I’ve been thinking a lot about the mustard seed growing into a tree that I wrote about recently. I was reviewing my schedule, looking for small actions that might have big results.
Then suddenly a light bulb went on. What if Jesus parable isn’t about small things becoming big? What if the point of the parable is that the mustard seed has life?
We get tripped up because the text uses the word mikros, or “micro” to describe the size of the mustard seed. But if that was the only point of the parable there are other ways to describe something very small growing very large. A grain of sand is very small but it becomes a building.
But a seed is alive. And when it unfolds it passes that life along to the birds that lodge in its branches.
I did a little digging to see if I could find any other Jewish stories about mustard seeds, to find out if it was a common expression.
I came up empty-handed but I did discover something interesting. In the 12th century there was a Jewish scholar and rabbi called Nachmanides who taught that the universe started out as a tiny speck…the size of a mustard seed.
Was Nachmanides influenced by the teachings of Jesus? He lived in Catalonia so that is quite possible. But it is also possible that both Jesus and Nachmanides, separated by 1000 years, were drawing upon the same traditions and teachings.
Whatever the origin, it seems that both men used a mustard seed to describe a tremendous unfolding process that is at the heart, directed by God.
