The Kingdom of God is like a Weed

Jesus was fond of parables.  These stories would cast a different way of seeing the world, stories that would help shape our vision in expectation of the Kingdom of God.  I spent a summer mixing concrete.  It was one of those activities that I did as a teenager laying foundation for homes and basketball courts.  And we mixed by hand.  We would fill up wheelbarrows of rock and sand while perfecting the ratio with bags of concrete.  Adding water and mixing vigorously with shovels in a volcano like structure, we’d get down on our hands and knees and smooth out the surface so it would be ready for the bricks.  It was hard work.  Concrete is a strong substance that withstands the weight of a car or supports the structure of our homes.  It’s a powerful mixture. 

I spent a lot of time on the cement basketball court behind my house.  I’d spend my afternoons after school shooting around.  I was never tall enough to be any good, but I could always run and my jumper became fairly accurate with practice.  I noticed that over time, the cement started to crack and weeds began to grow from underneath the cement.  My dad would take the most powerful weed killer and spray all over the driveway, but somehow these weeds kept taking over, spreading throughout the court and disrupting the evenness of the surface.  The concrete was weakened and new growth emerged from underneath the oppressive weight.  The cracks caused by these weeds forced my ball in a different direction, as if the weeds began to dictate the flow of the game.

Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.  It’s the smallest of seeds, and to be honest, the bush that emerges is not the most impressive of plants.  In fact, Jewish law forbade the growing of mustard in gardens because it took over everything.  For most, we would expect Jesus to talk about the kingdom of God as something majestic and grand.  Perhaps we would expect the imagery of the Redwood trees, the trees in California so big that you can drive a car through them.  But rather than something majestic, large, and powerful, Jesus uses the imagery of a small seed and a rather unintimidating bush.  But it’s a bush that influences everything around it.  It grows and spreads with a potent fragrance.  Mustard, like the Kingdom, interrupts. 

The Kingdom of God is like the weeds in my driveway.  They are small and patient, but they have the ability to push aside the oppressiveness that keeps them from thriving.  From underneath the concrete comes new life.  The gospel is meant to interrupt the oppressive weight of this world’s power.  Like the weed that causes the breaking and cracking of the concrete, a weed that forces my ball to go in a different direction, the Kingdom of God is slowly and patiently disrupting the patterns of death.  God’s Kingdom is making a home in the forgotten, unwanted, cracks and crevices of our world.