Mustard and Marginality

Proper 12A

Just how much mustard do we need, really?

I know its an odd question, but since we just heard the famous parable of the mustard seed I want to reflect a bit on my relationship to its condiment cousin. I don’t know about you, but I have lots of mustard in my refrigerator. There are all these odd shaped jars of wine and jalapeno flavored mustards from Sonoma county, and mustards of many colors with various seeds in them. And I can’t ever seem to get rid of them, even when they start getting brown and crusty around the lids, because who knows when a raspberry mustard might be just the right thing for a sandwich. Mustard is tenacious.

And then there’s yellow mustard. I remember when John and I lived in Nicaragua in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. The country was terribly poor and suffering from a war and economic sanctions, so consumer goods were hard to come by. And there were these huge modern supermarket-like stores with long shelves like you’d see here but they’d be all but empty, except for a row entirely filled with plastic bottles of yellow mustard. Mustard is ubiquitous.

Mustard the condiment is just one of those things that never goes away. Its tenacious, its ubiquitous, and in a curious way, its poetic. Thinking about my relationship with contemporary mustard has helped me to hear Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed in a fresh way. Let me explain.

The parable of the mustard seed is possible one of the best known in the gospels. It has become, in our cultural imagination, a symbol of the power and potential of the small. Which, as Jesus teaches, might grow into something huge and generous and hospitable. Quite possibly some of you were given a mustard seed or mustard seed jewelry when you were young, as a reminder that a little faith can make a big difference. And that’s all good and right and true in a gospel sense.

But if we sentimentalize the parable of the mustard seed, its possible to lose sight of the horticultural context within which Jesus would have been preaching it. So if you find yourself inspired by the image of a small seed growing into great tree filled with happy singing birds, bear with me as I burst your bubble a little bit. The mustard bush of Jesus’ time was no more a mighty oak than it is now. It was relatively small shrubby plant, considered to be something of an invasive species. Really, it was a kind of trash tree. Think of it as the crusty yellow mustard bottle of trees.

The mighty mustard tree was not only small in size, it was also a marginal plant of little economic value. And if there’s a common theme in the parables we heard today, this might be it. That the kingdom of heaven that might well be found in the marginal, the disreputable, and the hidden.

Because our Bible and our Prayer Book are so replete with imagery and language about God’s kingly might and power, I wonder if we are tempted to overlook just how countercultural these parables of the kingdom are. So lets take a moment to listen a little more deeply. Notice that our gospel reading includes five parables. They are all brief, and have no explicit interpretation, unlike the parable of the sower that we heard last week.

There’s the kingdom that’s like a mustard seed, like leaven, like treasure in the field, a pearl of great price, and the parables of the net. So to unpack some of the better known of the bunch, we’ve got heaven being compared to the greatest of shrubs—which is nevertheless a shrub—and also heaven being compared to yeast. But yeast in Jesus’ time was not a hermetically sealed packet of Fleishmann’s or Red Star brand. Rather, it was something more like how we would imagine mold. A contaminant that was just as likely to spoil bread as to make it fluffy.

And then there’s that crazy story of the treasure hidden in the field. Like the parable of the pearl that follows it, its making hard choices about what to buy and keep and what to sell. In both instances, the protagonist has to sell everything in order to buy what’s most important. Which—as someone who doesn’t like to let go of anything—is a challenging and liberating discipline. All very good and holy, I’m sure, except that if you read carefully it does not appear that the buyer of the field disclosed to the owner that there was a treasure hidden in it. And what was he doing digging around in someone else’s field, anyway?

Where are you conscious of the kingdom of God in what is marginal, disreputable, or hidden? We may have to get creative with metaphors, because most of us don’t plant a lot of mustard seeds or buy a lot of fields with hidden treasure in them these days. And yeast, far from being a contaminant, is the fashionable catalyst of artisanal beer and bread in the Bay Area. But we can find equivalent examples of the marginal, disreputable and hidden. And in fact, we have to find equivalent examples if we want to hear Jesus’ voice afresh.

So might the kingdom of God be hidden within, say, the voice of a child? I’ve just returned from a week of serving as chaplain to one of our youth camps, where I was quite astonished by the skill and authority of our young Episcopalians. I had the privilege of hearing their stories of longing for community and spirituality, and also the heartbreak of their frustration with not being able to find Episcopal churches where they have authority to lead worship, choose music and use space in ways that fit their lives and their longings. Which left me wondering if we sometimes treat them a bit like contaminants. They may be few in numbers in our communities, but fully capable of transforming our church in huge ways, if only we let them. The kingdom of God is like that yeast.

Might the kingdom of God be like my friend Lee, a rising star of a Bay Area marketing executive who turned down a chance to be Amazon employee number I-don’t-know-which? She would be a millionaire tens or hundred of times over if she’d taken the job in the 1990’s. But instead, she chose to nurse her dying mother and later pursue a much less lucrative career path. And has no regrets because she knows she made the right choice. The kingdom of God is like that pearl.

Might the kingdom of God be like an urban congregation in a changing neighborhood, small but tough and tenacious as a weed? Planted in its place with its doors wide open to the new residents who may be speaking different languages and generally doing things differently? Making room for multiple congregations and a preschool and a tutoring program. Yes, the kingdom of God is like that mustard seed.

I myself never had a mustard seed necklace, but I’ll wear these stories close to my heart. Because when Jesus—who might himself be thought of as the scribe of the kingdom in that final parable— brings forth from his rabbinic treasury old metaphors, we can trust that they are always being made new in us.