Jeremy Duncan: This image is telling us the same story that's well known from the Hebrew prophets, but with a very important twist. The kingdom is not just something that grows large. The kingdom is something that pops up where it's not supposed to be and welcomes those who aren't supposed to be there in the first place. We're still in a series on the parables of grace. So let's pray, and then we'll jump right into our next tale.
God of grace, we come to you today simply as we are, carrying our questions, our needs, our hopes, even distractions perhaps. Some of us arrive this morning confident, others tired, some of us unsure of what we even believe here in this moment. And, yet, all of us are welcome. Remind us, as we saw last Sunday, that our prayer in this moment is not a performance or a transaction, but simply an expression of the courage to stand before you honestly. And so we do.
We ask that you would quiet our hearts, open our imaginations to your grace, plant something small inside of us today, some glimpse of your goodness that might slowly grow into the courage to see the world the way that you do. As we listen to the words of Jesus again, may your spirit grow in us something far larger than we perhaps ever expected. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Today, we tackle a very famous parable.
And, it's another one of those ones where even if you didn't grow up in church or around church, you are probably well aware of mustard seeds, their diminutive starting points, and their impressive results. And so today, we will cover familiar examples, Sabbath rules, the wrong terminology, and then finally, the twist ending. But, as a bit of background, the parable of the mustard seed is one of only a handful of parables that are told in all three of what we call the synoptic gospels. Now, if you're not familiar with that term, it's a Greek term. It means they see with or they see together.
And we use it to describe Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which are the three gospels that are the most similar in their approach to telling the Jesus story. And for a little text critical background here, we generally think that Matthew and Luke possibly probably had a copy of Mark at their disposal when they were writing out their gospels. They each lift passages that seem to come from Mark, which would of course make Mark the earliest gospel. And if you're interested in that gospel, we did a longer two part series on the gospel of Mark, working our way through it a couple years ago. You can find that in our archives.
However, there was also a theorized document called Q. Now, that may have been an early proto gospel that has since been lost. And that theory comes from the fact that Matthew and Luke also seem to have overlapping passages, where they seem to be quoting someone that's not Mark. And so some scholars have speculated about a second text that they had at their disposal when they were writing, when they were quoting from, but one that's not available to us. Now, that's a pretty reasonable explanation for what we see in the text.
Not at all universally accepted, so very much theoretical. For those wondering, the reason we call that theoretical document Q is it comes from the German word for source. Now the reason I take you on that little tangent is because when Matthew and Mark and Luke all tell the story of the mustard seed, Matthew stays very close to Mark's version of the story. Luke, however, records a version of this parable with the same intent, but he places it in a very different narrative setting. He also changes some of the iconic language and phrasing in ways that suggest that he might be getting this story from another source, perhaps our theoretical document Q.
For example, you will notice when we get there that in Luke's version of the parable, Jesus doesn't mention anything about the size of mustard seeds at all. He just simply compares the kingdom of God to the enormous tree that grows when the seed is planted. So a little different. And there might be a good reason for that. In fact, Jesus is not the first person to notice that such a large plant grows from such a small seed.
Mustard seeds are very tiny after all, though technically not the smallest seeds in the world. That title belongs to the epiphytic orchid. You can bring that fact to your next horticultural gathering. So there. By the way, my kids are six and 12 right now.
The 12 year old is in junior high, solidly at the age where if you get any fact wrong, mispronounce a word, use the wrong word in a sentence, he will let you know about it. It's a constant battle for me not to, in return, correct him on literally every other thing that he says, which, by the way, that's an exaggeration, and he would be right to call me out on that one too. But thing is, I also now have a six year old, and she is sitting at the table watching all of this. And just in the last couple months, I have now realized that I have to deal with this phrase a lot, actually, daddy, from her as well. And it's a comfort in the fact that I realized that somewhere in my early twenties when I realized that my parents were actually quite smart.
I tell you what, I'm looking forward to that. Still got about a decade to go. Who knows? Okay. Point here is that Jesus doesn't actually need to preface the parable with the size of mustard seeds because he's leaning into, actually, a very common cultural example with his mustard seed analogy.
Antigonus of Charistus and Diodorus Siculus, two dudes with absolutely wonderful names, were both ancient philosophers well before the time of Jesus, and they both told stories about mustard seeds. And they used those seeds as analogies for something that were very small, and they grew into something very large. In fact, Jesus himself, at another point in the gospel says, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, move, and it will go from here to there for you. Point being, mustard seeds are a incredibly common cultural reference point for things that start small and grow very large. What's interesting about that is it means that's not the twist in the story.
So we're going to need to look deeper. Hang on to that. First, we got to backtrack to Luke chapter 13 starting in verse 10. And, we're gonna pick up the narrative context for this parable. On a Sabbath, Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues.
And a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over, couldn't straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her and called her forward, he said to her, woman, you are set free from your infirmity. And he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God. Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, there are six days for work, so come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.
The Lord answered him, you hypocrites. Doesn't each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or your donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, shouldn't she be set free on the Sabbath from what has bound her? Here's the situation. Jesus notices someone in need, responds to that situation, religious leaders grumble, and Jesus responds.
Now, haven't gotten to our parable yet. We have, however, already seen Jesus' masterful knowledge of the scriptures. And this is gonna be important for understanding the context of the parable in a second. Because when the synagogue leader responds and rebukes, not Jesus, by the way, if you're paying attention, he actually rebukes the woman who's been healed. Kinda gross.
What he does is he quotes Deuteronomy five. Six days you shall labor and do your work. And that's true. That's what verse 13 says there. To which Jesus responds with verse 14.
On the seventh day, it is a day of Sabbath to the Lord your God. On that day, you shall do no work. Neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox or your donkey, none of your animals, in fact, not even your foreigners who reside in your towns may do any work either. All may rest as you do. And so when Jesus says, don't you untie your ox and lead it to water on the Sabbath, just the way I've untied this woman from what's bound her on the Sabbath, what he's saying is that rest is for everyone.
And that means that your rest can't come at the expense of someone you want to ignore. That's not rest. That's apathy at best. Really, it's injustice at worst. Jesus' point here is if you can't imagine God's intent or if you think that it stops at the end of your story and it doesn't extend to those around you, then you've missed the entire point of the law.
And so his opponents, they were humiliated. But the people were delighted at all of the wonderful things he was doing. Then Jesus asked, what is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It's like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden.
It grew and became a tree. The birds perched in its branches. K. Here's our context and our parable now. But I do wanna go back.
I wanna pick up one quick word here before we move on. Verse 17, we read that Jesus' opponents were humiliated. I get it. I like that part too. We all wanna see the bad guys get theirs, and a little shout in Freud is always welcome.
However, I do wanna make a point here. I don't think we should read that as Jesus' intent. Now, yes, Jesus is pointed. He calls them hypocrites. He calls them out on their bad behavior in front of everyone, I might add.
I think he clearly wants to make his point. I just think it's important for us to mark the distinction between Jesus' intent and how that's received. I don't think Jesus is trying to humiliate anyone here. First, his priority is clearly this women, not these men anyway. He's concerned with the person who's being subjected to scriptural interpretations that value pedantry over care.
That's what he cares about. But still, in everything I've come to understand about Jesus, in watching the way he interacts through scripture, even with his critics, I have to imagine his hope here in this moment is not that they're humiliated. I think his hope is that they actually hear what he's saying. And that's different. I know I have a lot of things that are wrong in my theology right now.
I don't know what they are. If I did, I would change them. But I do know in looking back on twenty years of teaching the bible that I have changed my mind. I've had my ideas blown up and my biases overturned more times than I would like to admit. And, yes, sometimes that has felt a little humiliating, largely because a lot of what I say gets recorded and put online.
But that's how I've received that information. It's not God's intent for me. Right? So as much as I'd like to see those I disagree with taken down a peg, if my hope starts to become intertwined with their humiliation, I think my concern is that I will make it harder for myself to be open to where I need to change in the future. Because I'll see change as a bad thing.
And here's the thing, changing your mind based on new information, that might be humbling, but it is not a humiliation to admit that you were wrong. It's actually a blessing. In fact, it's actually in refusing to admit our mistakes where correction shifts from being a blessing to feeling like a curse. And that's not a place I ever want to find myself. I wanna be open to change.
So bottom line here is, don't put your hope in the humiliation of anyone. Invest yourself in the elevation of those who've been humbled just like Jesus does here in this encounter. That's what he's going for. Now, that brings us to our parable. And again, here's our scene.
Jesus heals a woman on the Sabbath. Religious leaders go after her in response. And Jesus defends her by directly addressing their use of scripture and turning it back on them. They receive it badly. Jesus tells a story.
And it's a little hard to tell here from the text whether Jesus is continuing to address the religious leaders in the scene or whether he's now shifting his attention to all the people who are delighted with all the wonderful things that he's doing. But Luke very much links these two sections. In the NIV, which is what I read earlier, it just says, then Jesus asked what is the kingdom of God like. But the word there in the Greek is specifically what's called an inferential conjunction. All that means is that it might not flow nicely in English, but really it should be translated thus or therefore Jesus asked, what is the kingdom of God like?
In other words, for Luke, the mustard seed story is specifically a response to what has happened between Jesus, this woman, these religious leaders, and those who are watching it all happen. So, let's look at that parable. And, we noted this earlier. But Luke drops some of the language from Matthew and from Mark. There, Jesus starts with a comment about the diminutive size of these seeds and contrasts them with the resulting shrubbery.
Here, he just launches into the story. And, again, very important to understand. The idea of small seeds, specifically mustard seeds, growing into large plants, well worn territory, not the point of the story, which means it's not his point, which means we're gonna have to dig a little bit deeper here. Thankfully for us, there's only only one line in the story, so we don't have to dig that far. It's the twist ending we have to pay attention to.
Now, maybe you say to me, you're like twist ending, Jeremy. That doesn't seem like much of a cliffhanger here. Well, stick with me on this. Because there's two surprising references here. In this final line, we have to pay attention to.
And they're both gonna take us back to the Hebrew scriptures. What we're looking for here are the birds and the trees. Jesus says, a man will plant a mustard seed in his garden and it will grow and become a tree and the birds of the air will perch in its branches. It's actually three problems with this. The first is this, mustard seeds aren't supposed to go in gardens.
See, way back in Leviticus 19, there are rules about planting your seeds. And one of the big no no's was planting two different types of seeds in the same plot of land. Jesus tells another parable about wheat and weeds that grow mingled together in the same field. That plays off that same rule all the way back in Leviticus 19. Now, this story has a single man planting a single seed, so he doesn't seem to break the rules.
And technically, he doesn't. But the problem with mustard seeds specifically is that they grow into these very kind of scraggly scrubby bushes that tend to creep and crawl their way across your garden. I remember at our previous house, we used to have these big lilac bushes, and they were beautiful for, like, fourteen minutes in the spring each year. But, they were also notorious for popping up all over the place. So, you could get a shoot of a lilac, like five feet away from the original bush.
They were great. Very hard to contain though. Mustard bushes are the same kind of thing. And, that presented problems. Because once you plant one anywhere near anything else, it would have a way of popping up in the next plot where it wasn't supposed to be, accidentally running afoul of the rule from Leviticus 19.
And so in the Mishnah, which was a collection of Jewish teachings that sat alongside the Hebrew scriptures, there was a section called Seder Zareim, which meant the order of seeds. And in that Mishnah, it's strongly advised against, let's say, planting mustard seeds anywhere in gardens where they might unintentionally cross over into the next plot of land. So does this man break any rules in the story? Well, no. Technically, doesn't, but he's skirting pretty close to the line already.
However, he might have picked up on this already. The second problem here, and the reason there was even a rule for building and planting mustard seeds in your gardens is that mustard seeds do not grow into trees. In fact, they're kinda more like scrubby, scraggly shrubs. Now, those shrubs can, at times, develop a thicker, more developed stock, almost like a trunk, but they are decidedly not trees. And this isn't just a mistranslation.
Mustard plants are of a category in Greek called lacana. Here, Jesus very specifically uses the word dendron or tree in his story. However, that's not a mistake. It's a callback to the Hebrew prophets. This is Ezekiel 17.
This is what the sovereign Lord says. I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and I'll plant it. I'll break off a tiny tender sprig from the topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain heights of Israel, I will plant it, and it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it.
They will find shelter in the shade of its branches. Sounds familiar. Let's take a look at another passage. This is Daniel four. These are the visions I saw while lying in bed.
I looked, and there before me stood a tree in the middle of the land. Its height was enormous. The tree grew large and strong. Its top touched the sky. It was visible to the ends of the earth.
Its leaves were beautiful, its fruit abundant, and on it was food for all. Under it, the wild animals fell in shelter, and the birds lived in its branches, birds from every creature they were fed. And this passage again, just like Ezekiel, it's a vision. It's prophecy about the purpose and the destination of God's people. A great tree that becomes a source of shelter and food, a space where even the birds of the air find refuge.
I wanna point out that line. In Ezekiel specifically, it actually says the birds of the air. And in the NIV translation of Jesus story, we just get a reference to the birds. But if you go back to Greek, we find that Jesus actually very specifically calls out the birds of the air in Luke 13. It's the exact same phrase that's used in Ezekiel.
Now, it's important because Jesus is not just going out of his way to exclude flightless birds here, like no ostriches in the kingdom of heaven, I suppose. Now, he's very specifically using language intentionally deliberately to connect his words here to that imagination of the Hebrew people. He wants us to hear this story and then go and look up those passages. And when we do, what do we find? Well, we find that the prophetic imagination for the kingdom of God throughout the Hebrew scriptures looks like a tiny sprig planted by God that grows into an enormous tree and becomes shelter for the birds of the air.
A very familiar story except what do we then notice when Jesus tells the same story back to us? Well, in Jesus' version of the story, it's not a great cedar. It's a scrubby shrub planted where it's not really supposed to be. The kind of scrubby shrub that has a tendency to pop up in places it's really not supposed to be. And not only that, but what does it attract in Jesus' story?
Well, more of the things that show up where they're not supposed to be. Now, in Ezekiel's image, in Daniel's image, the idea of the birds gathering in the branches of a great cedar. Mean, that's wonderful. It's beautiful. Right?
Those birds represent all the Gentile nations turning toward God, finding respite and peace in a violent world. The image is wonderful. But you know what you don't want? Gathering in your garden, building nests where you've cultivated plants presumably to feed your family. We have some big beautiful trees in our backyard.
They provide really nice shade. They're fun for my kids to climb. But you know what they also bring to our backyard? Magpies. And I don't know if you've never met a magpie screeching at you just because you dared to step outside your home into your own backyard.
It is less than pleasant. I'm a vegetarian. I don't eat chicken. If magpie was on the menu, I might consider it just out of spite. Point is, the image of the birds of the air gathering in your garden, swooping in to scream at you while they eat your crops, making a home in a mustard plant that you are working really hard to cultivate and constantly having to prune just to make sure it doesn't pop up where you don't want it to be.
This image is telling us the same story that's well known from the Hebrew prophets, but with a very important twist. The kingdom is not just something that grows large. The kingdom is something that pops up where it's not supposed to be and welcomes those who aren't supposed to be there in the first place. In fact, this parable is taking a well known repeated image from the Hebrew scriptures, one that spoke to national pride, and let's be honest here, probably even national arrogance. An image that said, we're the ones that everyone will come to.
We're the source of God's blessing in the world. We're the shining light on a hill, and it completely inverts the narrative. Sure. We might get to plant the seed, but the kingdom grows where it wants to, and it welcomes those we shoo away. The kingdom is perhaps nothing like the image we've been holding on to in our mind.
And again, remember the context here. Jesus enters the synagogue, heals a woman who's been burdened for eighteen years. The critique is, well, this is improper. She should come back another time. She should respect our rules.
Jesus says, one, you don't know your rules to begin with. And more importantly, you have no idea what the kingdom of God will even look like when it shows up. So what should I compare it to? Well, I'll compare it to your imagination. You think the kingdom of God is like a majestic cedar, strong and tall, powerful.
You think the kingdom of God will look exactly like how you want to look at yourself. I tell you that the kingdom of God is like a scrubby bush that shows up not just where you don't expect, but where you don't want it to be. And it welcomes not just those who show up not on your timeline, but those you would chase away. The kingdom is for those like this woman that you've scolded and I welcome. This story isn't about a kingdom that surprises us with its scale.
It's about a kingdom that surprises us with its character. This isn't a story about a kingdom that overwhelms us with majesty and spectacle. It's about a kingdom that looks decidedly ordinary. This isn't a story about eschatology. It's not about one day when the kingdom will get big enough to take over.
This is a story about grace and about a kingdom that exists right now in our midst, popping up, poking through, all around us, all the time, and our consistent ability to constantly miss it. And maybe, all of a sudden, that story starts to feel familiar in a way you didn't expect it to. Maybe you never cared about mustard seeds. But maybe you have been the one on the outside looking in at religion, and you found yourself drawn to Jesus, something you couldn't quite put your finger on, but you knew you needed to move closer to that story, to find your way to him. Except whenever you tried, there was always someone there to say, not now, not that way, you're doing it wrong, come back when you can follow the rules properly.
Our cedar is too beautiful for you to sully. To which finally, we hear Jesus say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and to me, a kingdom that pops up unexpected. A kingdom that tends to cross our carefully manicured lines. A kingdom that provides shelter for the ignored and food for the hungry. That kind of kingdom would act absolutely gorgeous in any garden that I would be interested in planting.
And maybe that kind of kingdom could then actually begin to shape the way that we care for each other while we wait for it to appear. Let's pray. God, we're grateful for these stories that do more than reinforce our expectations. They actually subvert them. They remind us that the things that are important to us, spectacle, majesty, glory, size, and scale, all these things that we want to see in your kingdom mean very little to you.
That you're very happy to have your kingdom look like a scrubby, scraggly bush that no one wants showing up where no one wants it to be. Welcoming those that we try to chase away. And, God, we pray that that image would do more than subvert our expectations. It would actually begin to reshape how we think about you. How we think about each other.
How we think about the welcome that we can extend to those near us. That your kingdom is not anything that we would be proud to associate ourself with. It is something that reshapes us, humbles us, and points us back toward each other with more grace and more love. That kind of kingdom. That's the kind of kingdom that ultimately we want to be shaped by and we want to participate in the building of.
And so, pray your stories would do more to shape our interactions even than our conscious theology. We would hold them tight and they would guide us on the path toward your peace. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.
Jeremy Duncan: Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in, have a great week. Talk to you soon.