Annoying, Little Mustard Seeds

"You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers, who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it."
When they heard these things they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth.
-Acts 7:51-54

Hello Friends,

There's a lot of annoying things in this world: pants that are a little tighter fit than yesterday, the tissue box being empty when you need to blow your nose, your parents asking you why you spent $120 in one month while talking and texting on your phone, etc. Of course, there's always the more generic things that we find annoying as well: the dreaded pop quiz in class, the kid down the road who will not stop using a quote from "Napoleon Dynamite" in every other sentence, and... mosquitoes. If there's one annoying thing that really gets "under my skin" (no pun intended), it's the buzzing sound of a mosquito about to leave a itchy bite on my person, which sours an otherwise beautiful summer night. How interesting it is then, when Jesus used something annoying to describe the Kingdom of Heaven. When most people hear about the parable of the mustard seed, they think about God making something big out of a little seed, but perhaps Jesus meant something more than just that doctrine. He tells his listeners that the Kingdom of Heaven is like Mustard, which grows as a wild bush, and can actually be akin to a plant called, "Kudzu," defined as a wild vine that grows vigorously over an area. (Kudzu can blanket entire mountainsides, smother trees, and crack cement buildings). The Jews would have been rather surprised and perhaps even a little offended at Jesus' metaphoric use of the mustard seed, as it was very strictly kept out of gardens. According to Jewish customs (Kil'ayim 3:2; Kal'ayim 2:8), this plant was discouraged to be in any well-ordered garden due to its invasive nature to quickly overtake the entire soil area. To the Jews, this idea of God's kingdom subtly overtaking the world would probably seem to be a definite symbolic contrast to what they were expecting with the giant "cedars of Lebanon" imagery they had heard from the prophets. In this regard, Jesus replaced the triumphant symbolism of good overcoming evil with a more humble approach, as he also did with entering Jerusalem on a donkey rather than a "great steed." Instead of something grand and majestic like a giant cedar, he used a unusual, lowly weed: a weed that disrupted the order and the "comfort" of the status quo, a weed that had to be crushed, ground and broken in order to be used effectively, and a weed that Jesus described as a habitation for "the birds of the air." As uninspiring and undesirable as the mustard seed is, Jesus wanted His kingdom to be like it.

In a previous note called "The Devil's Recipe for Frog Soup," I talked about how becoming calloused to the presence of sin can cause a person to fall into the trap of sin. In a larger sense, I believe that the church can become involved in the same situation. The church can become calloused to the world's sin, which regretfully can result in the church's light being hidden behind a bush of ignorance and laziness. There are times where I wonder if the world is thinking, "Where have all the Christians gone? All we see is these people talking about how this guy named Jesus is coming soon, but they act like He'll never return." Just like the mustard plant is a pervasive weed in the garden, we, as Christians, need to be annoying to the world's normalcy of sin. We need to be bold; we need to be wild in the world's eyes so they can see the difference. Let's not be afraid to lovingly step on a few toes and make people feel uncomfortable if it means that they will be saved. It's not an easy choice to make. Jesus told us that the world would hate us for it, but the prospect of having one of God's kids spending an eternity in heaven or hell should matter to us enough to be a little "annoying" to the world.

In a later scripture after He mentions the mustard seed, Jesus talks about how a grain of wheat must die in order to be multiplied:

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. -John 12:24-26

In the same way, mustard seeds must be crushed, ground, and broken in order for them to become useful in healing ointments or in food preparation. Sometimes Christians think that they need to have it "all together" in order to be a "good Christian," but what I've come to understand from my own life experiences is that this isn't true. I beleive that for us to be a good vessel God can use is realizing that we DON'T have it "all together" and just simply letting ourselves be changed and refined by the Holy Spirit day-by-day, moment-by-moment for the purpose of God's glory. As the author of "The Ragamuffin Gospel," Brennan Manning said, "In love service, only wounded soldiers can serve." We have to be broken, letting God be our everything, our sole source of sufficiency in all aspects of life, while also rejecting our own desires for selfish self-preservation. It's amazing how Jesus said being this way would actually spread Christianity and God's unconditional love. Author Shane Claiborne says, "This is the crazy mystery that we celebrate, a Christ whose body is torn apart and whose blood is spilled like the grains and grapes of the Eucharist that give us life." Yet, this attitude of self-sacrifice for love cannot be stopped. Emperors, tyrants, dictators, and the devil himself have tried to stop it, but "annoyingly" it has multiplied and will continue to multiply even more perpetually if the church dies to itself.

At the latter part of Jesus' parable of the mustard seed, the Savior says of the seed:

"...but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches." -Matt 13:32

In a further interpretation of the phase "birds of the air" means the "fowls" or the buzzards, which were considered to be "unclean" by the Jews. As they were listening to Jesus say this, the Jews were very likely taken aback by His statement, which meant that the mustard seed plant would provide shelter and rest for the "undesirables" of society, people like, the tax collectors, the lepers, and the prostitutes. Jesus asked his people to love those we despise and hate, to give comfort and be with those whom we would rather be distanced from. As the Jews were offended back then at such a thought, we frequently are of the same mind today. It is so desperately hard to love those who hurt us and who are perhaps markedly different from us. I once heard a story about the early days of Calvary Chapel when the Jesus Movement in the 70s was really exciting a lot of believers. The Pastor, Chuck Smith, had an elder come up to him with an issue about the new former hippies who had become new Christians. These former hippies were coming into the church with no shoes on because they choose not to have them, but the dirt from their feet were ruining the carpets leading up to the pulpit. The elder suggested to Chuck Smith that they turn those people away in order to save the carpets. However, Chuck said to throw away the carpets. The comfort of having carpets was worth nothing in comparison to having the former hippies hear about Jesus, he explained. In the same way, we need to have that attitude of rejecting prejudice or bitterness in order to provide the love of Jesus to others.

The "annoyance" of the mustard seed kingdom Jesus talked about has been like nails on a chalkboard to the world for generations. One man, a lawyer named Minucius, was so perturbed by Christianity that he set out to destroy it. In disgust he said of these followers of Jesus, "They despise temples as if they were tombs. They despise titles of honor and the purple robe of high government office though hardly able to cover their nakedness... They love one another before becoming acquainted. They practice a cult of lust, calling one another brother and sister indiscriminately." After some time of observing this belief, however, Minucius found himself marveling at this rag-tag group of people who followed the teachings of a bloody, bruised man on a cross and became a Christian himself. He said of his new belief, "Why do they have no altars, no temples, no images?... What temple shall I build Him [God] when the whole world, the work of His hands, cannot contain Him? Should we not rather make a sanctuary for Him in our souls? What a beautiful sight it is for God when a Christian mocks the clatter of tools of death and the horror of the executioner; when he defends and upholds his liberty in the face of kings and princes, obeying God alone to whom he belongs. Among us, boys and frail women laugh to scorn torture and the gallows cross and all the other horrors of execution." Before, Manucius had just seen a belief that didn't make sense to him. But after seeing the example of men and women who were willing to die at any given moment for a belief that had changed their former sinful, unfulfilled lives into something remarkably beautiful, he recognized that he wanted to be that way too. He wanted the emptiness of his life to be filled with the only thing that could do so, the love of God. It's funny how what started out as being annoying to him eventually saved him. The church needs to continue being that image Jesus told to the Jews all those years ago. It needs to strive to be those annoying, little mustard seeds.

I remain,

Your friend,

Aaron Morrison