he would choose to describe God’s reign via a common and unwanted, pesky weed. But Jesus did this with many of his parables, using a shock effect to get his point across. He was not necessarily comforting the afflicted, rather afflicting the comforted, attempting to dislodge them from their complacency, to get their attention and hopefully change their behavior.
Allow me to end with a
prayer by Jim Cotter:[3]
Disturbing God, comparing
your domain to the wild mustard plant that threatens what we cultivate so
carefully, may your seeds grow in us until we are strong enough to challenge
those ordered worldly ways we take for granted. So may the unnoticed among us
at last grow tall. We pray this after the pattern of Jesus and in the power of
the Spirit. Amen.