There’s an irony in today’s Gospel lesson, which may be hidden to us. We can take scripture ever so seriously. Even those of us who have left behind the more literalistic readings of our earlier lives, tend to treat the Bible with a certain gravitas. I know that’s partly why our new translation this summer, the Common English Bible, feels odd. The use of contractions and colloquialisms doesn’t seem to fit the serious and pious reading of Scripture. Does it?
When we were proofreading bulletins this week, Mandy didn’t like the rendering of the mustard seed which “grows and becomes the largest of vegetable plants.” (When I gave her a heads up I was going to mention it, she made me promise to tell you she isn’t refusing to be here just because she didn’t like the translation. She’s up at camp Stony this weekend). I’ll admit, “vegetable plants” is a bit awkward, but it turns out it’s a better translation of the Greek than “shrub” or “tree” which we often get. This is about a garden herb.
And it helps us to uncover the irony in this passage. Years ago, St. Michael’s former rector, Brian Taylor, said of the mustard parable: “What if I were to tell you that God’s ways are like the majestic tumbleweed, offering security to all who lean on its mighty branches and comfort to all who rest in its luxuriant shade?”
That play with the image of the majestic tumbleweed is a bit like what Jesus is doing with the mustard plants. In the history of our planet, maybe one or two very enterprising birds has ever made a nest in a mustard plant. But it’s not common. Mustard doesn’t grow into mighty trees. Jesus is being ironic, facetious, and he’s inviting us to ask why on earth he would choose this strange image.
To understand Jesus’ mustard seed, to understand the irony, it might help to talk about the subject of the story. Jon Sobrino, the Salvadoran libration theologian, has said that we often misunderstand Jesus because the church is so busy preaching about Jesus. Jesus didn’t preach about Jesus, Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God. Jesus used story after story to describe a subversive reign, a reign of justice, of love, of fairness and equity. Jesus was planting an alternative set of values in his new movement.
Jesus and his followers lived in a time thin on justice and equity. The occupying army of Rome plays a big role in the Gospels. Jesus has run-ins with Roman governors. He heals the servants of centurions. Disputes over taxation are rife. Jesus stories were told to a people living under colonial occupation, and longing to be free. This was a time of oppression, and Jesus’ parables about an alternative kingdom, they are subversive.
But not subversive in the way we might think. If Jesus had chosen a different seed, maybe the story would play differently. When Eugene Peterson made his translation of Scripture, the Message, he dropped the mustard altogether. Peterson instead has Jesus say, “it’s like a pine nut. When it lands on the ground it is quite small as seeds go, yet once it is planted it grows into a huge pine tree with thick branches. Eagles nest in it.” Not just birds. Eagles. If Peterson had just made them bald eagles his translation would be entirely ready for American Christian Nationalism.
But Jesus’s story isn’t mighty. The reign of God is not like the Pines Rome, or the Cedars of Lebanon, or the mighty American Oak. God’s reign isn’t powerful, not in the ways we Americans probably imagine. Instead Jesus talks about a vegetable plant. And, for what it’s worth, Augustine thinks Jesus is being intentionally spicy.
Pliny the Elder, writing around the same time as Jesus, says this about mustard plants. Mustard “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 when it falls germinates at once.” For Pliny, mustard is like garden mint. Be careful where you plant it, or it can take over your garden. The Kingdom of God is like a weed. It spreads.
I wonder, for Jesus, if the teachings about the reign of God are subversive in this subtle way. Remember, he ran away when they tried to make him king. He told his followers to put away their swords.
The revolution Jesus preached was an inner revolution. Jesus’ kingdom had a habit of springing up where you didn’t mean to plant it. When folks have an encounter with this spirituality, it has a habit of taking root. When we get a taste of God’s justice, when we get a taste of Christ-like love, when we see even tiny glimpses of how we can treat one another, those seeds have a habit of growing.
Desmond Tutu used to like to tell a joke about the missionaries who converted the South African people to Christianity. He said:
“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”
But, Tutu would say, don’t underestimate the power of the Bible. He said, centuries later it would have been impossible to imagine what it would have been like for the black community during apartheid without the Bible. The Bible was the story they returned to for hope, for direction. Using the Bible, they came to the governing regime again and again and said, “let my people go.” Don’t underestimate the power of the Bible’s subversive hope.
The theologian James Alison has called Jesus’ parables “intimations of a great reversal.” These are stories of our expectations being flipped. The parables of Jesus tell of a world turned upside down. The meek inherit the earth. The mighty are cast down. These are intimations of a great reversal, stories of a new creation.
So the mustard seed parable is like the story of David, the smallest of his brothers, so young that Jesse doesn’t even bring him in from the field when the prophet visits. There’s no way that David will be king. But “God does not look at things like humans do.” David is God’s anointed one, the smallest, the least, is chosen.
I’ve known so many unlikely Christians. I’ve known folks who should have given up on faith because of the way they had been treated by church. I’ve known contemplative leaders who had PhDs in molecular biology, and who somehow couldn’t shake the unscientific love that God was growing in their lives. I have known young adults, who only came to church because their grandparents invited them, who found a community and a way to work for justice. I have known campesinos who gathered together in a church their denomination had closed, because the parishioners couldn’t afford to pay a clergy salary. In that old church they organized a campaign to get running water and electricity delivered to their village elementary school. The work of God’s Spirit has a habit of growing up in the least likely places, among the least likely people.
The work of God is often overlooked in our world. The work of God doesn’t often make front page news. The stories today which help us to know that God’s Great Reversal is underway, God’s reign is taking root, those stories likely won’t be talked about on CNN or MSNBC. They are heard instead around kitchen tables, told on long walks with an old friend. Hope that our lives have meaning, that our world can be more forgiving, more just, more loving, that hope isn’t often communicated using mass media or social media. God’s kingdom is hinted at in more quiet and intimate ways. God’s kingdom is in the smile of the neighbor at a food pantry, in the laugh shared between folks waiting to testify at a city council meeting. That hope is found in the shared stillness of centering prayer. Tasted in bread and wine made holy, broken, and shared. The moments when we glimpse God’s kingdom seem tiny, but they can spread like weeds. They can bring spice into our world.
Mustard seeds or tumbleweeds, shrubs or vegetable plants, however you read this parabolic story, there is an invitation. Jesus invites us to laugh at the irony that God is at work in too-often-unnoticed places. Jesus invites us to dig into the dirt of our life, and to notice the ways the Spirit is already taking root. Jesus invites us to spread seeds of love, seeds of forgiveness, seeds of justice, not knowing what will germinate. God invites us to the work of subversive hope, trusting that God will do the growing, even when we’re unaware. Amen.
Mike Angell 