“Trees and the Kingdom of God”
Ezekiel 17:22-24; Mark 4:30-32
6.16.24
Matt Goodale
I’m gonna start with a fun trivia question for you Bible nerds out there:
Aside from God and humans, what is the most frequently mentioned living creature in the Bible?
Trees! Believe it or not, trees are mentioned more frequently than every type of animal combined. There are over 800 mentions of trees, including fruit, branches, twigs, roots. And that’s not including the dozens of references to specific trees. So there’s probably well over a thousand references to trees in your Bible. Which means that if you randomly opened your Bible to just about any page, you will probably find a tree reference there.
I’m curious, have any of you ever sat in a peaceful place, maybe in a park or by a river, looked on at a tree planted nearby, perhaps blooming with flowers and thought, “You know, that tree is a great image of what human flourishing looks like?”
Well, if you haven’t done that creative exercise, the biblical authors have.
And we are going to practice that now. For one minute, I want you to pick a tree around here, it can be the same one you pretended to be earlier, and I want you to pay attention to it and contemplate how it might be an image of abundant life.
The author of Psalm 1 imagines the abundant life and says, “That person who has abundant life is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.”
Trees, more than any other living thing, captured the imaginations of biblical authors and audiences and so trees were written into just about every important part of the biblical story.
The story begins in the Garden of Eden with a Tree of Life at its center, emanating life for all creatures.
A little later on we find God speaking to Moses from a burning bush. And to Hebrews a bush is just a small tree, a tree is a big bush…they’re the same thing. God liberates Israel through a call to Moses from a tree.
Trees on top of high places are where God makes covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses and David. The temple is made of all kinds of trees. Lots of tree imagery depicts the promised land.
And when Israel is in exile, the biblical prophets pick up on this theme of trees and use them as a image of hope and new life. Isaiah says that the Messiah who is to come will be like a little tree sprouted from the ground. Ezekiel, which we read today, has God promising to restore Israel like a sprig replanted that will grow into a massive fruitful tree that provides shade for every type of bird.
Jesus himself uses tree imagery in so many of his parables, as we will look at today, and eventually he is killed on a tree. A tree that would become a symbol of new life and hope. And the Bible ends in a new garden with the Tree of life at its center providing healing and life for all the nations. And we are called to become a part of this tree.
In fact, at many places throughout the Bible we are called to be like trees. To imitate them—not necessarily in the way we did earlier—but in their rootedness and fruit bearing and life-giving capacities. We are the branches; Jesus is the vine. Jesus is the life-giving source that flows through us.
So do you believe me yet that trees are important in the biblical story? The Biblical authors want you to meditate on trees—to pay attention to them. And by meditating on trees, become like a tree. Which might sound a little hippy-dippy, tree-hugger to some of you…but it’s all right there in the Bible. Don’t shoot the messenger! We live most of our days indoors with a layer of concrete separating our feet from the ground, unlike the biblical authors…so maybe they were on to something…and maybe by paying more attention to trees we might learn more about God and abundant life.
Trees in the bible represent abundant life. The kind of life that comes from God and is powerful enough to heal, restore and give hope.
And Jesus, being a good biblical teacher, rooted in Jewish meditation on trees, plays with tree imagery in many of his parables. You could do a whole sermon series just on Jesus’ tree parables, but today we’re going to hone in on one to see how it might grow our understanding of God’s abundant life for us.
In this parable Jesus is speaking after a run-in with some leaders at a local synagogue. Jesus had been teaching on the Sabbath when a woman who was bent over and couldn’t stand up straight walks in. Jesus touches her and heals her. Which is perceived as a bit of a no-no on the Sabbath. Because not only was Jesus healing on the Sabbath taboo—they considered it work—he touched a woman who was unclean—she’s sick. An even bigger taboo.
And so after this run-in with the religious leaders Jesus turns to some tree imagery. He says, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.’
I’m sure you can obviously see how these two stories are connected right? Jesus commits Sabbath taboo and tells story about a mustard seed growing into a giant tree? No? Well, if you don’t see the connection there, don’t worry. We need to learn a bit more about trees to understand what kind of riddles Jesus is speaking in here!
Jesus’ parable sounds very familiar to what we read from the prophet Ezekiel earlier, about God causing a great tree to grow that will house the birds. It was a story of hope and new life for Israelites and Jesus’ audience would surely recognize it. But Jesus adds his own twist.
The tree in his retelling is a mustard tree, grown from a mustard seed. And if you grew up in the church you may have learned in Sunday school that a mustard seed is one of the most microscopic seeds in the ancient world, that against all expectations grows impressively to become a massive tree.
Oh ok. We think we know what Jesus is getting at: the kingdom of God may appear to the eye to be insignificant, but it is slowly growing beneath the surface of our world and will one day emerge in astonishing grandeur.
This was the way I was taught to understand Jesus’ parable as a kid. The moral of the story was, “don’t underestimate the kingdom of God; it may be difficult to see now, but one day it will be impossible to ignore.” My guess is many of you have learned to read this story in a similar way. This interpretation isn’t wrong per se, but it’s actually missing the most important element of Jesus’ story. And besides what does that interpretation have anything to do with Jesus breaking some rules by touching and healing a sick woman?
So what are we missing? Well, we need to know a little bit more about trees. Mustard seed was a tiny microscopic seed in the ancient world, yes, and it was also considered a weed. Mustard was an invasive species of tree, which people were actually forbidden to plant!
And we might think, oh but it shelters the birds and birds are so nice! Not when you have to grow your own food and they keep eating it! Mustard was a weed that grew uncontrollably. It was undesirable and illegal to plant in the ancient world. Notice that Jesus doesn’t say, “the kingdom of God is like the growth of a mustard seed—fast and unexpected,” but he says, “the kingdom of God is like the mustard seed itself”…a weed.
Now, all of the sudden, that doesn’t sound like the story we were expecting. The kingdom of God is compared to something that is corruptive and dangerous, it’s unacceptable and unclean. I was trying to think of what Jesus would compare the kingdom of God to if he was here in Cheney, and then it came to me. If Jesus were speaking to us, he might say, “The kingdom of God is like a couple feral cats in Cheney. They were released by some Eastern students who didn’t want them anymore, and they grew to be hundreds in number all across the city.”
I’m certain Jesus could’ve thought of something much better to compare the kingdom of God to. Why not liken it to a beautiful flower? Or a tiny stream of water that flows into and feeds a massive lake? Honestly, Jesus could’ve likened the kingdom of God to anything other than an invasive weed tree and it would’ve been better. But he didn’t.
Jesus is basically like, “Yeah you know that annoying weedy tree that you keep trying to get rid of from your garden? That’s what God’s kingdom is like…and it’s going to ruin your garden…yes, that’s exactly what God’s kingdom is like…”
Jesus chose to take what is undesirable and considered dangerous by society, and liken the kingdom of God to it. This is not a story of God’s kingdom growing against all odds; it’s a story of God’s kingdom growing despite our attempts to get rid of it like the weeds in our gardens.
Jesus’ message seems to be something like this: the kingdom of God will not come through the means or the people you might expect it to. God’s kingdom is already in your midst, but it is present in surprising places and unexpected people. God delights in bringing his will to earth through the people who are thought unclean, unacceptable, and even dangerous—The kinds of people you’re worried might ruin your neat manicured garden of a life.
We moved into our first home three years ago and the yard was overrun with a weedy tree that popped up everywhere and grew annoyingly fast—it could’ve been a mustard tree it was so awful—it smelled bad too. I’d cut one down and another would pop up in its place. It was really messing with the neat manicured yard I wanted to create!
And I wonder…maybe that’s what Jesus is trying to get at. We try to create these neat, manicured gardens of a life. In our manicured garden lives we expect to find God in all the usual places…at church, during quiet time, in our homes…but Jesus is challenging us to recognize that God’s kingdom, like an invasive weed, keeps popping up where we don’t want it to and in the people we don’t want to keep around, who threaten to complicate our manicured garden of a life.
I was thinking this week and realized that the kingdom of God is like Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech; his speech planted a seed that was considered dangerous and unacceptable to the majority white culture, yet like a weed it has continued growing beneath the surface and its effects are rippling wider and wider as we continue to deal with the mustard seed King planted. That mustard seed is indeed ruining the garden, but we realize that the garden we were growing was never good to begin with.
If we take Jesus’ metaphor all the way, then we realize that the garden he speaks of, the neat garden of a life we work so hard to manicure, is going to be overrun and corrupted by God’s kingdom. Our neat garden lives, our neat garden churches, our neat garden society, we try so hard to keep manicured and looking nice, will ultimately be overrun by the weedy infestations of God’s kingdom. It is a reversal of human fortunes. That which we have declared to be unclean will be made clean, that which we thought clean will be revealed to be unclean.
Jesus’ parable should give us pause every time we walk or drive by someone on the side of the road with a cardboard sign, or every time we’re ready to dismiss someone in our life. Because we may have missed a glimpse of God’s kingdom in our midst. These are the people who are treated like the woman who was bent over and could not fully straighten herself; they are looked down upon, they’re unclean, they’re a weed to our neat garden lives—and when someone like Jesus comes to touch them, it is scandalous and unexpected. But these are the people whom Jesus’ healing touch resides in; Jesus declares that the kingdom of God is theirs.
Not all trees are beautiful or desirable. It’s not every tree you want growing in your garden. But Jesus reminds us that every tree is full of life and not every garden is worth preserving. And every person, like a tree, is full of God’s life that is just waiting to grow and spread and bear fruit. The question Jesus leaves us with is: are we willing to give up the garden for the trees? Are we willing to let God’s kingdom overrun our “manicured garden lives” to plant something better in its place?
If you ever want to know what God’s kingdom is like, pay attention to the trees, even and especially the weedy ones. Amen and may it be so.