Easter and the mustard seed

Apr 19, 2020

By Anil Netto
When the early followers of Jesus realised that his death was not the end but a new beginning, what ran through their minds?

What next? They would have recalled Jesus’ teachings of the new kingdom he was proclaiming.

Some of these early followers may have had mixed views of what he meant when he proclaimed that the kingdom of God was at hand.

Even after the Resurrection some time around AD 30, some of them may have thought that Israel/Palestine would be liberated from Roman occupation and regain its lost glory. That was not to be, for the Romans later brutally suppressed the large-scale Jewish revolts against the Empire from AD 66-135.

Others may have felt that the kingdom was imminent in apocalyptic fashion and that God would intervene within their lifetimes and vanquish injustice and oppression from the world.

But, bit by bit, the followers of Jesus came to realise that the Resurrection was not only the triumph of life over death and sin. It was also a vindication of everything that God stood for against the evil and injustice of the world.

Jesus’ resurrection also paved the way for a new energy to infuse the spread of the kingdom around the world. After Pentecost, it became clearer to these followers of Jesus that the Spirit would bring forth a new creation, a transformation of the world, and they were in it for the long haul.

The kingdom was a work-in-progress — a project that could take longer than their lifetimes. What would this kingdom be like?

Jesus had used the parable of a mustard  seed. Now this is a strange metaphor. The mustard in that region was probably sinapis nigra, commonly known as black mustard.

Jesus said that it would grow into a large tree. But from various accounts, the plant only grows to around eight to 12 feet tall. It is more like a rather tall herb plant than a sturdy tree, as most modern-day listeners of the parable would imagine.

Black mustard is bitter and used as a spice. It is even used in homeopathic medicine to treat a whole range of ailments. It has a short pod with a few black or brown seeds. The leaves may be used in salads.

In his encyclopaedic work Natural History, published around AD 78, the Roman author and naturalist Pliny the Elder describes mustard as being “extremely beneficial for the health. It grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted: but on the other hand, when it has once been sown, it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once”.

So, this is not your normal tall tree; it was more like a herb plant, “extremely beneficial for health”, which could grow taller than a tall person, but not anything like the height of a massive sturdy tree.

But even if was not quite a tree in the nor mal sense, it could provide a resting place for birds to perch on or rest a little. It could also prevent predator birds from spotting the creatures below.

The plant also has a tendency to grow uncontrollably wild and rapidly. Some might even feel the urge to try and control it, to keep it in check or to eliminate it. For once it had spread, as Pliny said, “it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it”.

This could explain why so many Christians were martyred down the ages as invariably many saw them as a threat just as Jesus was seen as a threat.

This was an interesting metaphor, therefore, for the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed. And we have to wonder what the people listening to Jesus would have made of it.

It suggests that the kingdom was a movement that could rapidly spread from humble beginnings, as it did from a distant outpost of the Roman Empire.

Pilate and the religious leaders of Jerusalem thought they had nipped the nascent Jesus movement in the bud by eliminating its leader. They thought the followers of Jesus would be disheartened and the movement would die out.

Instead, the movement rapidly spread like the mustard plant to the heart of the Empire  in Rome, and to the rest of the world, within a matter of decades.

It was not a political movement at all. But still, it was not easy for the early Christians. To even speak of a kingdom of God at a time when the only political kingdom of the day was the Roman Empire and when the emperor was seen as a deity, or even a son of god could have landed them in serious trouble.

What does this mean for us today? The kingdom of God is in our midst. The mustard plant that is the kingdom is still growing, inexplicably, perhaps miraculously, into a large tree, confounding expectations that it can only reach a height of 12 feet or so.

In this era of the pandemic, the global political and economic system is failing us. Dominant superpowers are reeling from the onslaught of the pandemic. The recession we are experiencing now could turn into a full-blown depression, perhaps worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s.

But, unseen, that wild herb plant from tiny seeds continues to grow, presenting us with an alternative vision of the world – instead of materialism, spirituality; instead of injustice, justice; instead of oppression, compassion for the vulnerable; instead of disease and ecological destruction, a lifestyle that is in harmony with the ecosystem.

Perhaps, with the kingdom of God represented by a tree, we need to stop chopping down our forests so that new diseases will not emerge.

Easter shows us that metaphor of the mustard seed was not an idle parable but a story that revealed our potential to transform the world into a new creation.