A Mustard Seed

Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.” (Mark 4:30-32)

I was reading about the plague of bamboo in suburban gardens. To be clear- I wasn’t actually in suburban gardens when I read it. I live in a village. I mean, it’s growing in suburban gardens and I read about it.

Didn’t we all love those gardening programmes in the early naughties? Alan Titchmarsh all Northern camp. Tommy Walsh the digging woman’s catnip. And many men seemed particularly drawn to Charlie Dimmock for her extensive aquatic gardens knowledge.

A plague of decking fell across the land. And with it – majestic and swaying in the breeze – came the humble bamboo. Formerly used only to prop up tomato plants, we started using terms like ”architectural”.

And now, twenty years on, mighty bamboo takes revenge. Its frondy fronds are everywhere, its roots probing our foundations for weakness.

And it all happened while nobody was looking.

Jesus’s mustard seed wasn’t of the “produces small green sprouts when germinated on damp kitchen roll” variety.

I’m indebted to Pliny the Elder for telling us that black mustard was, bamboo-like, a rampant spreader. You’d just plant the one tiny, tiny seed to provide an accompaniment to your traditional Roman roast beef. Next you know, it’s all over the garden. And attracting the birds as well, according to Jesus. Though he may have been exaggerating for effect.

Starts from a tiny seed. Grows like Topsy. Shelters all the stragglers that blow in. Good analogy for the way that tiny single seed was planted in the Judean earth, germinated, and spread across the Roman Empire. Though it was a mortal shame when it went to seed.

You can take a train across Middle England. See the spires and towers of her churches. Where threes and fours cling on, holding the faith once delivered to our ancestors in whatever modern, post-modern or fetishistic mutations it has taken. And wonder – if a seed dies can it grow again? And if it does not die, how can it bear a crop?

Could the seeds sown from the dying plant germinate and grow again? Make a shelter for all the homeless birds of the air, blown from their nests by the winds of cruelty of our money-drunk, greed-blown, egocentric, plasticated society? Provide a place of shade, a place for security above the rats in the rat-race?

I don’t know. But it may not cost much to plant a seed. If it dies it dies. But if it grows – it can take over the world with kindness.