{"id":19492,"date":"2020-11-16T09:44:51","date_gmt":"2020-11-16T14:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19492"},"modified":"2020-11-16T09:44:51","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T14:44:51","slug":"the-kingdom-is-like-a-mustard-seed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19492","title":{"rendered":"The Kingdom is like a Mustard Seed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>The\nKingdom Is like a Mustard Seed<\/strong><br>\nMonday, \u202fNovember 16,\n2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wlw3T_Vm2ow\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>The\nKingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed which a person took and sowed in a\nfield. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the\nbiggest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air can come and\nshelter in its branches.<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014Matthew 13:31\u201332<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nReign of God is Jesus\u2019 message, but he never describes it literally. He walks\naround it and keeps giving different images of the Real. For example, the\nmustard seed is very small and insignificant, and the kingdom is \u201clike\u201d that.\nPliny the Elder, a contemporary of Jesus, wrote an encyclopedic book called <em>Natural History<\/em>, in which he describes all the plants that were known in\nthe Mediterranean world. He says two main things about the mustard plant: it\u2019s\nmedicinal, and it\u2019s a weed that cannot be stopped:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mustard . .\n.&nbsp; with its pungent taste and fiery effect is extremely beneficial for the\nhealth. It grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted:\nbut on the other hand when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get\nthe place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once. [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\ntwo images on which Jesus is building in this parable of the mustard seed are a\ntherapeutic image of life and healing, and a fast-growing weed. What a strange\nthing for Jesus to say: \u201cI\u2019m planting a weed in the world!\u201d Jesus\u2019 teachings of\nnonviolence and simplicity are planted and they\u2019re going to flourish, even\nwildly so. The old world is over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nvirtue for living in the in-between times Jesus calls \u201cfaith.\u201d He is talking\nabout the grace and the freedom to live God\u2019s dream for the world <em>now<\/em>\u2014while not rejecting the world as it is. That\u2019s a mighty\ntension that is not easily resolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are always\ntwo worlds. The world as it is usually operates on power, ego, and success. The\nworld as it could be operates out of love. One is founded on dominative power,\nand the other is a continual call to right relationship and reciprocal power.\nThe secret of this Kingdom life is discovering how we can live in both worlds\nsimultaneously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The\nReign of God<\/strong><br>\nSunday, \u202fNovember 15,\n2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus announced, lived, and inaugurated for history a new\nsocial order. He called it the <em>Reign<\/em>&nbsp;or <em>Kingdom\nof God<\/em>&nbsp;and it became the guiding image of his entire\nministry. The Reign of God is the subject of Jesus\u2019 inaugural address (see Mark\n1:15, Matthew 4:17, and Luke 4:14\u201330), his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5\u20137),\nand the majority of his parables. Once this guiding vision of God\u2019s will became\nclear to Jesus, which seems to have happened when he was about thirty and alone\nin the desert, everything else came into perspective. In fact, Matthew\u2019s Gospel\nsays, \u201cFrom then onwards\u201d (4:17), Jesus began to preach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In\norder to explain this concept, it may be helpful to first say what it is not:\nthe \u201cKingdom\u201d is not synonymous with heaven. Many Christians have mistakenly\nthought that the Reign of God is \u201ceternal life,\u201d or where we go after we die.\nThat idea is disproven by Jesus\u2019 own prayer: \u201cThy Kingdom come, thy will be\ndone, <em>on earth<\/em>&nbsp;as it is in heaven\u201d (Matthew 6:10).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThy\nKingdom come\u201d means very clearly that God\u2019s realm is something that enters into\nthis world, or, as Jesus puts it, \u201cis close at hand\u201d (Matthew 10:7). We\nshouldn\u2019t project it into another world. What we discover in the New Testament,\nespecially in Matthew\u2019s Gospel, is that the Kingdom of God is a new world\norder, a new age, a promised hope begun in the teaching and ministry of\nJesus\u2014and continued in us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\nthink of the Kingdom of God as the <em>Really\nReal<\/em>&nbsp;(with two capital <em>Rs<\/em>). That experience of the Really Real\u2014the \u201cKingdom\u201d\nexperience\u2014is the heart of Jesus\u2019 teaching. It\u2019s Reality with a capital R, the\nvery bottom line, the pattern-that-connects. It\u2019s the goal of all true\nreligion, the experience of the Absolute, the Eternal, what is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>God\ngives us just enough tastes of God\u2019s realm to believe in it and to want it more\nthan anything. In the parables, Jesus never says the Kingdom is totally now or\ntotally later. It\u2019s always now-and-not-yet. When we live inside the Really\nReal, we live in a \u201cthreshold space\u201d between this world and the next. We learn\nhow to live between heaven and earth, one foot in both worlds, holding them\nprecious together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We only have the\nfirst fruits of the Kingdom in this world, but we experience enough to know\nthat it\u2019s the only thing that will ever satisfy us. Once we have had the truth,\nhalf-truths do not satisfy us anymore. In its light, everything else is\nrelative, even our own life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Kingdom Is like a Mustard Seed Monday, \u202fNovember 16, 2020 The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed which a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the biggest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19492"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19493,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19492\/revisions\/19493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}