The parable of the mustard seed in today’s Gospel is a metaphor for the growth of the Church, a mysterious growth dependent on God’s grace, not on our efforts.

Jesus often used parables in his teachings. Parables are complex metaphors, stories with a twist. They are not simple allegories.

The stories around which the lesson is crafted stay in our mind, but the ending is often different from what we would expect. This is because “God’s ways are not our ways”, and divine wisdom is greater than our human logic. To understand the parable is to be led to think and act differently. This is why Jesus explained the parable separately to his disciples. Only they were meant to grasp its secret meanings.

The ordinary listener had one kind of expectation from Jesus as messiah. As Jews, they knew they were ‘the chosen people’, and this coloured their attitude to the kingdom of God. Jesus’s teachings patiently break down these expectations, and propose new values. And his teachings were usually couched in the form of parables.

In today’s text, Jesus proposes a comparison for the kingdom of God. “It is like a mustard seed,” he says. Initially, the reign of God in our hearts is a small thing, almost insignificant. It takes root without fanfare, without being noticed. But it grows silently, mysteriously, nothing forced. And growing as it does in the community of the disciples, it becomes richer and embraces every kind of diversity.

It may be compared to a large tree, which puts out branches far and wide, and in which the birds of the air can take shelter. So too the kingdom of God opens its gates to men and women everywhere, no matter what their origin, no matter what their class or creed.

God’s salvation is poured out upon all, not just to chosen Israel, but to the pagans as well.