jaywill:
The parable of the mustard seed growing abnormally is about the abnormal development of Christiandom. The gospel of Christ was lowly, small, humble, and feeding. It was corrupted and grew abnormally into a world wide religion. This religion houses many evil things and persons in its "branches". Even demonic things and evil spirits came in to hide out and roost in the branches of historic Christianity. So the abnormal growth of the mustard seed is a prophecy of how the church that Jesus established would in the future grow into a worldly religious / political system within which hide all manner of evil "birds".
Now if anyone doubts the validity of this interpretation they should consider similiar sounding ones offered in the Old Testament. It is left to the serious student to find them.
Here you supply your own negative spin. Yeshua nowhere suggests, as you do, that the growth and flourishing of a healthy mustard tree should be seen as some kind of ominous development. But your pessimistic interpretation is just the negative version of the traditional take on this story. Tradition says the 'kingdom of heaven' is the coming 'church' that the storyteller is here to 'establish.'
But did Rabbi Yeshua of Nazareth know he was 'establishing a church'? Why would he even think in such terms? No church existed in his day. He showed no interest personally in being anything other than a Jew and this applies to others he met.
We may fairly ask what
he anticipated. What kind of kingdom did
he proclaim? That's not the same as asking what new organized religion came to be in the decades that followed. Yeshua could easily have understood something very different by the term 'kingdom of heaven.' It may have been nothing like a church at all, good or bad.
The other parable is positive in nature. And we are not told what kind of seed it is. But through various levels of frustration is eventually finds "good soil". The good soil is the heart of the believer in the gospel who takes care of her heart after hearing and believing the word of the kingdom.
Of the four kinds of soil, four kinds of human hearts are depicted. No not physical hearts. It means hearts as a composite of the man or woman's mind, emotion, will, and conscience. Things in the heart fristrate the growth and maturity of the word of Christ. The cared for heart is good soil and bears fruit for God and man.
Now you say the kingdom of heaven is human hearts, not a church.
Sounds good to me. But surely you can see that this interpretation is completely different in kind form your first one.
Why switch horses in midstream like this? You don't have to.
Maybe the 'kingdom of heaven' Yeshua proclaimed was--in
every case--a revolution in the human heart. Maybe that was his interest all along. Maybe the term has nothing to do with the 'establishment of a church.'
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Edited by Archer Opterix, : HTML.
Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo repair.
Archer
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