Last week, we began considering the Kingdom Of heaven, and we were looking at Jesus’ parable from Matthew 13 that likened his Kingdom to a mustard seed. We discussed how with Jesus, small things are valuable, whereas in contrast, we tend to focus only on the big.
Mustard seeds had a reputation in Jesus’ day for more than just being small, because when a mustard seed grows, it starts to take over a whole garden like a weed. So Jesus goes on to say: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed planted in a field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest of garden plants. It grows into a tree, and birds come and make nests in its branches.”
I’m sure most of you have heard of Japanese not weed. It was brought over to our country to support the railway banks, but it spread like wildfire, invading everything in its path. it can crack concrete and kill other plant life, until all you’re left with is Japanese not weed. The more you try to cut them back, the more they grow. Mustard seed is like Japanese not weed. It takes over everything in its path. First century Jews found it so overwhelmingly destructive that they had written laws against planting mustard seed in your garden, so it couldn’t sprout and take over, strangling everything in its path.
When Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed, he’s also saying it’s like this unruly, uncontrollable, unstoppable, wild weed. It looks small at first, but it grows, and it becomes the largest of all the garden plants. This is what happens with the Kingdom of heaven. It’s like a stealth operation, sneaking up on the world one little life at a time, one house at a time, one little act of sacrifice, or grace, or truth, at a time.
Lots of Christians love to talk about advancing or building the Kingdom, but when Jesus talked about the Kingdom, he never talked about us building or advancing it. He said: “The kingdom of heaven is, and it grows, and it becomes.” He invited his followers
to watch it happen, to embrace it, to believe in the reality of it, and then to join in cultivating what he was already doing in the world.
That’s why what you think about the Kingdom of heaven matters because the Kingdom of Heaven is happening all around us. God’s invitation is to participate in it as it grows…or not.
Like the Jewish people who first heard it, I imagine many of us wouldn’t like that message either. We want it done now. We want to see it here now. We want the marriage, the financial troubles, the health issues, the addictions fixed now, not slow growth – small growth that takes time and patience – growth we have to wait for.
Sometimes it feels like it might not be making much of a difference, but this is what Jesus promised – that when we look, we’ll see it growing, in glimpses. It’s right here. It’s subtle. It’s quiet, but gradually, it will invade everything. It’s how the Church was meant to be. We don’t always show it perfectly, but many of us have seen God’s Kingdom in each other. Lives are being changed. Gifts are being used. The hungry are being fed. God is being worshiped.
My own church started as a small mustard seed. It was a tiny idea that took root fast, and now we have a genuine love for each other and our community, and the people around us are starting to notice. Our ministries were once seed ideas that may have seemed small or insignificant at the beginning, but during this last year they have grown greatly. We are beginning to see the fruit of a community that has been developing all around the seed ideas growing and climbing like weeds.
God’s Kingdom is growing in the small, the subtle, and the ordinary. It is growing in the way we comfort each other in grief or celebrate with each other in joy. It is growing when we forgive, and it’s present here and now, wherever, and whenever God is King on earth.
So right now, I want to invite you to take a moment to think about the seeds in your life. What could God be planting in you? Where could God be tapping you on the shoulder and saying: “Here it is. That’s my kingdom. Pay attention to it.”
Take a moment to pray and think about those places where The Kingdom is growing, spreading, and thriving. God says: “Pay attention when you feel me tapping on your shoulder with what might seem like an insignificant seed. Pay attention to the dreams – to the tiny ideas you’re not so sure about. Pay attention to the parts of your community that have potholes, which are littered with broken families. That’s where I’ll plant my Kingdom.”
When those small seeds grab root in the soil, we will witness the Kingdom here and now, taking over our community and the world like a weed.
It would be interesting to think of the Church as a garden. Where the people are different kind of plants or weeds. We are growing and being watered by God’s word. We are also being pruned by him taking out areas in our lives that need trimming back.