Reflections on the Mustard Seed and the Kingdom of God
June 14, 2015 | Anita Retzlaff (at St. Martins United Church)

Darren Wooff  (With the Children)
The adults will soon be talking about the bible reading for today. It is a story of Jesus telling a story about seeds. In the story Jesus says that the kingdom of God – that is the love of God—is like seeds. Seeds that are scattered on the ground and then grow up into all kinds of plants. The thing about seeds is that there are lots of seeds. There are even seeds in the grass where we are sitting! God made seeds to grow into plants but God made plants to have a LOT of seeds. A friend of mine said that she almost filled her whole garbage bin with seeds from the trees around her house. That’s a lot of seeds! And Jesus said that God’s love was like seeds growing in us to help love other people. But God’s love is not just a few seeds – God’s love is like a million seeds! God loves us soooo much. God loves us when we are at our soccer games or at our grandmother’s house or when we get special toys. God loves us as much as there are seeds in the world. So the next time you see a million little seeds on a tree, remember how much God loves you.

Michael Webster

• For a guy who was supposed to be a carpenter, Jesus sure talks a lot about farming
• The point of both parables seems to be that Kingdom of God is like uncontrolled growth
• Not the mustard weed we are used to. This is black mustard, from brassica family, related to broccoli – an annual that can grow to 8 feet in one season.
• In Ontario, could hear the corn growing
• Farmers and gardeners can’t grow anything – can only provide best conditions for growth to happen on its own. Uncontrolled.
• Us, too – can’t grow Kingdom, only provide best conditions, which include tending our personal spirituality and working together to weed out poverty, prune back injustice, nurture generosity and fertilize compassion.
• The rest is up to God’s uncontrollable Spirit.

Anita Retzlaff
Our task as followers of Jesus is really quite simply I think.  Grow where you are planted and make a difference right where you are.  The image of a mustard seed is a great one.  We are tiny, tiny influences in a big, big world.  However, that is not to make us feel powerless or useless or worse to think that we need do nothing because it doesn't matter in the entire scheme of things.

The radical call of Jesus is that we consider ourselves powerful little mustard seeds that help to grow the Kingdom of God - here, today, for us and in our community.  There is no pie-in-the-sky bye and bye that will make the kind of difference that each one of us can make today, in this life and right here.  That is a radical thought, maybe even sounds stupid to some because we live in a world where power, celebrity and influence tend to be those things that are sought after and which every "successful" person dreams of, aspires to. 

The subversive thrust of Jesus' talk of the mustard seed's influence is that it begins as something really tiny and inconspicuous - not a big time player or a threat to any governing hierarchy. Yet, the influence of a mustard seed's growth should not be underestimated. It grows and eventually its large branches support the kind of community that cares for all.  Success is measured by what that little seed becomes: a safe haven, a place of inclusion, a home of comfort and calm. In that way, an insignificant enough looking mustard seed can unseat the plans of powerful elites who have other ideas of what is valuable and successful in our communities.

What more can we work toward in our world of frenetic activity, competition and anxiety-inducing global relationships than to provide security and a safe place to grow? Jesus would have us pay attention to the things that we can do to make our world a better place, right where we live, one tiny act of kindness and care at a time. That is the Kingdom of God, not in a nutshell but in a mustard seed.

Keith
The other day I was planting some poppy seeds  and was amazed at how virtually miniscule they were and so black I remain unsure to this day whether any actually went into the hole or if I was the victim of an unscrupulous  seed marketer. It will be satisfying for sure when they begin to grow and when the time comes for them to bloom I will marvel at where from where they have come. Similalry the The scriptural reference we heard describes the mustard seed as the smallest of seeds which grow into the largest of bushes. I suspect that neither the poppies or the mustard would come to their full beauty , their full potential without the nurturing and attention of dedicated caregivers.

As a minister in an affirming congregation that strives to welcome all and celebrate diversity, I hear stories of people who have not been nurtured by caregivers, who have been made to feel less than and unwelcome and who have not been encouraged to bloom into their full being. I have always despaired that we miss out on much when this happens, when people either stop trying or go elsewhere to live their authentic selves.
Most of us know what it’s like to have a friend, someone to be easy with who accepts you and whom you accept with all your mutual faults and virtues.  And yet you can never predict friendship. Unexpectedly a stranger can become a friend, and you may never know why, when or how it happened.

Wouldn’t that be an ideal Kingdom of God? When everyone else is a friend? Or could be one?

In our churches, even when we have the best of intentions, friendship or connection is offered and turned down.  Perhaps is it easier to nurse a grudge, to be ambivalent,   to hold onto untruths, to  live in the  fear of getting involved or stepping outside of our comfort zone, to resist change or deepened understandings and sometimes it’s just challenges our personal codes at some level or another.

Maybe sometimes we are just too self-centred to recognize that someone known or unknown to us could be offering us the Kingdom of God. In our commitment to openness, compassion and care let us be open to that very possibility. Let it be so.

Sarah Unrau
After reading the parable, the first thing that claimed my attention was the seed.

At first glance, it seemed so plain and unremarkable - dry and hard in it’s dull shell. As I pondered this seed, I was struck with how similar it was to the Christmas story. Mary and Joseph, two people that could also be described as plain and unremarkable. And in the same way that Jesus came into this world as a baby, the seed is a yet another gift from God that comes in a small, vulnerable, and precious form. Jesus wasn’t the anticipated warrior king and nor is the seed a tidal wave, instead we have 2 small gifts with potentially for greatness.

If I was given a tidal wave instead of a seed, I would most definitely drown. The seed gives me hope that I can manage it, that we as people can manage it.

I am a small person in the scheme of things. Just one of 7 billion. It’s easy to write off my own importance. It’s easy to think I have little impact. Its easy to write off my individual charge to share God’s word and it’s easy to think that someone else will spread the word of God. However, I would like to think that each one of us, here and now, have been charged with the seed. That the kingdom of heaven is a personal experience that we need to grow and foster for ourselves today.

This summer, I planted a perfect, little, row of sweetpeas in our garden. Ten days later, when they began to push through the earth, I realized that a few where slower than others and hadn’t come up just yet. 2 weeks later, it be came apparent that they did not sprout. Like these little pods, our best efforts to live out the kingdom may go to waste and something as small as a mustard seed might be easy to lose. So although we are charged with this personal kingdom, we can not keep it for ourselves. We need to share it with others who have lost their’s. We need to kindle the spirits of those who’s seeds lie dormant.

I like to imagine that our efforts will not only yield a tree, but a forest. Humankind may have been given one, small kernel of wisdom, love and hope, but that seed will grow into a tree that reaches both upwards and outwards. This tree will produce thousands of additional grains, dropped and shared at the far reaches of it’s branches, which will be gathered and sowed and grow into more trees. And the circle will continue. Suddenly,
this tiny gift has the potential for tremendous abundance, not just in one tree but many.

We can be dull, ordinary people, but each of us have the opportunity to claim the scattering of seeds that God has laid before us and the ability to grow them.

Patrick Preheim
In the mustard seed we have the smallest of things which grows up to provide nesting habitat for the birds of the air.  In Ezekiel 31:6 we also have a tree which provides both shade and space for bird nests.  In Ezekiel, however, the tree is a Cedar whose height cannot be rivalled.  It is, by Ezekiel’s vision, a great tree if not the greatest of all trees.   In Daniel 4.11-12 we hear that King Nebuchadnezzar has also dreamed of a “great tree” which hosts the “birds of the air”.  Great trees in the Old Testament, it seems, refer to large empires.  The United States with its military bases or China with its economic influence or Russia with its natural resources would be considered a Cedar by Old Testament standards.  In both Daniel and Ezekiel, it should be noted, the great trees get their tops cropped by God on account of arrogance.

I think Jesus is very much aware of the way in which great trees were portrayed in his Hebrew canon:  they were political entities which extended over and through other nations.  Both the Cedar of the Hebrew Scriptures and the mustard shrub house the birds of the air, but they do so differently.  The kingdom of God is not about arrogance, dominance, or politics.  Jesus says that God wants to protect, care for, and minister to the birds of the world, and chooses to do it through the most unexpected sources.  “How can a mustard seed become a tree?  How does the kingdom of God grow in our hearts and in this world?  As verse 27 says, we do not know” (Katerina Friesen, “The Smallest Seed” in Rejoice! devotional (June 12, 2015)).  God takes the most farfetched dream, the smallest act of kindness, the tiniest spark of faith within a cold or anxious heart and “nurtures it beyond possibility” (Ibid).  We do not understand how it happens, but this is what the God of Jesus Christ does.  And knowing this, changes reality.  Amen.

Mustard Seed Reflections
June 14, 2015 | Patrick Preheim (at St. Martins United Church)

In the mustard seed we have the smallest of things which grows up to provide nesting habitat for the birds of the air.  In Ezekiel 31:6 we also have a tree which provides both shade and space for bird nests.  In Ezekiel, however, the tree is a Cedar whose height cannot be rivalled.  It is, by Ezekiel’s vision, a great tree if not the greatest of all trees.   In Daniel 4.11-12 we hear that King Nebuchadnezzar has also dreamed of a “great tree” which hosts the “birds of the air”.  Great trees in the Old Testament, it seems, refer to large empires.  The United States with its military bases or China with its economic influence or Russia with its natural resources would be considered a Cedar by Old Testament standards.  In both Daniel and Ezekiel, it should be noted, the great trees get their tops cropped by God on account of arrogance.

I think Jesus is very much aware of the way in which great trees were portrayed in his Hebrew canon:  they were political entities which extended over and through other nations.  Both the Cedar of the Hebrew Scriptures and the mustard shrub house the birds of the air, but they do so differently.  The kingdom of God is not about arrogance, dominance, or politics.  Jesus says that God wants to protect, care for, and minister to the birds of the world, and chooses to do it through the most unexpected sources.  “How can a mustard seed become a tree?  How does the kingdom of God grow in our hearts and in this world?  As verse 27 says, we do not know” (Katerina Friesen, “The Smallest Seed” in Rejoice! devotional (June 12, 2015)).  God takes the most farfetched dream, the smallest act of kindness, the tiniest spark of faith within a cold or anxious heart and “nurtures it beyond possibility” (Ibid).  We do not understand how it happens, but this is what the God of Jesus Christ does.  And knowing this, changes reality.  Amen.

Patrick Preheim, co-pastor Nutana Park Mennonite Church

On the Parable of the Mustard Seed  [Denise Levertov]
Who ever saw the mustard-plant,
wayside weed or tended crop,
grow tall as a shrub, let alone a tree, a treeful
of shade and nests and songs?
Acres of yellow,
not a bird of the air in sight.

No, He who knew
the west wind brings
the rain, the south wind
thunder, who walked the field-paths
running His hand along wheatstems to glean
those intimate milky kernels, good
to break on the tongue,

was talking of miracle, the seed
within us, so small
we take it for worthless, a mustard-seed, dust,
nothing.
Glib generations mistake
the metaphor, not looking at fields and trees,
not noticing paradox. Mountains
remain unmoved.

Faith is rare, He must have been saying,
prodigious, unique—
one infinitesimal grain divided
like loaves and fishes,

as if from a mustard-seed
a great shade-tree grew. That rare,
that strange: the kingdom
a tree. The soul
a bird. A great concourse of birds
at home there, wings among yellow flowers.
The waiting
kingdom of faith, the seed
waiting to be sown.
-----------------------------------
Against Empire  [Jim Moore]
   Small Olives taste best
   Small stars shine farthest
   Small birds call
   most sweetly.  Small lives,
   we are small, small lives.