“[T]his is the one who hears the word and
understands it….”.
Matthew
13 provides us with a version of the Parable of the Sower. It is one of the
best known of Jesus’ parables and scholars believe that at least the first part
of it is certainly the authentic Jesus speaking to us. A version of this
parable is also found in the Gospels of Mark, Luke and the Sayings Gospel of
Thomas.
It’s a common tendency to sum up this parable
in terms of a line we often see appended to the parables in all the Gospels:
Let
anyone with ears listen.
They
Just Don’t Get It…
There
is a sense in this assertion that the good news of Jesus is easy to understand
even as it will not be heard by everyone, particularly those unwilling to
consider it. But I think this parable has more to say to us than that.
First,
there is no small amount of self-serving mentality in that understanding. The
implication is that we understand it but everyone else out there just doesn’t –
or won’t – get it. You should hear echoes of election, of specialness, of
chosenness in these understandings. And consider how readily such notions play
out in condescension toward those who do not share our understandings,
condescension that easily can become the means of persecuting outsiders when
the elect gain political power. This
is a tendency that the Christian church has had to guard against from its very
beginning.
But, I think there is more to consider here than who gets it right and who doesn’t. I always find it interesting to read the portions of the gospels that were omitted by the members of the lectionary committee who designated our weekly readings. In today’s Gospel, the reading from Matthew 13 ends at verse 9 and picks up again in verse 19. There is a lot to consider in those missing verses.
Jesus Doesn’t Start With a Tabula Rasa
For
one thing, verse 10 begins with the disciples asking Jesus the obvious
question: Why do you instruct people only in parables? It’s a fair question
that points toward a very human tendency we all share: a concern for comfort. We
want Jesus to cut to the chase, to tell us what we need to know. Underlying
this question is the reality that having to wrestle with teachings and
reflecting on how they impact our lives is not something most of us are willing
to do. If we were to rephrase the disciples’ question, it would be something
like this: Jesus, why don’t you just tell us what to believe?
But
Jesus is not interested in filling empty heads, hearts and souls with his
teachings. Unlike John Locke, he does not presume that his listeners are
operating out of a tabula rasa, a blank slate, on which he simply has to
inscribe eternal truths. It might be a lot easier if that were true. But Jesus recognizes
that if he did just tell people what to believe, that would be his faith, not
theirs. It would not belong to them in any kind of existential way.
Jesus
knows that all of us bring a lifetime of learning, shaping by our families and
our culture, and a wide range of personal experiences to the hearing of his words.
And how we hear them will often turn on what we bring to that hearing as much
as what we encounter there.
But
Matthew cannot just leave things dangling there and so he has Jesus provide us with
an explanation for his use of parables which reflects his deep awareness of
human nature. Jesus knows that his listeners will respond to his words at the
point they find themselves on their spiritual journeys. And that is apparent as
we look around ourselves today.
We see those who can only apprehend the parable at a surface level. Matthew’s Jesus says they immediately receive his words with joy but have no depth to draw upon. Their visions will be shallow and brittle, highly defensive when challenged by others. We see that in our own time and place in those who can readily quote scripture but have no real understanding of its context or its implications.
We
see others who hear these words through the thorny lens of our consumerist
culture whose competing god is comfort and whose ritual is the amassing of ever
more material goods, power and status even as they are never able to satisfy us.
These are everyday people who mean well and, truth be told, engage in the same
behaviors all of us in this culture are trained to see as normal.
But
for many there comes a point of decision: which god will you worship? And it
should not be surprising that many resist the implications of a gospel whose
primary commandment is to love one’s neighbor as oneself – including one’s
enemies – rather than seeing them as means or obstacles to the demands we have
been trained to believe we are entitled to make. As Jesus said, “the cares of
the world and the lure of wealth” readily choke our ability to hear and respond
to his calling.
Finally
Jesus describes those who hear the word and understand it. It is these who are
capable of bearing fruit. So it would seem that following the way of Jesus is a
privilege limited to a chosen few, a privilege that includes an entitlement to
condescend to all the hoi polloi who just don’t get it.
But
I’m pretty sure that’s not what Jesus meant.
Different Starting Points to Hear the Parables
Much
of my life in academia has been spent in studying human development systems from
moral reasoning to cultural evolution to faith development. Two observations
guide that study. First, human beings are found at varying levels of
development in every culture and across time. There have always been a handful
of sages, mystics and prophets who have seen a bigger picture than most of us
and there have always been masses of folks who willingly joined mobs like those
standing outside Pilate’s palace screaming “His blood be on our heads and
those of our children,” something a good Jew would never have said. People
are where they are on their spiritual journey. And they can only hear at the
level of development they bring to the hearing.
At some level, every one of us has played all the characters in this parable. We have all been where others are now. And that demands our understanding and our willingness to take others where they are today.
I
think Jesus knew that we are all works in progress and he evidences that in his
use of parables. He challenged people to think, he didn’t tell them what they
must believe. And he knew that his listeners would hear his teachings at
whatever level of human development they presented.
But
he also knew one other thing.
Some
Seeds Lies Dormant for Awhile
It’s no accident that Jesus uses the symbol of seeds being planted. A popular meme online these days proclaims “We cannot force someone to hear a message they are not ready to receive. But we must never underestimate the power of planting a seed.”
In
my personal experience, that has always been true. The wisdom I heard as a kid,
as a young adult, in universities and seminaries, wisdom experienced in the countryside
of Central America and the halls of Congress, have all proven to have their own
timetables. I often experience the famous light bulb moment when I suddenly
realize, “Oh, *that’s* what was going on there!” and realize I am in the debt of those who
planted that seed in me. And I suspect many of you have had similar experiences.
As
I see it, Jesus calls us to exercise patience with those we might otherwise
dismiss as superficial, obtuse or even malevolent. And that patience starts
with ourselves. The same seed that Jesus planted in us lies within all who have
heard his calling. Those seeds wait the right time to sprout and grow to the
extent any of us are capable and willing to let them. But it will require patience, the ability to
delay gratification and the willingness to suffer the pain that growth always
requires, just as M. Scott Peck taught us in his book The Road Less
Travelled.
Who
Was Your Sower? In Whom Were You the Sower?
So
ask yourselves. Where along your own spiritual journey do you find yourself
this day? Who have been the people who made your way to this milestone
possible? Who were the sowers who
planted seeds in your life that may have taken years before they sprouted and
grew? To whom do you owe your gratitude for helping you become the person you
are today?
Conversely,
where in your own life have you been the sower, implanting seeds in the lives
of people which may not sprout until long after you are gone? If our lives are
the only Gospels some people might ever read, as the apocryphal statement often
attributed to St. Francis of Assisi asserts, what Gospel will they encounter in
us?
Like
Jesus, I have no answers to offer you. But I leave you with those questions to
wrestle with, just as Jesus did. And I close with a slightly adapted version of
today’s collect:
Holy One, we ask you to hear the prayers of
your people who call upon you. Grant that we may know and understand what
things we ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to
accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zh5nNX2Xmg
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Harry Scott Coverston
