The Real Meaning of the Mustard Seed (Gospel of Thomas)

The twentieth saying of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas is one that is familiar to Christians who have read the canonical gospels. It is known as the parable of the Mustard Seed. Thomas’ version goes like this:

The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us what the kingdom of Heaven is like." He said to them, "It's like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of heaven."

At first hearing it may sound identical to the New Testament parable. But listen again. Here is the version found in the Gospel of Luke. Pay attention to the differences.

Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches.”

They sound similar, but the small differences make a big difference. Let’s look at the differences and what they teach us about the Kingdom of Heaven, which is Jesus’ term for Divine Awareness.

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Transcript

The twentieth saying of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas is one that is familiar to Christians who have read the canonical gospels. It is known as the parable of the Mustard Seed. Thomas’ version goes like this:

The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us what the kingdom of Heaven is like." He said to them, "It's like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of heaven."

At first hearing it may sound identical to the New Testament parable. But listen again. Here is the version found in the Gospel of Luke. Pay attention to the differences.

Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches.”

They sound similar, but the small differences make a big difference. Let’s look at the differences and what they teach us about the Kingdom of Heaven, which is Jesus’ term for Divine Awareness.

First, in all three of the synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – it says that a man planted the seed. There is a slight variation in Mark, which is the earliest of the New Testament gospels, where it simply says that the seed was planted but not by whom. Mark is closer to Thomas, and both are closer to the original than Matthew or Luke.

In the three New Testament gospels, the Kingdom is planted. In Thomas it is not planted. The seed simply falls on the ground. It is like an acorn falling to the ground or a maple seed, which we always called helicopters or whirligigs, whirling to the ground. Or like pine cones that fall to the ground. Generally speaking, forests are not planted, except where humans have clearcut the forest. Trees seed themselves naturally.

So does the Kingdom of God. That is the point that Jesus is making. The Kingdom of Heaven is not planted on earth by human effort in the Gospel of Thomas. It is a natural. It is Reality. That is the difference. 

Humans think we can bring about spiritual transformation. We think we can do something to bring about spiritual awakening or enlightenment. This is the falsehood at the heart of all human religion. 

Religion is about what we can do to be enlightened or saved or go to heaven or be liberated, or whatever spiritual goal your particular religious tradition pictures. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says it has nothing to do with what we do. It happens. It is the nature of reality. We either abide in it or not. The mustard seed simply falls on the soil.

More exactly it says that the mustard seed falls on prepared ground or tilled soil. Jesus seems to be saying that there is something to be done to prepare the way for the Kingdom of God, but it does not say anything about us preparing the ground. People read our  biases into the story. 

When you look carefully, it does not say that we do the preparing or the tilling. It simply says that the soil is prepared or tilled. It does not say how or by whom or by what. Action without action. Wei wu wei. The soil is prepared. The ground is tilled. The seed falls. The plant grows.

Also it does not say we are the soil, like in the Parable of Sower (also called the Parable of the Soils). Even then the soil does not till itself or prepare itself. So Jesus is not calling us to spiritual practices here. Jesus is just telling us that this is the way the Kingdom of Heaven appears. Not by anyone doing anything, but it is simply the way it is.

This is my experience. I do not attribute the spiritual shift to anything I did. All I did was look for truth. Perhaps that is a type of preparation. Perhaps searching for Truth is tilling the ground. I don’t know. In Buddha at the Gas Pump Rick Archer used to say that enlightenment is an accident, but spiritual disciplines make you accident prone. I don’t know if he still says that. I have not listened to his YouTube channel for years. But he used to say that.

Perhaps that is true. I don’t know. All I know is that it had nothing to do with me - because there is no me. Me is a fiction. The personal ego or self is a fabrication created by the brain. It is a fiction. That is seen clearly in spiritual awakening. How can an imaginary character do anything to bring about anything. We wake up from that fictional existence! The human being does not wake up. Being wakes up from the illusion of the human self.

There is nothing that the self does that brings about awakening. How could it? For that reason this is experienced as pure grace. That is enough on this point. Let’s move on to the next point of difference between Thomas’ parable and the canonical gospels.

In Thomas, the mustard plant that grows from the mustard seed is called a large plant. But Matthew and Luke call it a tree. Once again Mark comes closer to Thomas, calling it “the largest of all garden plants,” showing these two gospels are earlier versions of the saying. In fact the mustard plant is more like a shrub or a bush than a tree as we normally think of a tree.

Yet Westerners tend to approach this parable from the perspective of the English proverb, “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.” We think it is about big coming from little, like the American myth that anyone can grow up to be president.  American politicians always talk about coming from humble beginnings.  This is the idea or pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. The “self-made man” or woman. 

This is not what Jesus is talking about. At least not in the Gospel of Thomas. The mustard tree is not a mighty oak. Jesus does say that the mustard seed is the smallest seed. That was true as far as he knew, even though we now know there are smaller seeds. But Jesus does not say that this small seed grows into a mighty oak or a Redwood. He does not even call it a tree in the Gospel of Thomas or Mark, but rather a large plant. A shrub. This seems like a let down. In other words, it is not about the largeness of the end result. It is about humbleness and humility from beginning to end.

Now to the third part of the parable.  Jesus says it becomes “a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of heaven." What or who are these birds of heaven? They are us! In this parable we are not the soil. We are the birds. Thomas’ parable of the mustard seed is not about what we can make of ourselves or what can be made of our lives. It is about abiding in the mustard plant, which is a symbol for the Kingdom of Heaven. We abide in this living Reality that is symbolized by the mustard plant. 

We are not the soil that receives the mustard seed or the farmer that nurtures it or feeds it. We are the birds that find shelter in the mustard plant, which is the Kingdom of Heaven.  This is what Jesus meant when he says “Abide in me.” Using the analogy of the grapevine, Jesus says in the Gospel of John, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me."  

The metaphors are different. In that parable Christ is the vine and we are the branches. In this one Christ is the mustard plant and we are the birds that abide in it. Both are about abiding. We rest in the branches of the mustard plant. We abide in the Eternal Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven. This lesson of the mustard tree reminds me of the 18th century hymn called “Christ the Apple Tree.” It starts off:

The tree of life my soul hath seen,
 Laden with fruit, and always green:
 The trees of nature fruitless be
 Compared with Christ the apple tree. 

Then it continues:

For happiness I long have sought,
 And pleasure dearly I have bought:
 I missed of all: but now I see
 ’Tis found in Christ the apple tree.

I’m weary with my former toil,
 Here I will sit and rest awhile:
 Under the shadow I will be
 Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.

The mustard plant is the Tree of Life, the Kingdom of Heaven. When we abide in it, we are home.