Have you noticed that our society values some things that really have no value! There have been several big stock launches in the last couple of years that made billions of dollars in profit for the owners of the companies even though the companies still don’t make a profit. Think about that. A company that is losing money each year goes public and it makes a profit for the first time, not for the new shareholders, but for the privileged few who happened to invest early. And the company makes nothing! It mines our data and sells it to the highest bidder. It develops software using our pictures that we post to enable better spying on us.
This illustrates that sometimes there can be unexpected growth, growth that is almost explosive. We see it in business, when someone invents something that lots of people want. Who would have thought that smart phones would be almost required hand apparel? Or Bluetooth ear buds the new ear jewelry for both men and women, becoming a permanent fixture to be worn all the time.
Sometimes plants have this surprising capacity to grow rapidly and seemingly out of proportion to their original size. Our text tells us about the mustard seed. It is a very small seed, about the size of a period made by a pencil on a piece of paper. Hundreds can easily fit in the palm of your hand.
And yet, this very small seed produces a very large plant. This is not what we normally expect. I would think that a small seed would produce a small plant, and a large seed a large plant. But the mustard seed shows that what we expect is not always the reality. The ratio between seed size and plant size is not predictable. We expect a Chihuahua to produce a little dog and an elephant to produce a big elephant. This is the normal, expected behavior of things in the world. Small makes small, large makes large.
Spiritual growth is not like this. The kingdom does not fit the normal mold. It grows from a very small, unexpectedly small seed, the seed of faith in Jesus. How can trusting a poor carpenter from a little backwater town like Nazareth change the world?
But this is exactly what God does. He does things differently. The people of Jesus’ day thought a mighty warrior would be better suited to bringing about deliverance from Rome. They thought it took might to defeat might.
The people of Jesus’ day thought it would be the established chain of religious command that would finally bring about freedom, even though it had failed in the past. They thought keeping all the rules would change the world. They thought doing it with more intensity would make the difference, that the people of the past failed because they lacked the knowledge that they had gained.
But God has a sense of humor. He uses the most unlikely vehicle to change the world. He comes Himself, baby in diapers, fully God and fully human, and goes to the most painful death in order to free us from a much greater enemy than Rome. He breaks the yoke of sin. This act crosses all religious, cultural, temporal, language, and every other barrier we humans can construct. The most unlikely solution is the only one that works.
The Arnold Journey 