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ESPAÑOL: ¿Por qué Jesús comparó el Reino de Dios con una mala hierba invasora?

Every spring as the snow melts away in our backyard, I see the brown dead grass emerging along with the annoying green leaves of dandelions that have already sprung to life and started to grow.

In my perpetual battle with the dandelion, my dreaded foe already has the advantage and no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to completely eliminate them.

Hi, my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I want to discuss the time that Jesus compared the Kingdom of God to one of the Middle East’s most dreaded weeds.

Yes, I said a weed.

But before I discuss why Jesus did this, let’s look at the curious statement that Pliny the Younger made about Christians in his letter to the Roman Emperor Trajan around 112 AD.

Pliny the Younger, who was the governor of Bithynea et Pontus, located in modern Turkey, was asking for advice on how to deal with those embracing the Christian faith that was rapidly spreading across the Roman Empire.

This was one of the earliest mentions of Christianity from a secular source.

In his letter, Pliny wrote that not only were Christians refusing to worship the emperor as a god, but added that the temples had been emptied and the markets selling meat sacrificed to idols were suffering because nobody was buying it.

Pliny said he was pressuring Christians to recant their faith but wasn’t sure what he should to because many of them were refusing to do so.

Then Pliny the Younger added this curious statement, he said, ‘For the contagion of this superstition (Christianity) has spread not only through the free cities, but into the villages and the rural districts, and yet it seems to me it can be checked and set right.”

Pliny the Younger was comparing Christianity to a fast-spreading plague, nevertheless, he was confident of his ability to stamp out this Christian contagion as he called it.

But this underlying confidence reveals that Pliny the Younger was unfamiliar with both the teachings of Christ and a book written by his uncle and adoptive father, Pliny the Elder. Had he been familiar, Pliny the Younger may not have been so reckless in predicting he could stop the Christian contagion.

You see Jesus compared the Kingdom of God to one particular weed.

We read:

“He presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; and this is smaller than all other seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.” (Matthew 13:31-32 NASV)

The weed that Jesus was talking about was the mustard plant.

Like today, the ancients valued the ground-up mustard seed as a seasoning for meat and its oil. The leaves are also edible and used in stews and salads.

But aside from the benefits, the ancients considered the mustard plant as an intrusive and aggressive weed because it can quickly overrun a field or garden.

Christ’s reference to the large size of the mustard plant means the Lord was talking about the Black Mustard that can grow up to 10′ tall (and higher in ideal conditions) in a matter of a few weeks from a seed that was less than one millimeter in size making it the smallest of Israel’s crop and herb seeds.

So what was Jesus implying when He compared the Kingdom of God to a mustard plant?

Jesus was subtly hinting about how quickly and large the Kingdom of God would grow, once He sent the Holy Spirit to empower the church.

And if Pliny the Younger was familiar with Christ’s comparison of the church to a mustard plant, it should have been a warning flag. Because his adoptive father, Pliny the Elder, talked about the mustard plant in his book, Natural History, written around 78 AD.

In this book which historians describe as the world’s first encyclopedia, Pliny the Elder discusses the mustard plant’s benefits and then warns of its weed-like qualities.

Pliny the Elder describes it this way:

“[the mustard] is extremely beneficial for the health. It grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted: 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.”

So despite all the benefits that mustard provides, the ancients found it difficult to control. If it got a toehold in a field or garden, it would quickly overrun it, as the plant was almost impossible to eradicate.

The Jewish Pharisees similarly did not think highly of the mustard plant for the very same reason. The Talmud, an ancient Jewish commentary of the Old Testament, actually prohibited planting mustard in a Jewish garden because of this.

They based this on their interpretation of Deuteronomy 22 that prohibited mixture — such as mixing different forms of cloth. They applied this principle to the mustard plant and labeled it unclean because it would quickly spread through the garden mixing with other plants and because it was almost impossible to get rid of.

Even today, agricultural specialists, such as those at the University of California in Davis include mustard in their weed reports telling farmers how to eradicate the plant if it gets into their fields.

There are many reasons why the mustard plant is so invasive, so aggressive and so successful. A typical mustard plant produces thousands of seeds that sprout earlier than other plants giving it a significant advantage in early competition for water and nutrients.

It also needs less water for its seed to start germinating.

The mustard plant also produces seeds earlier than most plants. By the time other plants are entering their flowering stage, the mustard is already dropping mature seeds.

If that is not bad enough, mustard plants can even chemically alter the soil making it difficult for other plants to germinate and grown.

Rains also cause the mustard seed’s outer coat to become sticky allowing it to cling to birds and animals resulting in wide distribution.

Along with this, mustard seeds can lie dormant in the soil for up to 11 years and after times of drought, the mustard plant is usually the first to recover and can quickly dominate the ground after the rains return.

Because of these characteristics, the mustard seed was unstoppable in ancient Palestine.

So Jesus was making a subtle point about how quickly the kingdom of God or church would spread from that founding group of 120 believers in the Upper Room in Acts chapter one.

Powered by the Holy Spirit, the church would rapidly take root and grow. It would be unrelenting and unstoppable.

By the time Rome’s first Christian emperor, Constantine, arrived in 306 AD, some estimate that over 55% of Rome’s population was already Christian.

The mustard seed that had been planted around 33 AD had exploded and was now spread across the Roman Empire.

Thanks for joining me on the podcast. I will catch you again.

RELATED: Mustard Weed Report: University of California, Davis