In Mark 4:30 Jesus asks the rhetorical question: “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it?” He then answers his own question by comparing it to a mustard seed: “It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade” (vs. 31–32).
The meaning is clear: the Kingdom begins with one man, Jesus; he gathers around him twelve apostles. Together they make converts in Galilee and Judea consisting mainly of the poor, social outcasts, penitent sinners and tax collectors. Then the Gospel is taken throughout the Roman Empire to the Gentiles, and beyond that, over the centuries, converts are drawn from all nations. Finally, at the end of the age, when Jesus Christ appears in power and glory to gather his faithful people, the Kingdom will come in its fulness, consisting of ‘a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation’ (Revelation 7:9), and will fill the whole world. What a contrast between the small beginnings and the enormous end towards which the process of growth is directed. A vast tree grows inexorably out of a tiny seed.
It is perhaps surprising to see where the Lord derives the imagery of this short parable. He is using the same symbolism with which the prophet Daniel describes the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar: “The tree you saw, which grew and became strong, so that its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth, whose leaves were beautiful and its fruit abundant, and in which was food for all, under which beasts of the field found shade, and in whose branches the birds of the heavens lived” (Daniel 4:20–21).
By alluding to Daniel’s words Jesus is perhaps implying that the kingdoms of this world in their transient power and glory are a pale reflection of the one true Kingdom which will replace them, to fill the whole world and last forever.
PAUL WASSON