In telling a parable about seeds and soil, Jesus invites us to transform our vision of the world from permanent division to open possibility.
the gospel message we refuse to hear
Proper 10A | Matthew 13:1-9,18-23
Today’s gospel takes place in a boat. Well…Jesus is in a boat while everyone else is on dry land. Actually, Jesus gets into a boat and puts water between himself and the people.
This parable about sowing seeds is deeply rooted in its context. It is more than a story about some seeds being able to grow and some not so much.
This teaching—also about good words that are heard and ignored—is not hypothetical. This is the story of the gospel. Some people have ears to hear it. And with them, the fruit of the spirit grows thirty, sixty, a hundredfold.
And lest we think that Jesus is giving preaching tips about how to reach those without ears to hear—let’s just strike that one down at the root. This isn’t about making our words more palatable. This is a word about a gospel that requires work. The kind of work that comes with Jesus’s yoke.
Let’s back up a bit.
Remember last week’s gospel story was from the end of chapter 11. Jesus expresses his frustration at the people for being selfish. Then he says to give up our heavy burdens and take on his yoke—to come, do the work of Jesus, rather than the stuff we’re obsessed with.
The lectionary dropped the essential part from the middle of all that. Jesus condemns three cities for (listen up!) not having ears to hear. For being like the seeds that fell upon the path—where the evil one comes and snatches them up. They refuse to hear the call to change.
And that teaching was made in the bigger context of teaching his followers what it means to be a disciple. It involves going out empowered by Jesus to help bring the kin-dom here. And we do this through sacrifice and trust.
And of course, by this point, they’ve already done it—they’ve seen it—they’ve lived it. So in light of all of this, Jesus is saying following me is easier than not. Come, accept this change.
The missing chapter
Then the lectionary jumps to chapter 13. And what it skips over is lived illustrations for today’s parable.
They walk through a field and Jesus’s followers pop the heads off of wheat to eat. And religious leaders see it and are outraged—because it is the Sabbath. They consider this farming. But Jesus likens it to David and his friends eating “the bread of the Presence”. This is about living!
A week later, Jesus heals a man’s withered hand in front of everybody. Again, a testament to the Kin-dom come near, but the leaders remain outraged. It says:
“But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.”
That is not the fruit of the Spirit. Nor does it reflect listening for God. It is fear and revenge.
Jesus heals another person, this one with a demon. Another testament to God, so that the people could witness the Kin-dom. Again the religious leaders concoct reasons to reject it. They try to claim that HE is working for the Devil.
Then more people come looking for a sign—as if these weren’t signs—as if they could command Jesus to perform for them, like those children in the square—dance for me! Jesus doesn’t even dignify the request, but scolds them for making it.
He says that he is like Jonah come to Nineveh—the sinful city to which Jonah brought a message of repentance. Jesus is proclaiming the same. Repent! Change! But unlike that ancient city, they aren’t repenting. They are refusing to receive the message. They, too are like the path.
This is worth the pause so we truly hear it. Nineveh was the epitome of evil. But in repenting, its people are more righteous than all these holy people. Jesus is calling them to repent. To change. And these people refuse to hear that message.
And in the midst of these scathing messages about the people’s willingness to repent, to receive the kin-dom, Jesus receives word. His mother has come.
No Longer Mother
Most of us, more or less, love and fear our mothers. When they ask for something, we’re likely to honor it. There are plenty of exceptions, of course. And plenty of mothers who weren’t very good at being Moms. We’re not really sure what kind of mother, this one was.
But she has come to see her son. She has brought Jesus’s brothers with her. And they are trying to get through to him. It seems the crowd surrounding him is thick.
Word comes to Jesus that they are outside, wanting a meeting, a word; we can assume privately.
Jesus’s response is both curious and no doubt hurtful.
“‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’”
The implications are deep. That his mother isn’t really his mother. Not anymore. For she isn’t with him. Why isn’t she with him? Why isn’t she doing “the will of my Father in heaven”? She is refusing to repent.
The Terrain
It is the same day that he addresses the crowd from the boat. Because the crowd was too large.
Some people try to explain this strange arrangement by saying that Jesus was looking for the amplification power of the water. This is just a natural amphitheater.
Other gospels depict a crowd that is too forceful, too suffocating, that Jesus is retreating to the water for space.
Perhaps, for Matthew, these are both true. And quite the same, actually. Because these crowds are hearing him—at least hearing him better than the leaders, better than his family.
But there are other terrains than the path to worry about. There is rocky soil, which takes great joy in the hearing, but never allows it to take root in their hearts. And the thorny ground, which cares too much for the ways of the world that it strangles the gospel’s grace. This is no doubt quite common terrain for that beach.
But I don’t think Jesus thinks these depictions of soil are immutable. We aren’t born to be rocky soil, unchanging and eternally cursed. These struggles of ours aren’t permanent. But they are present.
Misplacing the curse of division
Many of us struggle with this parable because we get caught up in the division between the soils. We don’t want Jesus to divide us any more than we like hearing that he has come to bring a sword of division. But these are assumptions we place upon Jesus here.
He warns us about our behavior. Our priority. And our stubbornness.
He names divisions that are persistent without calling them permanent. Dangers that are likely but not inevitable. Tendencies that lead to pain rather than peace.
If we drew this teaching into our own context, what do we find? Some of the same behavior, priority, and stubbornness.
We see our own inclination to paint our divisions as permanent and eternal, rather than present and willful. The white southerner depicted in the book Strangers in Their Own Land, for instance, has not always been. She or he is a present composition of previous decisions and circumstances. A snapshot of an individual in a specific moment, not an eternal truth.
Each of us can change!
Jesus keeps rejecting the people’s willful refusal to change. His message, the whole message, is an invitation to change, to become integral to how God changes the world.
And our culture and our church’s pathological obsession with not changing puts it strikingly at odds with Jesus.
Yet even that truth is not permanent. Merely the product of stubbornness and pride. Fear and ego.
We can change that truth just as willingly as we can change our minds. To repent. Turn to the Lord. And follow into a new, transformed world.