Dear Friends,
Today is the first of three Sundays when we’ll look at a collection of Jesus’s parables that are very familiar to us. Over the centuries, they’ve come to be known as “the Parables of the Kingdom” because they address what God’s reign will be like. For the writer of Matthew, God’s kingdom is not only a divine heavenly kingdom but also a commonwealth of God’s people on earth today and into the future. With the exception of today’s reading, these parables begin with words such as “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to. . .”
Scholars differ on the number of parables in this collection. There might be seven or eight, depending on whether verses 52 and 53 of this chapter in Matthew qualify as a short parable. I’d invite you to read those two verses sometime in the next three weeks, if you wish, and decide if you think they qualify as a parable. Parables can be allegories, or they can be metaphors. They’re stories in which the hearer or reader can discern for him or herself the point that Jesus is making. They’re sometimes oblique and sometimes more obvious. They’re stories meant to illustrate a particular moral or spiritual lesson, and they’re open to multiple interpretations.
The Parables of the Kingdom are also called the Third Discourse. As I have mentioned in earlier notes, there are five discourses in the Gospel of Matthew. The first is what we know as the Sermon on the Mount. The Second Discourse, found in Matthew 9 and 10, is comprised of Jesus’s instructions – his commissioning – to his disciples, including warnings of what they might expect as they set out to spread the good news. That commissioning, remember, was not only for the disciples of old, but for you and me as well.
As we prepare to read the beloved Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23, let us pray together this prayer for illumination:
God of life, by the power of your Spirit, we ask that you come to us now. We long to bear fruit in a world that is wasting away. Plow our hearts with your living Word that we might become fertile with your love. We pray this in the name of Jesus, whose charge we bear. Amen.
I suspect you may have a few questions, aside from any about the parable itself, about the way this reading is organized. Why does our lectionary skip over verses 10-17? And why do we hear the same parable twice, first in verses 1-9 and then again in verses 18-23?
Some brief answers to those very valid questions are in order before we dig further into today’s reading. After the crowds who had gathered to hear Jesus have scattered, his disciples ask, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” (13:10) Wouldn’t it be better, they wonder, to simply tell the people directly what he had on his mind and in his heart?
As he patiently answers what we might construe as a slightly impertinent question, Jesus first flatters them a little. And this was surely a balm for them; they had just returned from their mission trips, where they had been charged to spread the good news – to sow the seeds – of God’s care for all humankind with their words and actions. It’s not been an easy task, however; they apparently encountered great resistance, just, of course, as Jesus himself did. A wise and compassionate teacher, Jesus responds to their bold questions by reinforcing their role in the new world he’s inaugurating. “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.” (13:11)
As he often does, Matthew refers back to the prophesies of the Hebrew Bible in these intervening verses. The first-century Jews and Jewish Christians to whom he was directing his gospel would have found great comfort and assurance that the predictions of Scripture had come to pass in the person of Jesus. There’s a distinct echo of Isaiah 6:10 when Jesus says to his disciples, “For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn,” before he assures them, “and I would heal them.” (13:15).
Finally, these intervening verses give us a moment to pause and catch our breath after the first telling of the Parable of the Sower. This is almost like the pause between scenes in modern-day theater when the stage is reset, often before our eyes. Imagine it, if you will. We see the crowds clearing the stage. Jesus and the disciples move downstage, to a calmer, quieter area closer to the audience. And now Matthew is ready to have us look at the parable again.
Even though we’re certainly able to understand this parable without the context of those intervening verses, I hope that brief summary helps us envision what’s going on here between Jesus and his listeners, including, most importantly, his disciples. And we must include in the notion of disciples both Jesus’s original band of followers and all of us today.
In general, Jesus used parables to highlight, emphasize, and teach a particular point – and usually just one single point. Though Jesus shares his parable with the people, he is directing it specifically to his disciples, who, you’ll remember, have just returned from spreading the good news. And the emphasis here is on “spread.” Their mission was one of word and action. The emphasis was on spreading the word, sowing the seed, of the good news that Jesus brought. The results of their ministry were not the issue, and they were not guaranteed an accepting audience, as Jesus had warned in the Second Discourse when he said, “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (10:16).
This parable flows from the same river as the charge in that Second Discourse. Here, Jesus is affirming a similar message: the task of discipleship is to cast the seed, not to reap the harvest. It is God who brings the harvest in, not us, and God’s harvest yields “some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” (13:8 and 13:23) Those numbers are a little hard to unpack until we learn that a good harvest would have provided a first-century Galilean farmer with ten bushels for every bushel of seed. A more common return would have been a mere seven and a half bushels. A return of one hundred, sixty, or even thirty times the original investment in seed and care would certainly have been considered miraculous, if not the result of divine action.
Just as the disciples’ charge is not to judge the success or failure of their work, neither are we to do so as disciples today. Our goal is a simple but challenging one: to be sowers, to cast the seeds. “Let anyone with ears listen!” Jesus says in verse 9. Our charge, like theirs, is to faithfully do our work to spread the seed of the good news everywhere. That, in and of itself, is a large enough task for each of us. We are like Jesus’s own disciples two millennia ago; we are charged to be active, mission- and ministry-oriented followers of Christ. We cannot be responsible for how our words are heard, or if the seeds we sow will prosper. Indeed, we would likely be paralyzed into inaction if we were to try to take on such responsibility. The harvest is God’s doing, not ours.
The first telling of the parable in verses 1 through 9 is most likely how Jesus would have shared the story. Contemporary Biblical scholarship explains the re-telling, in verses 18-23, in what I found to be an enlightening and at first, almost shocking way. In the second telling, Matthew has the audacity to recast Jesus’s words into his own and with a different emphasis. He tells the story from his own perspective, in a new, post-Easter way.
But perhaps I shouldn’t be shocked, and perhaps Matthew isn’t so audacious. This is, in fact, what all preachers do; we re-tell the story in order to make it more accessible. Indeed, all of us, preachers and seekers alike, inevitably hear and interpret Jesus’s words, including his parables, with our knowledge of the resurrection affecting how we understand them.
Matthew’s second telling of the parable is more recognizably an allegory than Jesus’s telling of it in verses 1-9. And it’s actually likely the version most of us know the best. When I first heard this parable in Sunday School, my teachers must have emphasized verses 18-23, because I remember being taught that Jesus himself was the sower in this parable. The seed was the word of God, and each of us was the soil. Each of us was “the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields.” (13:23)
That Sunday School understanding serves me well to this day, but this interpretation of the allegory offers a far different perspective from the emphasis on the sower, and thus on the call to discipleship. In truth, both perspectives make the parable more vibrant and accessible for us. The call to discipleship, after all, can only be heard by those who have heard the word and understood it, that is, by those for whom the seeds have borne fruit.
I once visited a church in New Bedford, MA that had a large Tiffany mosaic of the Sower mounted to a wall near the pulpit. It was thus always in view, and it was absolutely beautiful, intricately crafted with deep, brightly colored glass. A marvel just as it was, it also had an elegant, astonishing surprise embedded into it, which was visible only when the sun shone brightly through a nearby window. The Tiffany artists had enhanced the seeds with a small bit of gold foil placed under each tiny glass bead, and when the sun’s rays touched on the seeds, they would almost magically sparkle and glow. What a perfect illumination (if you’ll forgive the pun) of this elegant parable!
I wonder how many have been lucky enough to be in that sanctuary at the moment the sun’s reflected rays found the sparkling gold behind each tiny seed? I wonder how many who have seen that mosaic have imagined that they were the soil onto which the sparkling golden seeds were falling? I wonder how many thought they themselves were the sower? And did any of them consider the harvest from those sparkling seeds? Which do you think has more importance – the sower, the seed, the soil, the harvest, or all of them?
As familiar as this parable is, we continue to explore, contemplate, and wonder about it, and we continue to learn. As we do so, we hope, pray, and strive to be faithful sowers as well as fruitful seeds in the good soil that receives the golden word of God.
Joys and Concerns:
For all who are affected by this new surge of the corona virus in our community, in our nation, and across the globe.
For those who, due to poverty, age, or compromised conditions, live in fear of this illness.
For the continuing struggle for justice, visibility, and healing in these days of racial, social, and cultural unrest.
In gratitude for the community that binds us together even in this time of continued isolation and distance.
For children and youth who are experiencing a very strange summer with few ways of knowing what the fall and the new school year will bring; for the teachers and administrators who are working overtime to anticipate and plan for all the unknowns of the upcoming academic year; and for the parents and grandparents who want their children to thrive in health and academically in this time of uncertainty.
Let us pray together:
Holy God, we were yours before we drew breath, and still we will be yours when the pulse of life ceases. In every fragile, reckless moment in between, we belong to you. In these days, we experience intensely the fragility of life, and we are thankful for your abiding presence.
We lift to you now all who have been affected by what is emerging as the new normal in our families, in our schools and workplaces, in our nation, in your church, and in your world.
Even in these trying times, Empowering God, give us the courage to live responsible and faithful lives. Teach us to sow more than we reap, to act with justice and compassion, to tend to the world you love, to heal our suffering and that of others known and unknown to us, to make room for others as you made room for us.
Redeeming God, guide, direct, and beckon us to the paths you would have us travel, that we may sow your Gospel and share your love with all whom we meet. Amen.