05/03/2026 - Luke 13:18-21, Fifth Sunday of Easter
Every week when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we pray for God’s kingdom to come and God’s will to be done, on earth as it is in heaven. And for a long time, I was taught that the kingdom of God looked and sounded a very specific way, with very specific theology and beliefs and practices. And maybe you were too. But as I grew up, I realized that the kingdom of God in my head was too small. The more I learned about other’s theology, beliefs, and practices, the more the boundaries of that kingdom began to expand.
Because when Jesus talks about the kingdom of God, it’s as small as a mustard seed, and yet big enough to encompass the entire world.
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Scripture: Luke 13:18-21
Jesus asked, “What is God’s kingdom like? To what can I compare it? It’s like a mustard seed that someone took and planted in a garden. It grew and developed into a tree and the birds in the sky nested in its branches.”
Again he said, “To what can I compare God’s kingdom? It’s like yeast, which a woman took and hid in a bushel of wheat flour until the yeast had worked its way through the whole.”
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Next to the Good Samaritan, I think the parable of the mustard seed is one of the more recognizable ones that comes out of Scripture. Often it’s used as an example of personal faith, or how having just the littlest bit of faith is enough to do these great wonders.
But that’s not actually the comparison here in Luke. Jesus isn’t talking about personal faith, he’s talking about collective faith. He’s talking about the entire kingdom of God. So when asked what the kingdom of God is like, in all its vastness and majesty and glory, Jesus responds with a mustard seed.
Now the mustard seed talked about here isn’t necessarily the plant you’re thinking of that can be processed into the yellow condiment we slather onto hamburgers. Instead, it could be the seed of an arak, which also can be known as a mustard tree, so that’s the imagery I’ll be going with today. They are common throughout the Middle East, and also have tiny seeds. Their roots and twigs were traditionally chewed on to help clean people’s teeth, their seeds were used to make detergent, and their fruit and leaves were edible and used in traditional medicine. It was an incredibly versatile plant. But its seeds are incredibly tiny. On their own they’re really not impressive - a minuscule little red seed that if you didn’t know what it was, you could easily just brush it away as a speck of dust or a crumb of something.
But it’s more than just the seed itself. It’s what it can do, what it can grow into, and most importantly, how quickly it can spread.
When I was little, I thought dandelions were magical. I couldn’t quite comprehend how they transformed from sunshine yellow flowers with soft petals that stained my fingers, to fluffy white seeds that would flutter away at the slightest breath. There was no dandelion that was safe from my grasp; either I was trying to stain my hands with it, or I was trying to get every last seed to fly away to a new, far away location. Much to the chagrin of my dad, however, that far away location was often right in our backyard again.
I didn’t know until I was older that dandelions were considered weeds, undesirable flowers that were meant to be uprooted and tossed away rather than picked and scattered to the wind to grow elsewhere. Even with that knowledge I still think they’re really pretty, and whenever I find a white fluffy one, I’m still tempted to pick it and blow on it, with apologies to the neighbor’s lawns.
Because it is so easy for dandelions and other weeds to take root, anywhere and everywhere they land, and they can grow and flourish in almost any type of soil. How many times have you seen dandelions and other plants growing in the cracks of sidewalks?
Just like dandelions, mustard trees are hearty plants. They can grow in a wide variety of soil types, from rocky and full of clay, to the richest, nutrient dense earth you can find. And once mustard trees have taken root and have grown into these bushes, they can be very difficult to get rid of. Even if you’re able to uproot a mustard tree, the seeds easily scatter over the earth, and because they’re so tiny and brownish red, you often don’t realize how far and wide the seeds have scattered until they have already taken root and started growing.
Which is why it’s strange that Jesus mentions somebody choosing to plant this tree in their garden. Because mustard trees weren’t really crops that you planted, they were wild plants that you scavenged from. They weren’t welcome in gardens and on farmland, because the seeds could get everywhere and grow more trees where they weren’t wanted.
So to intentionally plant one was to disrupt the land and the other plants. It meant that you wanted your garden to be full of these mustard trees, growing anywhere they could find enough soil to live in. You didn’t care what your garden looked like year after year. You didn’t care that the neat rows might suddenly be interrupted by a tree, that you might not be able to plant the tomatoes next to the carrots like you’d planned.
All you cared about was this mustard tree.
Because if you were willing to work with the mustard tree instead of containing it in a small space with thoughts of how it should look, or how it should grow, the tree would grow and thrive and provide valuable resources for you and your family.
It’s this plant, this tree that is meant to represent the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is not just like a mustard seed - tiny, easily forgotten, easily crushed and disposed of. And it’s also not just like the big, wild plants that aren’t necessarily welcome everywhere, even though they are good, because it can interfere with other’s plans. The kingdom of God encompasses all of it, from the planting of the seeds to the early growth to the flowers in the spring to the wooden stems and branches. It’s about how the kingdom of God comes to the earth, finding root and purchase in places that seem so unlikely to sustain life, like rocky, clay-filled soil.
That as long as someone is willing to plant the initial seed of love and life, even in places where it seems like they could never grow, the kingdom of God will find a way to grow and thrive.
And just like the mustard tree, once the love of God takes root in the world, it is impossible to fully get rid of. You can prune and cut and slash the wild, fast-growing branches, but they’ll always grow back. You can cut the tree down to a stump, but it’ll just grow back. And even if you try and dig out every last root of the plant, it’ll be easy to miss some. And even if somehow you managed to dig up every last strand of root buried deep in the soil, you’ve still scattered hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny little seeds into the soil that are almost impossible to see with the naked eye. It doesn’t matter what soil they land in - they could land in the soft soil of a tranquil, content life, or they could land in the rocky soil of grief, pain, anger, trauma, and fear.
For the love of God is hearty, able to take root in whatever soil the little seeds find themselves in. And even though they are tiny, just one is enough to begin to grow another wild plant, with roots of hope digging deep back into the earth and branches of joy reaching up to the sky. Because all it takes is one little seed of hope, of love, of kindness and peace, to take root and begin to grow and share that love with everyone else.