The Kingdom of God

In my book, Bell to Bell: A Get-Through-Today Devotional for Teachers, I tell the story of the time the math teacher down the hall called me down to her room so she could show me something strange she had found.

There in the back of the room, where the wall met the floor, was a small plant, surrounded by a small mound of dirt.

She and I both stood there, trying to figure out where it had come from.  There was no crack in the floor or the wall.  Had it really found a way through a foot of cinderblock from the outside to the inside?  And how was it surviving at all, lit only by fluorescent lights each day?

It was a mystery—until one night when the custodian decided to sweep the plant into the trash.

The next day, a boy, who I’ll call Sam, raced over to the teacher’s desk, upset and out of breath.

“What happened to my plant?” he asked.

Sam was not the best of students.  He preferred cutting up and chatting than doing any work. 

He admitted, though, that he had brought the plant in, as a seed, that he smuggled dirt and water in one of those round, plastic M&M containers.  This was his classwork—to grow this plant from seed to life.

There are two mentions of mustard seeds in the Gospels.  We see the first example of that in today’s reading from Luke 13:18-19 in the Parable of the Mustard Seed.  I know that I am personally more familiar with the second mention of the mustard seed found in Matthew 17:20 where Jesus says, “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”

I remember when I was a kid thinking that this type of faith would give me powers similar to the Force in Star Wars.  I remember lying on the couch, the remote just out of reach, and thinking, if I only had enough faith, I could command that remote to fly to my hand.

In the end, my faith was not strong enough to aid and abet my laziness.

Today, I want to look at both of these mentions of the mustard seed, not individually, but together.  I want us to look at the message they send as a whole.

In Luke 13:18-19, Jesus says, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it?  It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”

This comparison seems fairly straightforward.  The kingdom of God starts as something small and grows and flourishes into something grand and filled with life.  Note that Jesus does not say the mustard seed grew randomly and flourished, but that it was planted, in a garden.  It is implied that it was cared for and looked after. 

Such is the kingdom of God.

And it is something we can all relate to.

We can all think of something—seed or otherwise—that started small and grew larger.

Even right in the Bible—take Genesis 15:5 where God tells Abram, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them … So shall your descendants be.”

One man, Abram—soon to be Abraham—a man with no children of his own at that moment, told that his descendants will one day be too many to count.

But there is also an implicit warning in the Parable of the Mustard Seed, something unspoken, but sitting right there beneath the surface.

There are many things that can grow when given proper attention … and not all of them are good.

A lie, for example, can start off small and balloon to something wild and out of control.

Hatred, anger, bitterness, resentment—all these things can fester and spread and grow.

The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, full of potential, filled with promise and waiting for its moment to grow.

But other things grow like a cancer and whatever we give attention to will be what flourishes.

The kingdom of God, Jesus is telling us, is life.

And, the kingdom of God is built on faith.

“If you had faith the size of a mustard seed ….” Jesus says.  It’s no coincidence that Jesus uses the mustard seed as an example twice.  He wants us to see the connection between the two examples.  In the first, the kingdom of God is something that starts as small as a mustard seed but grows when planted and looked after.  In the second, faith, even as small as that mustard seed is strong enough to move mountains.

What does this mean?

Think of all the power residing in the smallest seedling of faith.  Now imagine that seed growing and growing, spreading and growing upwards and filled with all kind of life.  That is the kingdom of God, something—quite frankly—unimaginable.

Faith as small as a mustard seed has the power to move mountains.

And a kingdom built on such faith could remake the universe.

That student, Sam, who cared for that plant in the back of the room was thwarted by a very conscientious custodian.  His tiny, little plant kingdom was undone by a sweep of the broom.

But the kingdom of God is deeply rooted.

The kingdom of God cannot be swept away.

Amen.