One of the notable things about Jesus’ use of parable is that he is a person completely at home in the environment and culture of the time. Like the people who took his words to heart there was a deep seated understanding and respect for the earth and everything in it. 
Image: United Nations Development Programme, Flickr
Mark 4: 30-34 (June 14, Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary time)
Jesus said to the crowds:
“To what shall we compare the kingdom of God,
or what parable can we use for it?
It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground,
is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth.
But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants
and puts forth large branches,
so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”
One of the notable things about Jesus’ use of parable is that he is a person completely at home in the environment and culture of the time. Like the people who took his words to heart there was a deep seated understanding and respect for the earth and everything in it. He could appreciate and wonder at the natural world, read the signs of the sky; he knew of sowers and various seeds, olive trees, grape oxen and ploughing; he knew the importance of the change of seasons. He acknowledged and reverenced the vital interdependence and interrelatedness of all creation. Above all He understood that all were the gifts of a loving Creator.
So Jesus’ parables are shot through with images so familiar to his audience because the Kingdom of God cannot be physically grasped but only apprehended analogously. Through stories He continually invites people to see all of life as God sees it. The crunch for us, as it was for so many in Jesus’ time, is that oftentimes the parables demand profound changes be made in the way we live and move in and regard the world.
This brings us to the parables of the mustard seed. There is an absurdity here: Why would Jesus use the image of something that is a pest? Why is the Kingdom compared to something that we don’t want? Is it because the Kingdom transcends our attempts to define it? In other words it is something hidden, indirect, surprising and breaking into our ordinary lives in all aspects.
“Notice the birds in Jesus’ story: The birds which would normally have dedicated themselves to eating up any available seed now rest in its branches….for what Jesus is bringing to existence…is something which will even be capable of offering hospitality to those who would have been its principle enemies….. [T]he way of the kingdom is the not the way of domination, retribution, scarcity, and enmity, but of shalom and abundance, of reconciliation and restoration.”
(http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/blog/2008/08/shrubs-and-kingdoms/#sthash.GtN6MocC.dpuf)
It is also a good metaphor for our changing attitudes to responsibility of this planet Earth, God’s gift to all.
Prayer
Call us to renewal, to stewardship;
Call us to solidarity to the earth and all its creatures.
Give us new vision to see the fragile beauty that remains to us;
Give us new spiritual energy to become active
In loving the world through our daily life;
Give us new voices to speak out for environmental solidarity.
Jane Deren, 2009
Source: www.educationforjustice.org
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