The Courage of Small Beginnings

What Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed and Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of action can teach us about Christian unity, faithful perseverance, and trusting God with what we cannot yet see

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Anyone who has worked for Christian unity over many years knows the particular discouragement of sowing without seeing. After years of meetings, shared prayer and friendships formed across old divisions, the visible landscape of Christian separation can appear much as it did before. Outside of those directly involved in ecumenical effort, it is easy to wonder whether anything is really changing when it comes to the day-to-day practice of the Church.

I was thinking how Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed speaks directly to this: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field.’ I remember the first time I actually held a mustard seed. It was remarkably small, only a dark speck resting in the palm of my hand. I would never have known what it would become - a shrub several metres high and large enough for all manner of birds to shelter in its branches. Between the tiny seed and the shrub lies everything Jesus’ parable invites us to trust, and almost nothing we are able to witness while it happens.

The companion parable of the leaven makes the same point but from another angle. The yeast disappears into the flour. There is nothing to see even though the transformation is thorough. In other words, it remains hidden until its work is complete.

When it comes to Christian unity, these two images challenge not only our patience but also the way we judge what matters. In my experience, across the Church we are often tempted to measure progress by what can be seen: attendance, new initiatives, visible partnerships, or measurable outcomes. None of these are unimportant, but Jesus suggests that the Kingdom operates according to a different logic. Much of God’s deepest work is already underway long before anyone notices it.

For me, that raises an intriguing question. If the Kingdom begins in hidden ways, what is it about human action that makes those beginnings so difficult to recognise?

Applying a philosophical lens to this question can help explain why this might be so. 

Writing from a very different standpoint, the Jewish German-American political philosopher Hannah Arendt, argues in The Human Condition that every genuine act is a beginning, an expression of what she calls natality: the human capacity to start something new in the world. She makes the observation that because every action enters a web of relationships beyond our control, no one who begins something can know what it will eventually become. We act, and the consequences pass into the responses of others. Arendt regarded this as the frailty of human action. 

Read alongside Jesus’ parable, however, I believe her insight gives us an unexpected theological insight. What she describes as the vulnerability of human action, the Gospel reveals as one of the ordinary ways God’s Kingdom grows. The Sower and the seed belong together precisely because neither commands the outcome. To plant a seed is already to entrust the future to others - and ultimately to God.

This is, in miniature, the situation of everyone who works for unity. Ecumenism rarely advances through dramatic breakthroughs. More often it grows through conversations over drinks, shared acts of service, prayer during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and the simple willingness to keep turning up. None of these moments seems especially remarkable on their own. Each is a beginning whose growth is entrusted to others, and finally to God. Looking back over my own ecumenical journey, the encounters that shaped me most almost never seemed significant at the time.

Arendt believed that the unpredictability of action is made bearable through two uniquely human capacities: promising and forgiving. Promising binds us to one another across an uncertain future; forgiving releases us from the weight of what has already been done. 

It would be hard to find a better description of the ecumenical task. The divisions we inherit were themselves once actions whose consequences escaped those who began them, and centuries later we are still living among their effects. Forgiveness allows the churches to acknowledge that history honestly without remaining imprisoned by it. The promise, renewed whenever Christians pray and work together, commits us to a unity we cannot yet see and could never create by ourselves.

For me then, the mustard seed parable offers more than a lesson in patience. It teaches us something about the kind of human agents we are. Our task has never been to manufacture the harvest. St Paul knew as much when he reminded the Corinthians that one plants, another waters, but God gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6–7). What is asked of us is faithfulness in the sowing, and the courage to let go of what we sow.

Perhaps that is why Jesus reached for the smallest seed in the garden. In God’s hands the smallest seed becomes a place of shelter, and the ordinary encounter (patiently repeated) may one day become the beginning of a unity far larger than anything we imagined. That is how the Kingdom grows, and perhaps how Christian unity grows too. Just keep turning up; afterall, division survives most easily at a distance.

Key References
Matthew 13:31–35
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), especially Chapter V (‘Action’).

Notes
Natality is Hannah Arendt’s term for the uniquely human capacity to begin something new. Every action introduces a fresh possibility into the world, even though its ultimate consequences remain beyond the actor’s control. The concept offers a striking philosophical parallel to Jesus’ parables of the mustard seed and the leaven, both of which portray God’s Kingdom as growing through beginnings that appear small, hidden and apparently insignificant.

Concept and article by Dr Ian Watson, whose lay views are his alone. He serves as County Ecumenical Officer with responsibilities to promote, support, and provide guidance on Christian unity throughout Norfolk and Waveney. The purpose of Ian’s regular reflections is to build on the standard arguments for Church unity in order to generate fresh intellectual and pastoral energy by offering conceptual frameworks that re-describe unity in ways that feel both rigorous and surprising.
 
Image created with the help of OpenAI.