The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that, although is the smallest of all the seeds, when sown, springs up and becomes the largest of all plants and puts forth large branches so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade. The kingdom (or rather its closeness and/or fulfillment) was the content of the good news that Jesus was proclaiming (cf. Mark 1:14-15; Matthew 4:23). It was a message that should not have sounded alien to the ears of Jesus’ immediate audience. You see, the “Kingdom of God" was a concept with which they should have been familiar. The Jews understood themselves as belonging to the kingdom of God. As a matter of fact, to the Jews, their nation (land) and the kingdom of God were synonymous. Had the Lord not chosen them from among the nations and made them his own? Had the Lord not made Israel God's first born? It was a privilege in which they took pride and guarded with their dear lives.
However, this was not the kingdom that Jesus was proclaiming. Jesus was not speaking about a spatial reality such as the nation of Israel or any of the other kingdoms of the world that were in existence at the time. He was not taking about God carving for himself a nation of the earth and making it his own. The kingdom that Jesus was proclaiming was God himself. To say that the kingdom of God had was in their midst (cf. Luke 17:21) was thus to say that God was in their midst. God, who until then had dwelt “apart” from the people (in the heavens, as it were, [cf. Isaiah 66:1]), had now come to make his dwelling with his people. It was indeed the time of fulfillment because in the life and ministry of Jesus, God was now actively present to his people in a totally new way. All the good things they only used to hear about God was now present in their midst. For when the Lord God comes to visit his people, he comes with goodies. In the two parables Jesus tells in today’s Gospel passage, Jesus reminds us why his proclamation of the kingdom of God should be good news even for us today.
In the parable of the seed growing by itself, Jesus reminds us of the ever, sometimes unseen presence of God in the lives of those he has created. God, the sower of the seed of life, places in each seed the requisite “ingredients” that each seed will need in order to remain true to itself and to achieve its purpose. Once the seed has been planted, God continues to watch over it, even if from a distance. For as the sower, God’s eyes are set on the harvest. The kingdom of God gets to be realized when all God’s creatures fulfill their purpose by attaining the goal for which God created them. For the human person, that purpose is a life of contentment and happiness, otherwise called a life with God. As Jesus has said it, he came so that we can have life in abundance (cf. John 10:10). This was the message of the kingdom that he came preaching, and this is the reason why God remains present to us.
The parable of the mustard seed tells us not only of the universality of God’s kingdom (all kinds of birds of the sky making their nests in the shade of the mustard tree), but also about how God always acts on our behalf even as he looks out for us. The God who is revealed to the universe in Jesus Christ is a God who loves what he has created without discrimination. The God proclaimed by Jesus has no favorites (cf. Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11). All are God’s children and God will always be moved to act on their behalf. This is clearly visible in the ministry of Jesus, for Jesus is the fullest revelation of God. From the moment Jesus’ began his ministry to the the day of his passion, he was all about the people (cf. Acts 10:38).