Chapter
5
by Fr. Thomas Keating
The Parable of the Mustard Seed
He said therefore, "What is the
kingdom of God like? And to what shall 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." (Luke 13:18-19)
The thrust of
the parables is to subvert the distorted myths in which people live their
lives. To understand what we mean by "living in a myth" just
think of a couple of our own contemporary myths. Take the myth of "the All
American Boy," for example. This is the young man who gets straight A's in
college and graduate school, climbs the executive ladder, and perhaps becomes the
head of a multinational. Or the "American Dream:" two cars in every garage,
vacations in Florida, houses in Spain, and so forth. On a more serious level,
the American dream has been a vision of America's invincibility, of its absolute
entitlement in the eyes of God.
A myth is often what
holds people's lives together. It is an attempt to resolve the tensions of
everyday life by promising an idealized future in which one will be rescued from
all the problems of ordinary life. When a myth begins to falter, great leaders
may try to find ways to recapture the glory of earlier days, like John F.
Kennedy's effort to rekindle the American dream by sending a man to the moon.
American astronauts did go to the moon, but meanwhile the Vietnam war devastated
the prestige of American invincibility and with it the American dream.
For the Israelites
of Jesus' time, the tension between everyday reality and a mythical vision of
Israel as God's chosen people was felt with particular urgency. From the heyday
of national power and prestige during the reigns of King David and King Solomon,
Israel had been on a downhill slide for several centuries, its kingdom conquered
and divided several times over. If one lives in occupied territories, as the
Israelites of Jesus' time did, the question naturally arises, "Is this
ghastly oppression by the Romans a punishment from God, or is our suffering just
part of the human condition?" In the particular myth in which the people of
first-century Israel were living, the kingdom of God had specific connotations
of power, triumph, holiness, and goodness. The kingdom, when it came, would
introduce a glorious new age of universal peace, with God's chosen people at the
head of the nations.
The cultural symbol
for this myth was the great cedar of Lebanon. Cedars of Lebanon were comparable
to the huge redwood trees of California. They grew straight up for two or three
hundred feet or more. Every kind of bird cold enjoy their shade. This image was
deeply embedded in the cultural conditioning of the Jewish people. The kingdom
of God as a nation would be the greatest of all nations just as the great cedar
of Lebanon was the greatest of all trees.
Instead, Jesus
proposed this parable, "What is the kingdom of God really like? It is like
a mustard seed"--proverbially the smallest and most insignificant of all
seeds--"that someone took and sowed in his garden." for an alert
hearer of Jesus' day, the detail about the garden would be a tip-off. In the
Jewish view of the world, order was identified with holiness and disorder with
uncleanness. Hence there were very strict rules about what could be planted in a
household garden. The rabbinical law of diverse kinds ruled that one could not
mix certain plants in the same garden. A mustard plant was forbidden in a
household garden because it was fast spreading and would tend to invade the
veggies. In stating that this man planted a mustard seed in his garden, the
hearers are alerted to the fact that he was doing something illegal. An unclean
image thus becomes the starting point for Jesus' vision of the kingdom of God in
this parable.
If the starting
point is an unclean image, the rest of the parable becomes even more perplexing.
What do we know about a mustard seed, botanically speaking: it is a common,
fast-spreading plant, which grows to about four feet in height. It puts out a
few branches, and with some stretch of the imagination, birds might build a few
down-at-the-heel nests in its shade.
Steeped in their
cultural images of the great cedar of Lebanon, the hearers would be expecting
the mustard seed, Jesus' symbol of the kingdom, to grow into a mighty
apocalyptic tree. Jesus' point is exactly the opposite. It just becomes a bush.
Thus the image of the kingdom of God as a towering cedar of Lebanon is
explicitly ridiculed. According to Jesus, the kingdom of God is like a mustard
seed, which some man illegally planted in his garden. It became a shrub and a
few birds nested in its modest branches. That's all. The parable subverts all
the grandiose ideas about what the kingdom is going to be like when it finally
arrives.
One of the most
firmly held Israelite expectations was that the kingdom of God would manifest
the final triumph of God in history. Its arrival, heralded by the long-awaited
Messiah, would rescue Israel from its miserable subservience to the Roman
Empire. It was a future kingdom, not one in the here-and-now. Jesus' parable
implies that if we accept the God of everyday life, we can find God in everyday
life. We do not have to wait for an apocalyptic deliverance. We do not have to
wait for a grandiose liberation. The kingdom is available right now.
The parables,
according to Scott, are like handles on the mystery of the kingdom, pointers
suggesting both what it is and what it is not. We cannot fully understand the
kingdom because it is a mystery that transcends any possibility of being
contained in a concept. But by rotating the wisdom of Jesus' sayings in our
mind's eye and with the help of the parables, we can at least get a glimpse of
it.
A parable points to
something we only gradually come to know as we absorb the teaching of Jesus. In
this parable he intimates that God is not necessarily going to intervene in this
world for the triumph of the just. He may not intervene in an apocalyptic manner
to deliver Israel or bring about justice and peace. He has entrusted the latter
to us. We are not to wait around for an apocalyptic intervention to do the job.
If we lead a holy
life--as opposed to a merely respectable one--we are likely to lose most of our
friends and relatives. We might get one or two of them to follow our example,
but it is like the mustard seed. We may get a modest result, but it is not in
the nature of cedar of Lebanon. All we are likely to get is an inconspicuous
shrub of which there are plenty of others all around in great variety. The
mustard seed is just one step ahead of being an ordinary weed.
How are we to
understand this deliberate use by Jesus of the unclean and insignificant as
images of his kingdom? It suggests that God's greatest works are not done on a
grandiose level. Not in cathedrals, big buildings, or large mausoleums.
Cathedrals can become museums rather than sources of inspiration for the
Christian community. The kingdom is in everyday life with its ups and downs, and
above all, in is insignificance. Such is where most people actually live their
lives. The kingdom is thus readily accessible to everybody.
The parable affirms
that grace is like a mustard seed sown in us, the smallest of all seeds. It is
growing, but it is not going to turn us into a cedar of Lebanon. We will be
doing well if we become a modest shrub.
So hard was it for
people of Jesus' time to get over their idea of the kingdom of God as a
triumphant institution that even the evangelists tried to change it into
something great anyway. In other words, the myth recaptured the parable. The
parable was meant to change one's idea about the kingdom, but what happened was
that the old mindset began to interpret the parable in a way that was consistent
with its former mythical expectations. There are four versions of this parable
in the Gospels, three in the synoptics and one in the Gospel of Thomas, a
document recovered about fifty years ago in the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Collection,
which many exegetes think is closer in some places to the original oral
tradition. For Luke and Matthew, contrary to all botanical good sense, the
mustard seed does turn into a tree. In Mark, it turns into the greatest of
shrubs. In Thomas, it turns into a great branch so that a lot of birds can rest
in its shade. All of these expectations are contrary to the facts A mustard seed
does not become a tree, the greatest of shrubs, or put forth a great branch,
however much one may want it to. The oral tradition was evidently influenced by
the old expectations of grandeur as people gradually slipped back into their
former mindsets. They lost the radical thrust and the incredible freedom to
which the parable called them. For us too, it is a threat to our preconceived
ideas and mythical belief systems, and hence there is a strong tendency to
resist its stark realism.
If we are looking
for a great expansion of our particular religion, nation, ethnic group, social
movement, or whatever, into some great visible organization that fills the
earth, we are on the wrong track. This is not God's idea of success. Where are
the mightiest works of the kingdom accomplished? in our attitudes and hence in
secret. Where there is charity, there is God. Opportunities to work for the
homeless, the starving, the aging, are all readily available. No one may notice
our good deeds, including ourselves. The kingdom of God manifests itself in the
modest changes in our attitudes and in the little improvements in our behavior
that no one may notice, including ourselves. These are the mighty works of God,
not great external accomplishments.
"To what shall
I liken the kingdom of God?" Jesus asked. The kingdom is manifested in
ordinary daily life and how we live it. Can we accept the God of everyday life?
If we can, then we can enjoy the kingdom here and now, without having to wait
for an apocalypse or someone to deliver us from our difficulties.
More information can be obtained by reading the book The
Kingdom of God is Like . . .by Fr. Thomas Keating. It is offered in our Book
Store.
