Daily Bible Reading 11th October 2026 // Luke 13: 18-21
18 He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? 19 It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”
20 And again he said, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? 21 It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.”
It is fair to point out that there is another and differing interpretation of these parables which takes both the mustard seed and the leaven in a bad and evil sense - the great tree with birds sheltering in it as the picture of a false Church, and the leaven as being the entrance of corruption working secretly in the Church to produce ultimately an apostate Church. It is true that the vast organisation we know as the Church is in some ways an unnatural growth, and that corruption does spread within it. But, after all, Jesus does say that it is the kingdom of God, not a false kingdom that is represented by the mustard seed; He does say that it is the kingdom of God, not the principle of corruption that is like leaven; He is telling us about the real kingdom, not about an evil principle at work in the Church. To interpret these parables in a bad and evil sense seems therefore to do violence to our Lord's own intention. As to the mustard seed, the contrast is between the smallness of the seed and what it becomes. The seed, after all, is a living thing, and, small and insignificant as it may seem, it has within itself the virtue and power to issue in blessed and extensive fruitfulness. This, in fact, enshrines a fundamental principle of the gospel, which states that the weakness of God is stronger than men. This is seen in the mystery of the Incarnation - who should have thought that God's answer to the woe and need of the world should be - a Baby? - in the death of the Cross - an object of shame, contempt and reproach to the world, foolishness to the Greeks, a stumbling block to the Jews, but the power and the wisdom of God, and the real Throne of the universe - and in the method of the Church's proclamation - the foolishness of preaching is still the divinely ordained means for the spread and the triumph of the gospel, and God's Word shall not return unto Him void.