Behold: The mightiest of all the shrubbery!
Revel in its prodigious proliferation.
Taste it and relish its rich piquancy, revealing to the sophisticated pallet the exotic terroir of its provenance.
O, may I humbly sing the praises of The Most Wondrous of the Weeds, The Queen of the Condiments,

A delicacy fit for the frankfurters of kings!
Mustard!

Mustard, my Muse!

There. If you’ve cracked a smile, then you’ve caught something of the Kingdom of Heaven.

That’s the point of the parable of the mustard seed, (Matthew 13:31-32, Mark 4:30-32, Luke 13:18-19, Thomas 20).

It’s a joke.

Jesus is playing a holy fool, a sacred clown, a wise trickster trying to tweak us awake.

Now, the only thing worse than trying to explain why a joke is funny, is when that joke is two-thousand years old.

But here it goes.

I’ll start with trying out a modern parallel.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a bunch of dandelion seed fuzzballs that a gardener took in her hands and blew all over her garden and all over her yard. Those tiny seeds grew and the yard filled with flowering blossoms of such beauty the neighborhood had never before beheld. All those who strolled by were overcome with the romance of the sunny glory of the dandelions.

O, the redolence of their perfumed blossoms.

Ah, the dazzling display of their golden peddles.

This is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.

Do you remember as a kid, once dandelions go to seed, picking one of those fuzz-balls and blowing it and watching the seeds float off into the wind? And making a wish?

That’s what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like those little seeds spreading out and drifting and settling down and sprouting up into tons of weeds.

In other words, the Kingdom of Heaven is a delight to children and a nuisance to neighborhood associations.

The Kingdom of Heaven is a wonder to the innocent, and a weed to those quick to pump out the round up … even after you’ve explained to them that dandelion leaves have more nutrients than the kale chips at an overpriced hipster sandwich shop.

Our neighbors in Philly don’t seem to care about dandelions in our lawn, but boy, when we were in Walla Walla, Washington those untamed blossoms in our yard would bring out some of the finest displays of northwest passive-aggression.

Now you know you can tell your neighbors who complain about the dandelions in your lawn, “Hey, neighbor, I’m just practicing good theology!”

Anyway, Jesus was talking about mustard, not dandelions. So, let’s talk about mustard.

We’ve heard this parable about the mustard seed so many times that it’s lost its impact. Usually it’s taken to mean that faith is so powerful that having even just a little of it can have huge effects. Take even a little leap of faith and God will make something great grow from it. That’s how we can get a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven on earth.

This is a great message – don’t get me wrong. It’s true and good and beautiful. By the grace of God, just a little bit of trust in that Higher Power can grow into goodness beyond what we imagined. That’s good stuff; it’s worth remembering, it’s worth repeating.

But Jesus is doing something more with this parable. He’s trying to get across something much more startling. He’s trying to get across something that it may be best for us to be laughing to take in.

And the proof is in the mustard.

In British slang, I gather, “mustard” is used to mean pluck, verve, spunk, especially in the underdog. 

For such a small seed, it packs a lot of spice. But it is also a weed.

Mustard sprouts quickly. It spreads quickly, and to places where it doesn’t belong. It’s tenacious and it’s tough to get rid of. I’ve had farmers tell me how mustard is quick to get in among the corn and hay. Farmers at Jesus’ time were instructed to grow mustard apart from their main crops, at the edges of their fields. 

So, our first clue in Jesus’ parable that something is off here, is that the farmer takes a bunch of mustard seeds and throws them all over their field. No one does that. It’s ridiculous. It’s contaminating their fields.

Now, a mustard seed is indeed tiny. And the type of mustard plant in the middle east, the black mustard, grows into an impressive piece of shrubbery indeed – it averages four feet high, and can grow as tall as nine feet.

That is impressive … for a weed. And I know that people were shorter back then, but still, a tall weed with bitter leaves that’s spread where it doesn’t belong doesn’t exactly inspire the kind of awe that would lead someone to contemplate the glory of God.

Jesus is being cheeky.

The other ingredient in his cheek is his saying that the mustard grows so big that all these birds come and roost in its branches. Now, a full-grown mustard is indeed bushy enough and big enough for birds to be happy in its branches. But Jesus is being sly.

In Jesus’ tradition, poets and prophets sing of a mighty tree whose growth is so generous that the wild birds find shelter in its branches. 

That tree is the Cedar of Lebanon. In the Hebrew tradition, when someone wants to evoke grandeur and power, one of the images they use is the Cedar of Lebanon. Now that’s a big tree. It’s in fact the most impressive thing that grows in the area. The species of cedar that grows in the Middle East can grow more than 100 feet tall, and 30 around. They can live for hundreds of years. Cedars are beautiful sentinel trees towering above the desert landscape. It’s the tree that’s on the Lebanese flag today.  

In our first reading from Ezekiel (Ezekiel 31:1-6, 10, 12), we see an example of a prophet evoking the grandeur of the cedar, that gives shelter to all the birds of the air and the animals of the ground. we see the prophet also talking about all the wild birds finding shelter in the branches of a tree.

But Ezekiel uses this cedar to represent the pride of the Egyptian empire.  Ezekiel is saying that Egypt is playing God, in all of its invading and oppressing and enslaving. Ezekiel is warning Egypt that they’re playing a dangerous game they’re going to lose … this pride is going before the fall. God will crush Egypt, like a storm tearing apart a cedar tree.

Now, Jesus seems to have a better sense of humor than grumpy old Ezekiel, no disrespect to the prophet.

Jesus is mocking the hubris of the powerful, same as Ezekiel; he’s mocking religious pretense. But he’s doing it with a flash of humor that is lifting up all the spunky and scrappy roots of the truth that spread tenaciously through the cracks between the concrete. He’s talking about his little movement of mustard-folks who are wild with love and reckless in their spread of the seeds of grace. Those seeds of grace naturally find the places in our lives that we turn away from or, worse, mow down, the margins of ourselves and of our society, where weeds grow.

Jesus’ movement was like a spread of weeds, a movement of the lepers and punks and prostitutes, the junkies and peaceniks and illegals and queers, those who Dr. King called the creatively maladjusted misfits to a society whose values are inhumane.

There – here – is the Kingdom of Heaven. Or should I say “Kin-dom”?

The Kin-dom of Heaven is not something we bring as missionaries, or something we build as settlers, or something we win as victors – it is something for us to discover as pilgrims in our own place and time. The Kin-dom of Heaven is here, among us, within us, beyond us, if only we have eyes to see.

So, let’s be the kinds of pilgrims who are scrounging around on the ground looking for the wild weeds busting through the cracks, and let us share the holy gifts with the same reckless generosity and same delight of a child sending seeds into the wind.

And if we let ourselves laugh a little while we’re at it, that just may be where the grace gets in.

Thanks be to God.

Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg

With deep gratitude for Dr. Hal Taussig, who taught me the insight about this parable that I share here.

Image: “Gone to Seed Already” by Noël Zia Lee is licensed under CC BY 2.0