Even though the days of our agrarian economy have passed, I think that Americans still relate well to the times when our country was largely rural and its inhabitants primarily farmers. I believe that this fact is partially due to the many agricultural allusions that we find in scripture. For example, the last three Sundays we have references to the planting of seeds. Two weeks ago, Matthew’s message concerned the parable of the seeds falling on differing soils; last week we worried about the weeds among the wheat. And today we have the profound image of the tiny mustard seed that grows into a great shrub. Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to one of the smallest of all seeds, but it grows into a great shrub in which birds gather and nest. How are we to interpret this parable?

First, let’s think about what this parable meant to Jesus’ disciples. In the times of the earliest church, the number of believers, we know, was quite small. Small as a mustard seed, one might say. Yet Jesus encourages them by comparing the size of their group to a mustard seed and the growth of the kingdom to the great tree in which birds of the air—or nations of the world—come for refreshment. If we had been disciples, we would surely have been encouraged by this image. It would have given us hope that from small beginnings develop great accomplishments. And considering that one out of every three persons in the world today professes to be a Christian, their optimism certainly proved accurate.

But how can we use this parable in our own lives? Herbert Slade, an Anglican monk, said, “All life is growth. This is especially true of the spiritual life. It continually grows. To stand still, to look back is death.” Still, this little seed, planted within us, that is the kingdom of God, cannot grow unless we nurture it. I believe that within us all there is a yearning, a hunger, that nothing—no thing, no created object, no person, no pleasure—can satisfy. We hunger and thirst for the living God. The seed of the kingdom of heaven within us longs to be satisfied. The words of Psalm 63 express that yearning.

The psalmist says,
O God, you are my God, I seek you,
My soul thirsts for you;
My flesh faints for you,
As in a dry and weary land
Where there is no water.

Although we do both hunger and thirst for God, for nourishment for the longing within us, we often try to satisfy our needs with other things. We hunger for satisfaction and fulfillment, real fulfillment. Even though we do not find satisfaction for this hunger from without, we continue to look for nourishment in the world around us. We fill ourselves with food, and we fill our homes with technology and furnishings. We acquire more “things.” A recent ad for containers urges us to use their containers for all our “stuff,” and when we have done that, to go out and buy more “stuff.” We have plenty of “stuff.’ But the seed remains dormant; it does not grow with externals. We still hunger and thirst for satisfaction, for someone who will love us unconditionally, who will know and accept us, who will delight in us, who will direct our lives. We can spend our entire lives searching for nourishment for the seed of the kingdom of heaven that dwells in us, but we will never find it if we look only in the material world around us.

For centuries, the desert has been the symbol of the quest for God. The dry, barren landscape serves as a metaphor for ourselves. When I was in Israel a few years ago, of all the places we visited, I was most drawn to the desert. Perhaps I sensed there the dry places within. Actually, I still long to return to that arid spot, to spend time in the wilderness, to find God in the dry, parched desert of the holy land. But I don’t have to go to Israel to find the desert, for it appears within me, within you, within all who persevere on a spiritual journey. Antony, an Egyptian ascetic said, “There is no need for us to go abroad to attain the kingdom of heaven, nor to cross the sea in search of virtue: as the Lord has already told us, the kingdom of God is within us.” But where is the water of life when we are in the desert? Where can we find relief for our parched souls? What can encourage that tiny seed to grow?

Jesus told us that if we are thirsty, we should go to him and he will refresh us. He has said that rivers of living water will flow out from within him. He has promised us that the water he gives will become in us a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. What sustains us in the desert times is the promise that at the end of the journey, and even in its midst, there is water. Like the Israelites returning across the wilderness from Babylonian exile, we hope for sustenance in our desert journey.

And our thirst for God will be satisfied. Once we acknowledge the longing we have and the inability to satisfy this longing in the material world, we can perceive a stream off in the distance rippling toward us. We struggle to find the stream—we read, we pray, we listen, we worship, we reach out to others in Christian love and forgiveness. But, no matter how mighty our efforts are, they are trivial compared with the strength of the water coming to meet us. And, in the end, it will not be our labor that finally satisfies our longing and nurtures the seed of the kingdom within us. Rather it will be the desire of the Water itself to meet our need, the love of the One whom we have struggled to find, that will nurture the seeds of hope within us and grant us peace. One of my favorite passages from the Old Testament (from the Hebrew scriptures) is found in Jeremiah, Chapter 29: “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord . . . “

For, as John Main, an English Benedictine monk said, “ The Kingdom of God is simply God’s power enthroned in our hearts.” When we have found nourishment for the small seed, it will grow and draw others to its growth because then we will want all that God wants and we will want it always and we will want it without reservations. We will establish the human conditions that will allow justice to flower and right to flourish. We will love with the love of God. And when we do, when we all do, the world will see and know that God is love. Donald Coggan, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, said, “Wherever the bounds of beauty, truth and goodness are advanced, there the Kingdom comes.”

The image of the small seed within us growing into a large shrub in which others may find refreshment is an appealing one. What we must do to nurture that seed is to seek it with our heart, mind, soul and strength. And when we do, the living water will find us, and we will want all that God wants, for all occasions and without reservations. These are the possibilities when we nurture the kingdom of God which is within us.