03.03. THE MUSTARD SEED

THE MUSTARD SEED Matthew 13:31-32

Neither the parable of the Sower nor the parable of the Tares was calculated to elate those who were interested in the kingdom of heaven. The hindrances and disappointments incident to the establishment of that kingdom were too plainly stated to be gratifying. It was not exhilarating to the hearers of these parables to learn that the state of things to which they had eagerly looked forward as the realization of their ideal, and the embodiment of all excellence, could not be actually achieved on earth. In this parable of the mustard seed our Lord turns the other side of the picture, and affirms that the little movement already stirring society would grow to vast dimensions; that the influences He was introducing so unobtrusively into human history were vital, and would one day command attention and be productive of untold good. He does not anticipate the parable of the leaven, and explain the precise mode of the spread of Christianity, but merely predicts the fact of its growth. He invites us to compare the visible cause with the visible result; he directs our thoughts to the two facts of the small beginning and the ultimate grandeur of the kingdom of heaven, and suggests that the reason of this growth is that the originating principle of the kingdom has vitality in it.

It is the study of the laws of growth which in recent years, has given so great an impulse to human knowledge and to the delight men find in nature. How this world has come to be what it is; its rude and unpromising beginnings, and its steady progress towards perfection; the development of an infinitely various and complicated life from a few rudimentary forms; — these have been the commonest subjects of scientific investigation. It has been shown that everything we are ourselves now connected with has grown out of something which went before; that nothing is self-originated. The growth of languages and religions, of customs and forms of government, of races and nations, has been traced; and a new interest has thus been imparted to all things, for everything is found to have a history which carries us back to the most unlikely roots, and is full of surprises. Creation excites wonder; but growth excites an intelligent admiration and wonder as well. For, after all investigation and exposition of its laws, growth remains marvelous. That the swift-flying bird, sensitive to the remotest atmospheric changes, should grow out of the motionless, strictly encased egg, is always an astonishment. That the wide-branching tree, hiding the sky with its foliage, should be the product of a small, insignificantly shaped seed, never ceases to excite wonder. Nothing could well be more unlike the bird than the egg; nothing less like a tree than the seed it has grown out of; but by an unseen and ultimately inscrutable force the egg becomes a bird, and the seed grows into a tree. To see the stateliest pile of building filling the space which before was empty, makes an appeal to the imagination: that kind of increase we seem to understand; stone is added to stone by the will and toil of man. But when we look at the deeply-rooted and wide-branching tree, and think of the tiny seed from which all this sprang without human will or toil, but by an internal vitality of its own, we are confronted by the most mysterious and fascinating of all things, the life that lies unseen in nature. In the difference, then, between the beginning and the maturity of our Lord’s kingdom there was nothing exceptional. The same difference may be observed in the case of almost every person or influence that has greatly helped mankind. Many of the inventions to which we are hourly indebted entered the world like little seeds casually blown to their resting-place; they floated on, unheeded, unobserved, till at last, apparently by the merest chance, they caught somewhere, and became productive. It is the very commonness of this career, from small to great, to which our Lord appeals for the encouragement of His disciples. Here is the least among seeds; it flies before your breath; it is not noticed in the balance; a miser would scarce trouble himself to blow it from the scale; the hungry bird will not pause in his flight to pick it up; but let a few years go by, and that seed shall have become a tree, in which the birds of the air may lodge, and which no force can uproot. The seed, as you now see it, is doing and can do nothing that the tree does; it casts no shade, it shelters no birds, it yields no fruit or timber, it does not fill the eye and complete the landscape; but give it time, and it will do all these things, as nothing else will or can. In this parable, then, our Lord gave expression to three of the ideas which frequently recurred to His mind regarding the kingdom of heaven: — 1st. Its present apparent insignificance; 2d. Its vitality; 3d. Its future grandeur.

1. Our Lord recognized that to the uninstructed, ordinary observer His kingdom must in its origin appear insignificant, “the least of all seeds.” It might seem less likely to prevail, and to become a universal benefit, than some other contemporary systems or influences. In point of fact, so extravagant did Christ’s claim to be a benefactor of the race appear, that those who wished to mock Him could devise no more telling and bitter taunt than to bow before Him and salute Him as a king. That such a tame-spirited, forsaken person should attain a place among the strong-handed rulers of the world seemed altogether too preposterous. The Roman magistrate, before whom He was arraigned on the charge of rebellion against Caesar, found it difficult to treat the charge seriously. Open the histories of His time, and your eyes are dazzled with the magnificence of other monarchs, and the magnitude of their words, but He is barely named — so little known, that He is sometimes misnamed through sheer ignorance. It was no discredit to the most learned and accurate of historians to know nothing of Jesus Christ. This obscurity and insignificance would not have been disconcerting to the followers of a mere teacher, for the best teaching is rarely appreciated in the first generation; but as our Lord claimed to be a lawgiver and real king, it certainly did not bode well for His kingdom that during His lifetime so few obeyed or even knew Him. The very circumstance that He was a Jew might have seemed to those of His contemporaries who were best able to judge, enough in itself to ensure the defeat of any purpose of universal sway. The exclusive character of the religious and social ideas of the Jew, and the hostility with which this exclusiveness was returned by other nations, seemed to make it most improbable that all men should be brought into one common brotherhood and community by a Jew. Moreover, Jesus Himself was no Hellenist, whose Jewish ideas might have been modified by Greek learning and cosmopolitan associations and customs; but He was a Jew of purest blood and upbringing, educated in all Jewish customs and ideas, and subjected to the ordinary Jewish influences, never visiting other lands, and rarely speaking to any but His own countrymen. So far as we know. He made no inquiries into the state of other countries, and read no books to inform Himself; He did not send emissaries to Rome, inviting men to consider His claims; He made no overtures of any kind to men at a distance; — that is to say. He did not present Himself as a grown tree branching friendly outwards, to which might flock the birds of the air which had been driven out by the winter of their own land, and had wandered far in search of food, and were weary from their long flight.

Even among His own people, from whom He might have expected a hearty welcome and loyal advocacy, He met with either contemptuous neglect or positive opposition. He obtained no recognized standing, even among the Jews. Those who formed the opinions of society pronounced Him an impostor, and the people were so completely convinced by them, that they clamored for His death. The few who were attached to Him, and who thoroughly believed in His sincerity and spiritual greatness, persistently misunderstood the essential parts of His purpose and teaching. They could not, even to the last, rid their minds of the natural impression that His being crucified as a malefactor was the end of all their hopes. And is it not probable that even Jesus Himself, as He was ignominiously hurried to His death by a handful of Roman soldiers, may have been tempted to think, What is there in this to regenerate a world? Will such an everyday incident even be remembered next Passover? Certainly, so far as appearances went, and in the judgment of all who saw and were interested, His kingdom was at that time comparable to anything but a firmly-rooted and flourishing tree.

After the resurrection of Christ, His kingdom became slightly more visible, but its prospects must still have seemed extremely doubtful. A handful of men, none of them having much weight in the community, or being in any way remarkable, compose the force which is to conquer the world. To win a single soul to an unpopular cause is difficult, but these men were summoned to the task of converting all nations. They had no ancient institutions, no well-tried methods, no strong associations, no funds, no friends to back them. On the contrary, everything seemed banded against them. Teachers, who disagreed in all else, combined to scorn the folly of the cross; emperors, who would allow every other form of religion, could not tolerate that of Jesus. Everywhere the world was already preoccupied by ancient and jealously-guarded religions, by habits, and ideas, and traditions adverse to the spirit of Christ. The instrument, too, which was to convert the world seemed as powerless as the men who were to wield it. They were to tell of Jesus, of His life, His death. His resurrection. Was it not vain to expect that remote and barbarous races would become so attached to a person they had never seen, that they would govern their passions and amend their lives for His sake? Was it likely that, on the word of unknown men, the person of an unknown man should become the center of the world, commanding the adherence of all, and imparting to all the most powerful influences?

2. But at the very moment when our Lord was most conscious of the poor figure His kingdom made in the eyes of men, He was absolutely confident of its final greatness, because, small as it was, it was of the nature of seed. It had a vital force in it that nothing could kill; a germinating and expansive power which would only be quickened by opposition. His own death, the obscurity and limitation to which His cause was at first subjected, were not, He knew, the first symptoms of permanent oblivion, but were only the sowing of the seed. He was no more anxious than the farmer is who, for the first week or two, sees no appearance of his plants above ground. Our Lord knew that, could He only get His kingdom accepted at even.one small point of earth, the growth would inevitably and in good time follow.

There are certain human qualities, ideas, utterances, and acts which are vital and must grow. They have in them an expansive, living energy; they sink into the hearts and minds of men, and propagate a lasting influence. What, then, is the vital element in Christianity? What is it that has given permanence and growth to the kingdom of Christ? What did Christ plant that no one else has planted? What is it that keeps Him in undying remembrance, and gathers from each new generation fresh subjects for His kingdom? It is not the wisdom and beauty of His teaching. That might have led us to immortalize His words by reprinting and quoting them. Neither is it solely the holiness of His life, or the love He showed. These might have kindled in us admiration, but could never have prompted that real allegiance which is implied in a kingdom. But it is chiefly the revelation of God in Him which draws men to Him. In His death and resurrection we get assurance of Divine love and Divine power abiding in Him. It is God in Him that draws us. We cleave to him, because through Him we are lifted to God and to eternity. In His brief career He gives us a perception of the reality of the spiritual world, the permanence of the individual, and the nearness and love of God, which nothing else gives us. In Him men meet a God satisfying all their expectations; so devoted to their interests, that He lives and dies with them, and for them; so hopeful regarding them, that He proclaims pardon and newness of life to sinners; so victorious over all the evils weighing upon man, that He conquers death itself, and throws open to all the gates of life everlasting. The seed is the highest product of the plant: the fruit is but the accompaniment of the seed; it is into the seed that the plant each year puts its life. So in man, the ripest product of the individual, the actions or words into which he gathers up his whole character and strength, — it is these which are vital and germinant. The vital element in the life of Christ cannot be mistaken: it was, in a word, the Divine Son giving Himself for us; God expressing the fulness of Divine Sympathy and sacrifice in our behalf — a seed, surely, from which great things must spring.

3. Our Lord points to the eventual greatness of His kingdom. The despised seed, ground into the soil under the heel of contempt and hatred, will become a tree, whose leaves shall be for the healing of the nations. The disciples do not seem to have gathered from this parable the encouragement which was laid up for them in it; but an instructed onlooker might have admonished the crucifiers of the Lord that they were fulfilling His words — “That cross which you are setting up, and which you will take down before the sun is set, shall stand in the thought of countless millions as the point of earth most illuminated by the light of heaven; that blood which you are shedding, as you would pour water out of your way on the ground, is to be recognized by your fellow-men and by God as precious, as that by which the souls of men are redeemed and purified.” The kingdom of heaven has indeed become a tree. It would be difficult to count even the greater branches of it; difficult to number the various twigs which depend upon the central stem; impossible to count the leaves or to form an idea of the fruit which, through past years, has gradually ripened and fallen from it. This religion which emanated from a country so detested by the surrounding nations that they might be expected to say of it, as the Jews themselves of Nazareth, “Can any good thing come out of Judea?”— this religion propagated by Jews who had become Christians, so that being excommunicated by their own countrymen, and naturally hated by all other people, they seemed the most unlikely instruments to commend new ideas; this religion which could offer no high posts or secular rewards, and numbered few wise, wealthy, or noble among its adherents; which would not tolerate other religions, and yet proclaimed doctrines which excited the ridicule of the educated; which demanded from all alike, not only an absolutely pure morality and a repulsive and humbling self-renunciation, but a newness of spirit impossible to the natural man; this religion which seemed to have everything against it, which seemed like a sickly child which it was scarcely worth calling by a name to be remembered as a living thing, — this has grown to be the greatest of all powers for good in the world. The seed determines the character of all that springs from it; the quality of the fruit and its abundance may vary with the nature of the soil and with the presence or absence of careful cultivation and other advantages, but the tree will still be recognizable as of that kind to which the seed belonged. And as the seed of the kingdom of heaven was love and holiness and Divine power, so have similar fruits been borne by men wherever the kingdom has come. The outmost branch, looking in an opposite direction from the distant branches on the other side of the tree, and apparently quite dissociated from these branches, is still identified with them by the fruit it bears. Wherever in all these past ages, and in all the scattered countries of Christendom, there has been a Christ-like life; wherever sinners have been drawn to love God and hate their sin through the knowledge of the cross; wherever in hope of a blessed immortality men have borne the sorrows of time without bitterness, and committed their dead to the grave in expectation of a life beyond, — there the seed Christ sowed has been showing its permanent vitality. The figure of the tree inevitably suggests other considerations regarding the Church, besides those which are directly taught in the parable. The tree, with its single stem and countless branches, is only too true a picture of the diverging belief and worship of those who own a common root in Christ. Sometimes, indeed, one is tempted to compare the Church to one of those trees in which the branches diverge as soon as they appear above ground, so that you cannot tell whether the tree is really one or many. In some of its aspects, again, the church resembles the huge tree that stands on the village green, looking benignly down on the joys of the young, and giving shade and shelter to the aged, seeing generation after generation drop away like its own leaves, but itself living through all with the freshness of its early days; its lower bark only marked by the ambition of those who have sought to identify their now scarcely legible names with its undecaying life, but whose work has after all not entered into the life of the tree, but only marred its external hull. Again, we see that some of the lowest, earliest grown branches are quite dead or drooping; that Christianity has passed from the people among whom it first found root, and that satyrs dance where the praises of Christ were once sung. It would almost seem as if there were a melancholy accuracy in the figure used in the parable, and that the tree, having once attained its full dimensions, grows no more. After some years the rapid growth which was so striking in the young tree is no longer discernible. It maintains equal or perhaps stronger life, but spring after spring you look in vain for any discernible increase in size. But certain it is that this plant which Christ planted has shown vitality, drawing nutriment from every soil in which it has been tried, and assimilating to its own life and substance all that is good in the soil, using the faculties and accomplishments, the literary or artistic or commercial leanings and gifts of the various races so as to further the true welfare of men; gathering strength from sunshine and storm alike, cherishing a hidden life through the long winters when every branch seemed hopelessly dead, and drawing supplies of vitalizing moisture from sources beyond the ken of man when the scorching heats threatened to wither up every living leaf. The tree is growing now, gradually absorbing into itself all the widening thoughts of men, and by the chemistry of its own life extracting nutriment from criticism, from philosophy, from research, from social and political movements, from everything that forms the great stirring human world in which it is rooted; not afraid to stand out in the open and face the day, but gaining vigor from every brisker air that tosses its branches. This parable was spoken for the encouragement of the disciples: it is needed still for the encouragement of all who are interested in the extension of Christ’s kingdom. In many respects our outlook is even more hopeless than that of the first disciples. The novelty, the first enthusiasm, the external signs, are all gone; the solidarity of the Church is also gone, and in its place we have to overcome the discrediting exhibitions of discord and internal conflict, as well as the weakening influence of skepticism, and the slowly corroding materialism that is destroying the very foundations of religion. The missionary enterprise of the first disciples seems never to have extended very far from the Mediterranean coasts. They were unaware of the vast multitudes beyond, and of the solidity and attractiveness of some of the religions already in occupation; whereas to the eye of the modern Church populations are disclosed, numbered by hundreds of millions, and adhering to religions more ancient and more outwardly impressive than our own. Our zeal, too, is slackened by the very fact that all this yet remains to be done; that Christianity should have been growing for nearly two thousand years, and that it has not yet convinced all men of its superiority, and that in places where it has been most ardently received it has borne fruit of which every man must feel ashamed. To all persons who are disheartened, whether by the apparent fruitlessness of their own efforts or by the slow growth of the Church at large, this parable says. You must measure things not by their size, but by their vitality. What you can do may be very little, and once it is done there may be no sign of results; but if you put yourself into it, if it come from the heart — a heart whose earnestness and hope are the result of contact with Christ — then fruit will one day be borne. You must have some imagination. You must have some faith that will enable you to wait patiently for fruit. Make sure that what you sow is good seed; that what you teach your children is true; that what you strive to introduce into society is sound and helpful; that the ideas you propagate, the charity you support, the industry you seek to advance, are all such as belong to the kingdom of Christ, and you may be sure your labor is not lost. You may not see the results of your actions. You may not see full grown the trees of your planting, but your children will lie under their shade, and dream of your sheltering forethought, and strive to fulfil your best purposes. Do not be discouraged because all is not yet done on earth, and much remains for you to do; do not be discouraged because there is room for sacrifice and faith, devotedness, and wisdom, and love, and skill. It is not hot-house results we seek to produce, nor, like the Indian jugglers, to make a tree visibly shoot up by sleight of hand. What we look for is the real growth of human good, and this can be accomplished by no rapid and magical processes, but only by the patient nutrition of the soil by all that is truest and deepest in human nature, and by all that is most real and most testing in human effort. Honestly seek the growth of this tree, and be not too greatly dismayed by the portentous difficulties of the task. “He that observeth the wind shall not sow, and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all. In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand, for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.” In conclusion, is it not relevant to ask whether we have joined the Christian Church, because it is large, or because it is living? Simon in the temple held all Christendom in his arms, and yet felt sure the redemption of the world was nigh. Is your faith like his? Is it the Person of Christ and not what has grown round His person that you cleave to? Do you find that in Christ which compels you to say that, though you were the only Christian, yourself the Church visible, you must abide by Him? Is there some independence in your choice, some individuality in your experience? Can you say, with some significance, “I know Him in whom I have believed”? or do you but adopt the fashion that prevails, and feel the propriety and safety of going with the majority? In any case it is well that you recognize that there is this tree planted by the Lord Himself, and still growing upon earth. There is upon earth a society of men not always easy to find, but in true sympathy with Him; a progress of human affairs to which He gave the initial impulse. There is on earth a tree, the seed of which is His own life, whose growing bulk embodies, from generation to generation, all that exists in the world of His purpose and work. The good He intended for men He deposited in that seed. He came to impart to men permanent blessings. He saw our condition, recognized what we needed, and introduced into the world what He knew would achieve the happiness of every one of us.