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Such Is The Kingdom

The Growing Seed

“The kingdom of God is like this,” he said. “A man scatters seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day; the seed sprouts and grows, although he doesn’t know how. The soil produces a crop by itself—first the blade, then the head, and then the full grain on the head. As soon as the crop is ready, he sends for the sickle, because the harvest has come.” Mark 4: 26-29

Some literary features

  • This parable only occurs in Mark’s account. It does not appear in Matthew or Luke.
  • This is one of only two parables that Mark directly connects to the Kingdom of God. The other parable is the Parable of the Mustard Seed.

Some considerations

What is the parable about?

Since Mark directly connects this parable to the kingdom of God, we have to take the parable holistically as describing the reality of the present and near Kingdom that formed the center of Jesus’ ministry. This parable is not about how we should act, it is about how the kingdom operates.

Sleeping and rising

The mention of the man’s sleeping and rising day and night should be understood as Jesus trying to show the passage of time, not to emphasize the man’s inactivity. After planting, a farmer tills, weeds and irrigates on the farm.

Identifying the characters

It is not clear from the parable what exactly the seed correlates to in the operation of the kingdom, so we have to be careful not to plant our own ideas on the parable. Because the word of God is the seed in the parable of the sower, we cannot assume that in every parable where there’s a seed, it must refer to the word of God. In the same way, we are not to assume that God is the farmer, or that the soil is a person’s heart.

Meaning of the parable

This parable helps us realize three things:

  • The kingdom of God is present in Jesus’ ministry
  • There is a period of time for growth/development
  • There will surely come a “fullness of time”, when there will be a harvest. This is inevitable.

Realizing this, the parable should then fill us with hope and patience. We know that this present, growing kingdom will be fully revealed in God’s time even though it may not look like it at the moment.

The Wheat and the Weeds

Too long, please open your Bible Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43

Meaning of the parable

This parable also talks about the operation of the present kingdom, highlighting the seeming dissonance between the presence of the kingdom and what things may look like externally. In this case, Jesus emphasizes that the presence of evil does not undo or undermine the work of the kingdom. Evil will certainly be judged one day. We shouldn’t be surprised at the presence of evil. This new creation has started right in the middle of this current corrupt one.

We also need to take note that it is not our task to completely eliminate evil. We are not to try to use the gospel to build for ourselves utopian lives and ideals.

The Mustard Seed

He presented another parable to them: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It’s the smallest of all the seeds, but when grown, it’s taller than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the sky come and nest in its branches.” Matthew 13: 31-32
And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use to describe it? It’s like a mustard seed that, when sown upon the soil, is the smallest of all the seeds on the ground. And when sown, it comes up and grows taller than all the garden plants, and produces large branches, so that the birds of the sky can nest in its shade.” Mark 4: 30-32
He said, therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like, and what can I compare it to? It’s like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the sky nested in its branches.” Luke 13: 18-19

Mustard tree?

Something that has made this parable puzzling is the outsized size of the tree that grows from the small seed. The mustard plant is at best a shrub and does not grow into such a huge tree that birds come to sit on. Jesus’ hearers would have found that to be very strange.

However, that might also be the point of the parable; to show the unexpected outcome of the eventual result of planting, especially when you consider the size of the seed.

Meaning of the parable

This parable possibly addresses the doubt in the heart of Jesus’ hearers, about the fact that the kingdom of God was truly present in His ministry. This parable encourages them (and us) to not get carried away about the seeming insignificance of what was happening in His ministry.

This parable challenges our sense of judgement about smallness and significance. A lot of times, we attribute to the kingdom or believe God is at work only when things are big in our eyes.