It is in the weeds and the kudzu, the death, and the destruction, the questions and the uncertainties, the doubt and the longing that Christ is reconciling the world to himself. It is there that new life and the new creation will break forth.
[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.”
Jesus gives us two images, both agricultural: the Kingdom of God is like a garden which the gardener did not pay a lot of attention to but it sprouted anyway, and the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which doesn’t look like there’s a whole lot to it, but actually grows into a really big tree.
Christ is reconciling the world to himself. It is there that new life and a new creation will break forth. It is there that we have planted what seem to us like the tiniest of seeds, planted almost in despair. And it is there that Christ will make all things new and grow for us, somehow, someway, bursting through the weeds and cracked ground, the most amazing mustard tree.
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