Daily Devotional • November 7
A Reading from Luke 13:18-30
18 He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? 19 It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”
20 And again he said, “To what should I compare the kingdom of God? 21 It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
22 Jesus went through one town and village after another, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. 23 Someone asked him, “Lord, will only a few be saved?” He said to them, 24 “Strive to enter through the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. 25 Once the owner of the house has got up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then in reply he will say to you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ 26 Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ 27 But he will say to you, ‘I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evildoers!’ 28 There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out. 29 Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and take their places at the banquet in the kingdom of God. 30 Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”
Meditation
The mustard seed is a parable which can vividly capture the imagination. Every time I cook a curry with black mustard seeds popping and sputtering in hot oil, my mind goes back to the scriptures! From the smallness of this little black speck of nothing much, once buried in the secret dark places of the earth, comes forth a tree which exists not solely for itself, but to shelter the birds of the air. I cannot help but link the text, whether St. Luke would want me to or not, with John 12, when Jesus tells his followers: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
There is something deeply moving about parables like this, when Jesus uses the events of the everyday to reveal the mystery that is at work: the kingdom of God which is breaking in upon us. There really is a delicious ordinariness, or accessibility, to this story, in the very fact that it has no “supernatural” element or even much of a plotline. Yet this parable reveals the grandeur and mystery of God, whose work of creation from nothing and chaos is ever-present, ever-miraculous, and ever carried out in tender love for that which God creates.
It is certainly counter-intuitive, the planting of a seed. Going down into the dark, in order to grow up into the light. It is mysterious, bizarre, and strange. It takes an act of faith to believe that a seed, something that looks small and inert, holds within it the capacity for growth and life. It takes an act of faith to think that by going down into darkness, new light may dawn. And yet this is what the message of our Easter faith insists — that God can work to bring new life in the darkness in more ways than we can begin to grasp.
The Reverend Cara Greenham Hancock is a deacon serving in the Anglican Church of Australia, as a curate at the parish of St Stephen and St Mary, Mount Waverley.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Diocese of Pungue River – Igreja Anglicana de Mocambique e Angola
Saint James School, Hagerstown, Maryland