Have you ever seen the Salvador Dali painting where clock is sliding off the table and another one is bent backwards on a tree branch? It is called "the persistence of memory." Now, you know that clocks do not bend and melt and do not assume the positions they do in this painting. But what might it be saying about time? What happens to time? Time flies, time melts away, time disintegrates, things fall apart … You may not like Dali's painting, but you cannot help but think about it.

The details in the parable of the mustard seed are skewed. It's a strange image Jesus is painting. We might not notice, not being Palestinian farmers, but those who heard Jesus tell this parable sure did. Mustard seeds are not the smallest seeds. They are tiny, but they are not the smallest by a great deal. And they do not grow to become the largest of all garden plants. In fact, it isn't a garden plant at all: it's a weed. A weed! And it was against Jewish law to plant weeds in a garden. It was a wild plant, totally undomesticated, beyond control. And there isn't a farmer in all of Palestine that wants birds perched in a bush or shrub or under them when new seeds were in the ground.

Those who heard Jesus tell this parable knew something was up! He knew what mustard was. He knew and they knew. What could his distortion of the mustard, as a seed and as a plant, mean? Was he urging disobedience to the law? Was he poking fun at the empire? Rome was a mighty oak tree. Greece was as powerful as the cedars of Lebanon. The kingdom of God is like a weed?