Mustard Tree
When the branches of the tree were about the width of a man’s thumb, Joseph sent Jesus over to ask for a couple of branches. When I asked Jesus what he wanted them for, Jesus just shrugged, so in curiosity I went back to the carpenters workshop with him. Joseph took the branches and cut them into lengths of a hand span. Taking one of his tools he cut the bark off about an inch of the branch, and with his fingers teased out the fibres of the core. He then promptly put it in his mouth and began to use it like a brush to clean the teeth. He quickly made another one for Jesus and one for me. Within weeks we were supplying the whole village with toothbrushes. We had the best teeth in the area!
One year Jesus decided to see whether there were birds nests in the tree. It was growing so low to the ground, and so densley, that for some reason best known to himself he decided to dive headfirst straight into the lower branches. He must have just caught one of the branches with his hand, for we all came running at his cry of pain, and watched bemused as he backed back out of the tree with a large piece of wood passing through the palm of his hand. I took him indoors and pulled the wood out. I poured water over the wound, and then packed it with a healing salve made from the leaves of the very tree that had injured him. I sent him back to Mary with a bandage on his hand. Still he had answered the question he had set out to answer. He had seen some nests in the branches before he had managed to get out again, even if he had sent all the birds in them rising into the air as he landed in the tree.
I watched Jesus and Jonathan mature into fine young men. Jonathan married, and I have grandchildren who have slept in the shade of the tree as I make baskets and watch over them. I had long known the story of angel who announced Jesus conception and Mary had told me of the visitors, shepherds and wise men who came to see Jesus when he was born. I watched him grow into a studious young man who worked hard at his studies with the Rabbi and hard in the carpenter’s workshop first learning from Joseph, then taking over from him when he died. Many of the young women in the village threw themselves at him, but he didn’t seem to notice. Mary never went to the matchmaker, so Jesus remained unmarried. He was away quite a bit taking made items to customers, and going to work on new buildings, so when we began to hear stories about him performing miracles and healings, we hadn’t really noticed any change in his behaviour. When he came back to the village and read from the Torah, and then announced he was the Messiah, we had to hide him from the fury of our neighbours, in the tree of course. As I heard more and more of the stories about him, I came to believe that he was the Messiah. I went to listen to him once when he was passing near the village. When he told the crowd that the kingdom of God was like a mustard seed, a small seed which grew into a plant that birds could rest in, I heard a couple of people comment that their black mustard plants didn’t grow big enough for birds. This started a debate with people nearby, and the biggest anyone could come up with was about nine feet tall, which he claimed he had seen a bird in. When I caught Jesus eye as he listened into this conversation, he just winked at me, and I knew he wsa remembering the tree he and Jonathan had planted, which provided pain and healing, food for us and the animals, as well as shelter from the sun and from angry neighbours.
Nathan and I went with Mary to Jerusalem for the Passover the year Jesus was crucified. Mary seemed to know and understand what was happening there. I couldn’t believe that his dying like that, as a criminal on a cross could be what God wanted for his Messiah, for little Jesus who had played with my son. When I saw him hanging there on the cross, his face bloodied, his lip split where the guards had ill treated him, I was reminded of the day he ate the fruits of the Mustard Tree to find the seeds. But his hand, the hand I had held and healed, now nailed to the cross; I wanted to tear the nail out with my bare hands and pour cleansing water over it and smother it in salve and bandages. But I couldn’t. It seemed like the end, when I was hoping for a beginning.
God's stories 