The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Proper 6B
Mustard seeds and mustard plants – a parable of hyperbole. Mustard plants can get big, but they’re not absolutely huge shrubs. And the seeds, they are pretty small, but orchid seeds are even tinier. Jesus isn’t giving us a botany lesson, but he is using some hyperbole to get the point across. The kingdom of God starts small and grows. But as with any parable, the more we sit with it, the more it opens up to new meanings. Parables are open-ended, much like our use of mustard.
Think of the different species of mustard: there are white, brown, and black mustards. Each one has a different flavor profile, and they are widely cultivated. Like many cultivated plants, we’re not exactly sure how far back in ancient history it was when we first started domesticating mustard, or even where it started. Mustards are related to turnips and radishes, but over millennia we focused on the seeds to give us maximum flavor. There is a diversity to mustard.
I didn’t know it, but mustard is sometimes used in agriculture besides for food. It can be grown in fields to deal with some kinds of pests through crop rotation; certain mustard plants produce compounds that deal with nematodes and insects, so it can help a field recover from an infestation. And the debris of mustard plants can be used to help renew the soil.
And think of how we use mustard for food, even just the different kinds of mustard. There is classic American yellow mustard, Dijon, hot Chinese mustard mixed with more spices for extra punch, like this one, that I found in the back of my cupboard (Please don’t eat it, it’s definitely a few years old, it’s just a prop). Mustard seeds can be pressed into mustard oil, used for cooking in many cultures, and certain mustard plants are grown so we can eat their leaves.
Mustard, then, is not a one-kind-of-use plant. It’s not a one-trick pony nor a one-hit wonder. Neither is the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God shows an amazing diversity just like mustard. We see glimpses of that diversity as we look at how the worship of God takes on different characteristics throughout the world. Different languages, cultures, metaphors, liturgies and prayers. Different kinds of gifts, different ways of serving God, different ways of showing the love of God and neighbor.
The Kingdom of God is a blessing not just for humanity, but for the whole creation. The birds may nest in its branches, but mustard also enriches the field with nutrients and heals it when it’s been infested without using harsh synthetic chemicals that poison the soil. “But what about the nematodes”, you may ask – perhaps in this parable the nematodes are the little bits of sin in our hearts – the Kingdom of God heals our hearts of an infestation without destroying us.
And the Kingdom of God nourishes with gratuitous flavor. Flavor isn’t “essential” – we could, in theory, eat a nutritionally complete bland food and be fine. But what is food without flavor? When we are sick and can’t taste flavor, or when our senses don’t perceive flavor as well as we used to, we miss so much the joy of food. The Kingdom of God gives us our needs, gives us our daily bread, but the Kingdom of God also gives us our flavor. It gives zest; it goes over the top. The Kingdom of God gives us life, and it makes life marvelous. Look at all that we uncovered with our attention to the parable. The parable of the mustard seed isn’t boiled down to “the Kingdom of God is small and grows”. There’s much more. Parables plant seeds in our imaginations, and they grow into new insights and deeper life. Parables branch out in many different ways, and we nest in their branches … and make delicious, delicious mustard. Amen.