Susan and I watched the movie "McFarland USA" earlier this week. It is based on a true story about a cross country team from a small high school in the very impoverished Central Valley area of California--an area where the vast majority of residents are Latino, with Mexican heritage, who eke out a living in the fields picking cotton, almonds, sugar beets, oranges, and grapes. They work long hours for substandard wages, and they start early in the morning as well as early in their lives--one high school student tells the coach that he started at age 10, when he didn't have to get paid so much as he would when he turned 12.
This is a community that doesn't get to aspire to much beyond that, since life has taught them that they don't have a chance for anything more. And yet, the whole community bands together and trusts in the coach who convinces them that their foundation of hard work and heart, along with their athletic gifts, can make these high schoolers a State Championship winning team, even with competing against all of the other high schools that have better facilities and more resources to draw from. McFarland wins the state championship that first year, and we learn during the closing credits that they would go on to win 9 state championships in the next 14 years. All seven of the members of that first team would go to college--most on cross country scholarships--and graduate. Many came back to McFarland and work in the school or the town--family and community being a foundational value for those who live there.
It is a classic true story of the underdog triumphing over incredible odds (ok, some details are tweaked--some are tweaked a lot--but the broad outline is entirely true). Underdogs triumphing over incredible odds warms our hearts--something small becoming bigger than anyone thought possible.
In that sense, the parable Jesus tells about the mustard seed is one of those "underdog" stories. Jesus says that "it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree". And the Kingdom of God is like that seed. It is small, easy to miss, and yet as it grows it becomes bigger that would seem possible.
It is like the desire inside the cross country runner from McFarland. It starts small, an internal, invisible spark, and in being lived out proves to be something unexpected and surprising, and bigger than seems possible. The Kingdom of God starts for each one of us in much that same way. And its impact can be big--and obvious.
GOSPEL Matthew 13:31-32
31 He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32 it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’