THE PARABLE OF the mustard seed is beloved, but also dangerous. Like most beloved scripture passages, its revolutionary impact on its original hearers has been weakened over time, replaced by sentimental fondness.
Originally, the parable would have promised restorative justice to the economically afflicted, an undermining of borders and boundaries to the religious purists, and a warning against exulting oneself. Part of the genius of Jesus’ parables was to speak on multiple levels to multiple groups with the same words.
Noticing Jesus’ audiences for this teaching is profoundly important. Jesus was teaching in a gathering that included at least some religious leaders (Pharisees and scribes; see Matthew 12:38).
Leaving the house in which he was speaking, Jesus went down to the water to address an even larger crowd (Matthew 13:1-2). In his audience for the parable, there were a mix of religious leaders and ordinary people, including farmers of the fertile Galilean hills. Jesus used their respective expertise to provoke the different groups.
Tenant farmers
Jesus said the reign of God is like a mustard seed that a farmer took and sowed in the field. The agricultural workers who heard Jesus would have scoffed at this.
No one would ever sow mustard seed into any ground one owned. First-century farmers in Galilee with any agricultural acumen knew that mustard is a weed that reproduces rapidly and spreads indiscriminately. It chokes out other more-valuable crops and ruins the land for other uses. No farmer who loved the land would have planted a single seed of mustard in the field.
First-century farmers knew from Jesus’ story that the planter must not be a farmer who cared about the land, but someone who didn’t know anything about stewarding the land.
Only one group in first-century Judea and Galilee had access to land and fit this description: landlords who seized the land of their tenant farmers. The widespread nature of seizure of small holdings from peasants and concordant concentration of land-wealth in the hands of a few, rich owners was particularly cruel in Galilee, where Jesus was teaching on the mustard seed (see David A. Fiensy’s The Social History of Palestine in the Herodian Period). Seizure of land—separating people from their livelihoods and decreasing farm productivity—caused food shortage, economic inequality, an increase in poverty, and widespread banditry, themes that occur repeatedly in Jesus’ ministry.
The modern allegory to this shocking description of land seizure and terrible environmental stewardship by people who cared for neither the land nor the people being dispossessed of it is the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline on Indigenous land. “The reign of God is like a leaky oil pipeline that a man built on his recently seized land ...” gives the modern hearer a rough approximation of how deeply unsettling this teaching would have been to the first-century dispossessed farm workers.
To a peasant whose land had been seized by a clueless and careless landlord, Jesus’ description of the reign of God was at first disheartening, but it also contained a note of eventual justice. Those who stole your livelihood will eventually lose the profitability and usefulness of their lands. Like an oil pipeline, the mustard tree ruins the land and causes the value to plummet, and within a generation after it is planted (or built) is rendered obsolete and offensive to all who encounter it.
The planting of the mustard tree is not the end of the parable, but only a means to the final detail that offers hope. The culmination of the parable is that birds of the air find their rest.
The birds, in this case, are understood to be the same peasants, who—like birds—have no connection to the land anymore. They have been disinherited. For the farmers, the revolutionary promise of the parable is that, even after they have been dispossessed of their land and the land has been ruined by foolhardy and greedy landlords, the farmers will miraculously find their rest and peace again. The modern equivalent would be Native Americans on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation having all their lands restored to them.
The reign of God is like when land is stolen and used foolishly, but God returns the people to their rest.
Religious leaders
Farmers were not the only people in Jesus’ audience. The religious leaders also knew that mustard plants spread quickly and beyond limits, without discretion. For this reason, planting mustard in enclosed garden plots or near fields of grain was specifically prohibited (Mishnah Kilayim 2:8, 3:2). Even though there were other areas where mustard was allowed, scholars understand that the concern that mustard would spread was so great that eventually its planting was prohibited as a matter of practicality in Jewish-held Judea and the region of Galilee.
The mustard plants surely go wild, overrun their boundaries, and violate the instruction from God on Sinai to always plant with clear separation of species. New Testament scholar William Herzog puts it this way: “Once sown, it spreads like a weed, causing havoc on the ordered garden of the land. It also throws purity boundaries into confusion precisely because it spreads indiscriminately, thereby violating the prohibition against planting two kinds of seed in the same field (Leviticus 19:19; Deuteronomy 22:9). The mustard shrub becomes an agent of confusion and source of uncleanness.”
How can this be the model for the reign of God? To the religious leaders, Jesus’ description of the reign of God threatened to disrupt the distinct practices that bound together the Jewish diaspora. Further, they understood the “birds of the air” in this instance to be one half of the formulaic curse to destroy and defile punished human bodies (see Deuteronomy 28:26, 1 Samuel 17:46, 1 Kings 14:11). For a corpse to be left unburied and exposed to predators (wild animals and birds) was a ritual act of defilement. Jesus described the reign of God as an invasion that rapidly reproduces and thus obliterates the orderliness of life from top to bottom, from sky and land. In Matthew 5:20, Jesus upholds the religious leaders as models, saying, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” But here he challenges those listening to him to bring out their treasure for the living and let go of what is dead.
Some religious leaders today are concerned about distinct customs or cultural assumptions that may be disrupted by unauthorized entry into their land. Their concern is not invasive species of plants, however, but people.
There are Christians who support religiously based travel bans, deportation of law-abiding immigrants, and massive expenditures to build walls on borders. They fear a takeover by those who are “not allowed” to be in the land. They fear an eventual triumph over distinction and exceptionalism.
Jesus provokes us, saying, “The reign of God is like a woman who built a welcome center for refugees and undocumented immigrants on her land. As it grew, it became a home for anchor-babies and chain migration.”
The reign of heaven is like when life that has been kept out and segregated is allowed in and thrives. Surrendering our cherished boundaries is messy, confusing work. But it is at the same time holy and necessary.
An invasive species
The members of the Jesus movement would have heard still a third message, distinct from that heard by the landless farmers and the religious leaders: The reign of heaven has humble takeover possibility.
The mustard seed, which is quite small, becomes the largest shrub and “becomes a tree” (at three meters, it could grow taller than many acacia and varieties of olive trees). That said, it stays a mustard tree and will never grow to be the tall, strong, impressive, and valuable cedar trees of neighboring Lebanon.
The mustard tree does just one thing: reproduce small seeds that grow quickly, then take over any place it is planted. The reign of God is to be characterized by the way it reproduces and takes over, rather than how tall or impressive it grows.
In this sense, Jesus’ mention of the birds of the air is not an accident, but a clever reference to other trees in scripture that host birds. In Ezekiel 17, Ezekiel 31, and Daniel 4 the kingdoms of Judah, Assyria, and Babylon, respectively, are all described as tall, proud trees that host birds in their branches. Each of these lofty, beautiful trees was eventually cut down, however, because of the excessive pride of their rulers.
The image of a self-exulting tree or kingdom prompted the prophet Daniel to say, “Therefore, your majesty, be pleased to accept my advice: Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed. It may be that then your prosperity will continue” (emphasis added, Daniel 4:27). The temptation to pride and self-exulting over the “little people” frequently proves impossible for rulers to shun—and Babylon, like the other kingdoms, fell because of it.
The contrast between the reign of God as a humble mustard tree and the empires of the earth as tall cedar trees could not be starker. Jesus’ mention of “the birds of the air” calls to mind the scriptural arguments that those who exult themselves will be made low. But then he continues, saying the reign of God has more in common with a humble shrub that spreads quickly, without regard of purity issues, and will provide rest for the dispossessed. This tree does not become lofty or exalt itself. The reign of God is like a tree that never overshadows others, but merely reproduces and spreads by staying humble.
Jesus’ words, as always, are a comfort for the oppressed, a challenge to those who value uniformity over people, and a description of the way the reign of God spreads: through humility.
Jesus’ challenge in the parable of the mustard tree is threefold: comforting victims of economic oppression; valuing the outsider more than order; and remaining focused on the horizontal growth of God’s reign, not the aggrandizement of persons, institutions, or religious fads. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Cory Pechan Driver is an adjunct professor of North African history and religion. He is a rostered ELCA deacon waiting for his first call and lives with his family in Rabat, Morocco.
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