Wild Weeds and Imperial Trees: Reading a Messianic Parable at the Crossroads of Settlement and the Wild

Abstract

The seed parables of the gospels are “heirloom” for modern readers. They come across time, hard with unpacked dynamism. As bare ker neis, they sit unmoving before the eyes. But given the right nutrients from without, they may sprout with a surprising prolixity. In what follows, I want to treat these little Galilean riddles like transportable spore, and see what they do in a plot of contemporary “compost.” But. it. is important, to say op front, my concern is not. for the parables themselves as artifacts of history, but for the perspective they can open in a situation of crisis that increasingly engulfs the globe today. They offer commentary from their own time and space on the nature of the “messianic.” Their home provenance was social movement. Their context was a tradition of prophetic dissent about oppressive politics— including things like imperial clear cuts of ancient, forest (such as Solomon’s hubris in chopping down the cedars of Lebanon for his building projects). In transplanting them for a present reading, however, I want to begin by paying close attention to their soil of origin.

It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown, it grows up and, becomes the greatest of all shrubs and- puts forth large branches.

Mark 4:31–32