Sunday Musings
The Kingdom of God is like a tree
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Today is the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost.
Ezekiel 17:22-24
Thus says the Lord God:
I myself will take a sprig
from the lofty top of a cedar;
I will set it out.
I will break off a tender one
from the topmost of its young twigs;
I myself will plant it
on a high and lofty mountain.
On the mountain height of Israel
I will plant it,
in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,
and become a noble cedar.
Under it every kind of bird will live;
in the shade of its branches will nest
winged creatures of every kind.
All the trees of the field shall know
that I am the Lord.
I bring low the high tree,
I make high the low tree;
I dry up the green tree
and make the dry tree flourish.
I the Lord have spoken;
I will accomplish it.
Mark 4:26-34
Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
For whatever reason, I never really noticed today’s pairing of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament readings before. But I love that both Ezekiel and Mark make the same point: The Kingdom of God is like a tree.
Or, rather, the Kingdom of God is like a small cutting (in Ezekiel) or tiny seed (in Mark) that grows into a magnificent tree.
A tree. Not a throne room. Not an imperial temple. Not a big construction project. A tree.
Ezekiel offers a majestic vision of a cedar forest. From the crowns (those are the only crowns in this arboreal reign) of the trees, God takes a cutting and plants it on a “lofty mountain.” There, it grows into a noble cedar:
Under it every kind of bird will live;
in the shade of its branches will nest
winged creatures of every kind.
The tree — and presumably the forest that grows around it — witness to the glory of the Lord, “All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord.”
The cedars of Lebanon were first mentioned in ancient literature in the Epic of Gilgamesh — and they appear more than seventy times in the Hebrew Bible. Phoenicians built ships from the their wood. The Egyptians used them in the mummification process. Every successive wave of empire cut down the towering forests for their own purposes. They are like the redwoods of the ancient world — these cedars of God.
It seems obvious that Jesus knew the Ezekiel passage. The images are similar. Although the action is slightly different — in Ezekiel, God is the only actor; in Mark, there’s a human farmer — the result is the same. The trees grow large, the birds nest, the forest comes alive, the branches spread wide.
I’ve heard a number of sermons about mustard seeds and mustard plants over the years. But seminaries don’t offer tree science and pastors aren’t dendrologists. So, while many sermons assume mustard facts, modern mustard plants aren’t like the ones in the Bible. Our mustard plants are part of the Brassica family, closer to cabbage or radishes than trees. They grow in fields.
It is hard to imagine Jesus borrowing Ezekiel’s forested Kingdom and turning it into a radish.
Those mustard trees that Jesus spoke of? They weren’t mustard plants as we know them. They were large evergreen shrubs or small trees, Salvadora persica, known as the toothbrush tree, an ancient plant native to the Middle East, Africa, and India.
Toothbrush trees possess remarkable properties and have served as the basis of folk medicines across their native regions for generations. The name comes from one of the tree’s most widely known benefits — as a natural toothbrush! There’s even a record of the Prophet Muhammed using this traditional tree in his oral hygiene practices.
A peer-reviewed paper from the NIH website lists a host of folk uses for the tree:
With a long history in folk medicine for centuries, S. persica was used in oral hygiene, food, cosmetics, fuel, and even as a medicine. Thus, leaves and fruits were consumed as green vegetables or in salads. The resin may be used for varnish manufacture. Also leaves and young twigs were useful as a nutrient for several animals, including cows, camels, goats, and sheep to enhance cow lactation and increase the general body weight of animals. It has been reported that honey from S. persica has medicinal value, and its flowers are a good source of the honey bee nectar.
It is an astonishing plant, that mustard tree, you might even call it the greatest of all shrubs. From one little seed grows an entire medicine cabinet!
The Kingdom of God is like a cutting from the cedars of Lebanon.
The Kingdom of God is like a seed from a toothbrush tree.
And, of course, in our time, both trees are threatened.
The cedars are endangered due to both deforestation and climate change. The toothbrush tree is primarily threatened by overuse and exploitation by the Indian drug industry.
So, it seems that God can grow a Kingdom from a cutting or seed. But we humans can too easily destroy the trees that spread their sacred branches across the earth.
I think there’s a lesson in this. Few things appear more urgent than the final line of Joyce Kilmer’s familiar poem, “Only God can make a tree.”
We don’t plant or built a kingdom. Our job is to tend the forest.
And we aren’t doing a very good job of it right now.
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Who is ______?
INSPIRATION
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
— Joyce Kilmer, “Trees”
Who ever saw the mustard-plant,
wayside weed or tended crop,
grow tall as a shrub, let alone a tree, a treeful
of shade and nests and songs?
Acres of yellow,
not a bird of the air in sight.
No, He who knew
the west wind brings
the rain, the south wind
thunder, who walked the field-paths
running His hand along wheatstems to glean
those intimate milky kernels, good
to break on the tongue,
was talking of miracle, the seed
within us, so small
we take it for worthless, a mustard-seed, dust,
nothing.
Glib generations mistake
the metaphor, not looking at fields and trees,
not noticing paradox. Mountains
remain unmoved.
Faith is rare, He must have been saying,
prodigious, unique —
one infinitesimal grain divided
like loaves and fishes,
as if from a mustard-seed
a great shade-tree grew. That rare,
that strange: the kingdom
a tree. The soul
a bird. A great concourse of birds
at home there, wings among yellow flowers.
The waiting
kingdom of faith, the seed
waiting to be sown.
— Denise Levertov, “On the Parables of the Mustard Seed”
Also, I think Jesus was being funny in this passage. Sure, sure - like the cedars of Lebanon. But how about this scruffy shrub-tree?
After all, it heals whatever ails you!
Plus: birds.
It’s interesting to speculate about what mustard seed/plant Jesus was talking about. I had always assumed Jesus was talking about black mustard, Sinapsis Niger, which is a member of the Brassicaceae family and is found abundantly in Palestine in wild state and is also cultivated. I am sure many a sermon, including mine, have included the quote from Pliny the elder about this mustard: “but on the other hand, when it has once been sown, it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once.”
My preferred interpretation of this was that Jesus had a sense of humor. He knew Ezekiel. Everyone knew the mighty Cedars of Lebanon. But Jesus likened the kingdom to a common shrub that was often a nuisance weed. You couldn’t get rid of it even if you wanted to. Which brings me some comfort and a sense of strategy going forward if the unthinkable happens in the next election. We’re not going away; you can’t get rid of us even if you try. Countless millions of seeds have been blown around and taken root. The KofG is everywhere and is thriving in many wild places and ways.
But he could have been talking about Salvadora persica, and there is a good message there as well!