Patrick Comerford
This is the last week in the 40-day season of Christmas, which continues until Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation on Sunday (2 February 2025). This week began with the Third Sunday of Epiphany (Epiphany III, 26 January 2025).
The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Charles, King and Martyr (1649). But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Mark 4: 26-34 (NRSVA):
26 He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’
30 He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’
Today’s Reflections:
Chapter 4 in Saint Mark’s Gospel is the ‘parables chapter,’ recalling parables that make this chapter the central teaching section of this Gospel. Christ is in a boat beside the sea teaching a very large crowd who are listening on the shore (see Mark 4: 1-2). In this morning’s Gospel reading (Mark 4: 26-34) at the Eucharist, Christ describe the ‘kingdom of God’ by explaining the parable of sower scattering seed on the ground, which we read earlier this week, in the hope and expectation of the harvest (verses 26-29) and of the mustard seed that grows into a great tree (verses 30-32).
We may ask why Christ decides to talk about a mustard seed, or in Saint Luke’s Gospel about a mustard seed and a mulberry tree (Luke 17: 5-6), rather than, say, an olive tree. After all, as he was talking in the incident in today’s Gospel reading, he must have been surrounded by grove after grove of olive trees.
But, I can imagine, he is also watching to see if those who are listening have switched off their humour mode, if they have withdrawn their sense of humour. He is talking here with a great sense of humour, using hyperbole to underline his point.
We all know a tiny grain of mustard is incapable of growing to a big tree. So, what is Christ talking about here? Because, he not only caught the disciples off-guard with his hyperbole and sense of humour … he even wrong-footed some of the Reformers and many Bible translators who make mistakes about what sort of trees he is talking about in the Gospels.
The story of how mulberries were reintroduced to England over 400 years is a tale of how investors were wrongfooted, yet also leads to another story of how the churches helped to care refugees in London in the 1760s.
Mulberries were first introduced to England by the Romans and were commonly used for making mediaeval ‘murrey’ (sweet pottage) as well as for medicinal purposes. They were reintroduced in the early 17th century when James tried to establish native silk production in 1607-1609 when around 10,000 saplings were imported and distributed by William Stallenge and François Verton through local officials at six shillings for a hundred plants, less for packets of seeds.
The commercial project failed, black mulberries (morus nigra) being acquired rather than the white (morus alba) that silkworms tend to favour. But one of these mulberry plantations gave its name to Mulberry Street, a short quiet back street in Whitechapel, with the tall bell-tower of Saint Boniface, the German Roman Catholic Church, at one end.
There was a second mulberry garden close by, across Whitechapel Road in Mile End New Town, north of what is now Old Montague Street and east of Greatorex (formerly Great Garden) Street. Land to the east of that south of Old Montague Street appears also to have been similarly planted. Spitalfields was already at the beginning of the 17th century a centre of silk throwing and weaving.
The mulberry garden in Whitechapel became a market garden and then a pleasure ground, and was used of for a few weeks in 1764 as a temporary asylum for refugees. A tented camp was set up for around 400 deceived and destitute refugees from the Palatinate and Bohemia who had been abandoned on what they had thought was a journey to Nova Scotia. With local fundraising and charitable efforts, initiated primarily by local churches and clergy, the refugees eventually left and found homes in South Carolina.
Housing development in the area began in the 1780s and 1790s. The Mulberry Tree public house once stood on the north side of Little Holloway Street, while Union Row later became Mulberry Street.
Why did Christ refer to a mustard seed and a mulberry or sycamine tree, and not, say, an olive tree or an oak tree?
Christ first uses the example of a tiny, miniscule kernel or seed (κόκκος, kokkos), from which the small mustard plant (σίναπι, sinapi) grows. But mustard is an herb, not a tree. Not much of a miracle, you might say: tiny seed, tiny plant.
In Saint Luke’s Gospel, he then mixes his metaphors and refers to another plant. Martin Luther, in his translation of the Bible, turned the tree into a mulberry tree. The mulberry tree – both the black mulberry and the white mulberry – is from the same family as the fig tree.
As children, some of us sang or played to the nursery rhyme or song, Here we go round the mulberry bush. Another version is Here we go gathering nuts in May. The same tune is used for the American rhyme Pop goes the weasel and for the Epiphany carol, I saw three ships.
Of course, mulberries do not grow on bushes, and they do not grow nuts that are gathered in May. Nor is the mulberry a very tall tree – it grows from tiny seeds but only reaches the height of an adult person.
It is not a very big tree at all. It is more like a bush than a tree – and it is easy to uproot too.
However, the tree Christ names in Saint Luke’s Gospel (Greek συκάμινος, sikámeenos) is the sycamine tree, which has the shape and leaves of a mulberry tree but fruit that tastes like the fig, or the sycamore fig (συκόμορος, Ficus Sycomorus).
Others think the tree being referred to there is the sycamore fig (συκόμορος, Ficus Sycomorus), the big tree that little Zacchaeus climbs in Jericho to see Jesus (Luke 19: 1-10).
The sycamine tree is not naturally pollinated. The pollination process is initiated only when a wasp sticks its stinger right into the heart of the fruit. In other words, the tree and its fruit have to be stung in order to reproduce. There is a direct connection between suffering and growth, but also a lesson that everything in creation, including the wasp, has its place in the intricate balance of nature.
Whether it is a small seed like the mustard seed, a small, seemingly useless and annoying creature like the wasp, or a small and despised figure of fun like Zacchaeus, each has value in God’s eyes, and each has a role in the great harvest of gathering in for God’s Kingdom.
Put more simply, it is quality and not quantity that matters when it comes faith and love.
Today’s Prayers (Friday 30 January 2026):
The theme this week (25-31 January 2026) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Connections That Last’ (pp 22-23). This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections from Paula de Mello Alves, a Brazilian lawyer and theologian, Executive Secretary of the Southern Diocese, and former co-leader of the Anglican Communion Youth Network (ACYN).
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 30 January 2026) invites us to pray:
Lord, we celebrate the connections built in ACYN. May these relationships carry encouragement and strength to all corners of the Anglican Communion, near and far.
The Collect:
King of kings and Lord of lords,
whose faithful servant Charles
prayed for those who persecuted him
and died in the living hope of your eternal kingdom:
grant us by your grace so to follow his example
that we may love and bless our enemies,
through the intercession of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Eternal God,
who gave us this holy meal
in which we have celebrated the glory of the cross
and the victory of your martyr Charles:
by our communion with Christ
in his saving death and resurrection,
give us with all your saints the courage to conquer evil
and so to share the fruit of the tree of life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org