Lectionary Year A, Proper 10: July 14, 2002

Lectionary Year A, Proper 10:
St. Paul's Epsicopal Church, Fayetteville, AR

Today's Gospel reading contains the mother of Jesus' parables in the Gospel of Matthew. Actually, it is the mother of Jesus' parables in all of the synoptic Gospels. Mark, Luke, and Matthew each use the parable of the Sower in slightly different ways. Matthew took the story as it appears in the Gospel of Mark and used it to begin the third of the five discourses of Jesus in that Gospel. [1] The thirteenth chapter of Matthew contains the greatest concentration of Jesus' parables; there are seven parables in all, plus two allegorical explanations, and an statement as to why Jesus taught using parables. Given all of this, we realize that parables were important to the Matthean community as a teaching tool. The Church also seems to believe this because we will read through these Matthean parables for three consecutive Sundays, beginning with today.

What exactly is a parable? It is a work designed to teach a moral or religious principle by using a parallel story. Most parables have a main character, some supplemental characters, and a plot with some action. They are stories that makes us think. The Biblical scholar C.H. Dodd once wrote that although the action in parables is "drawn from nature or common life, [the parable] arrests the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaves the mind in sufficient doubt of its precise application to tease [the mind] into active thought." [2] Most of us remember the "good parables" like the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan because they are familiar stories with universal appeal that put forth fairly well agreed upon principles. They are entertaining, simple, and clear. But, many of Jesus' parables are open ended, leaving the hearers to do the work of interpretation. And, as the Episcopal priest and author, Robert Capon writes, "many of [Jesus'] parables are not agreeable; most are complex; and a good percentage of them produce more confusion than understanding." [3] Such is the case with the parable of the Sower.

In the Gospel of Matthew, the subject of all of the parables is the Kingdom of heaven. Every parable we will hear over the next few weeks begins with the words, "The Kingdom of heaven is like …" Today's reading does not begin that way. Rather Matthew begins the discourses about the Kingdom by giving us a parable about the response to the Kingdom of heaven.

There are several objects and actions in today's story, and our interpretation of the whole parable depends on what we examine. We can look at the sower who casts seeds on the ground before plowing. [4] We can look at the action of the seeds themselves, and what happens to them depending on where they fall. Or, we can look at the final harvest.

In her analysis of this parable, Barbara Reid, Professor of New Testament at Catholic Theological Union, speaks about the seed as the focus of the parable. [5] The seed, most people would agree, is the word of God. The parable assures us that despite the fact that the word can fall on soil that is less than fertile, what counts is what the seed does when it germinates. [6] At the end, the parable tells us that the sower will reap a crop that is a hundred-fold or at least thirty-fold what was sown. To you and me who know diddly about wheat yields, that seems meaningless. But, scholars point out that a really outstanding harvest in Biblical times would be 10-fold. So, if the seed is the focus of the parable, we can be assured that the word of God will achieve at least three times and as much as 30 times what we might anticipate as "outstanding." In other words, the yield will be fantastically abundant, despite the fact that part of the seed was eaten by birds, part fell on rocky ground or was scorched, and part was choked out by thorns. Take heart, the parable tells us, God's word will eventually bring forth fruit. I believe that means that if we hear and respond to God's word, it will bear fruit.

If the harvest is seen as the focus of the parable, there is an outcome that we can expect because of the sheer abundance of the harvest. And that is that the "harvest" is new hope for oppressed people. It can also facilitate the restructuring of relationships. Why? Because we are dealing here with an economy of abundance: When everything is abundant, there is no want or need. The abundance of God's word has the effect of taking away the need to prove that we are better, stronger, or braver by putting each other down. The word of God has the effect of taking away the need to keep some groups from obtaining equality with other groups in order to preserve the social order. The word of God can provide healing to people in broken relationships even when they cannot reconcile their differences. The word of God turns society and relations upside down and provides for the betterment of everyone in the process. Now that's abundance! The abundance of God's grace is realized here on earth by your hands and by mine. And that is what is meant by the word bearing fruit.

When the sower is viewed as the focus of the parable, as it usually is, the story takes on another meaning. From this perspective, the sower is God and the Word is Jesus. This Johannine view of God as sower tells us something fundamentally important about God's action in our lives and in the world.

When I was in high school, my family took a Greyhound bus trip from our home town of Klamath Falls, Oregon to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to visit my mother's family. We rode up the steep and rocky western slopes of the Rocky Mountains to Reno, Nevada, through the barren salt Flats of Western Utah, and down the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains toward the high plateaus of Colorado. The scenery for most of that part of the trip was of tremendously vast and empty spaces – largely uninhabited because of aridity, wind, remoteness, altitude, and the absence of tillable soil. But as we entered the great plains, the scenery changed from barrenness to abundance. I was mesmerized watching thousands upon thousands of perfectly parallel rows of corn, wheat, barley, and other crops whiz by the bus window as we passed perhaps thousands of farms in Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois. Many of us have seen this same kind of pattern from an airplane. Altitude provides the advantage that one can see the checkerboard pattern of entire farms and specific fields over an expansive area. The neat patterning of America's farmlands stand as a testament to the insistence of our country's farmers and ranchers on imposing geometric orderliness to the business of creation.

Contrast that orderliness with the picture of the sower in today's Gospel. The sower flings handfuls of seed into the air, letting it fall where it will on untilled ground. There are also no field boundaries or carefully prepared ground. There are no groomed parallel rows. The seed falls on rocks, thin soil, the road – everywhere. Some even falls on good ground. But it is important to note from the story that it all germinates where it falls. Note too that when God tends God's crops, there are no geometrically perfect irrigation canals or wheeled sprinkler systems. The rain and snow fall indiscriminately. As the seedlings gow, the sower does not bother to thin the crop or separate the thorns or weeds from the crop. Everything grows up together. And most importantly, when harvest time comes, whatever it is, is a delight to the sower-harvester. And the harvest is abundant: thirty, sixty, or one-hundred-fold. [7]

The preacher Sue Singer writes, "What a God we have! What an impractical, indiscriminate, wildly generous God, flinging the seed of the Kingdom far and wide, including the whole world in the farm, ignoring the boundaries, letting the seed have a try anywhere. Who knows, one day even the desert might bloom!" [8] This parable turns the whole idea of what Matthew's (and probably our) idea of the Kingdom of Heaven is about right on its head. If you and I were ordering the Kingdom, it would probably look like the fields from the air: orderly with neat borders. Good people would be over here, and not so good people would be over there. There would be absolute boundaries between good and bad, right and wrong. Rules would be applied without exception, and righteousness would be maximized. If we were in charge, only a "few of us would get in because our plan would be to only admit people who deserve to be there." [9] But God the sower is wildly generous – far more generous that we are. God the sower is not concerned with boundaries, rules, or right answers. Here "we are dealing with a God whose nature is abundance and self-emptying love;" a God who is most God-like in the act of giving God's own self away to you and to me. God the sower is a God who redeems us and offers us eternal life not because we deserve them. God does not shower us with abundant grace because we deserve it. God does those things for us because God can't help but love us. We are God's creatures, part of God's creation, and he sowed the world with the costly seed of redeeming love in order to fulfill God's vision of a blooming, fertile field for all of creation.

It is the sower we need to remember from this parable as well as the seeds sowed. Robert Capon, wrote that "in the plain terms of [this] parable, Jesus has already and literally been sown everywhere in the world – and quite without a single bit of earthly cooperation or even consent." Capon warns, however, that we Christians have the tendency to regard ourselves as having the inside track on what that Word is. He states that we most often "act as if the Word isn't anywhere until we get there with Him." [10] Failing to recognize that the Word is already present in some form or another all over the place can, if we are not careful, put us exactly where Jesus said we'd end up: We would see and hear, but still not understand.

We need to remember that the seed sown will work the work it has to do, no matter where it is sown. Sure, from the standpoint of the farmer, the harvest is important, and hence the farmer wants the seed to sprout on good soil. But that is looking at the story from a human perspective. Maybe what we need to remember is that the seed, the Word of God, Jesus Himself, is present in and to all of us, whether we are a little rocky or thorny, or dry, or of thin soil. And, that word will germinate and do the work that it will.

We need to trust in the operative power of the word, and in the sower who sowed the seed in the first place. We need to trust that God will help us to understand and act upon that Word in ways that are appropriate for each one of us. We also need to trust that the Word of God will also help us to see ourselves fully, and to recognize when we need to tend to our spiritual soil so that we can fully cooperate that seed of God's call to us.

8 Those who dwell at the ends of the earth will tremble at your marvelous signs; *

You are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh-- for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ-- if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: "Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!"

"Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty."

[1] Barbara E. Reid. Parables for Preachers: The Gospel of Matthew, Year A. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 79-90.

[2] C.H. Dodd as quoted in Daniel J. Harrington, S.J. The Gospel of Matthew. Sacra Pagina Series, Vol 1. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991), 198.

[3] Robert Farrar Capon. The Parables of the Kingdom. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmann's Publishing Company, , 1985), 1.

[4] Biblical scholars have pointed out that it was a common practice in Palestine to sow seeds before tilling,a dn tehn to let the tilling process work the seeds into the soil. See Daniel J. Harrington, S.J. The Gospel of Matthew. Sacra Pagina Series, Vol 1. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991), 199.

[5] Analysis of this parable from these perspectives was adapted from the work of Barbara Reid. See Barbara E. Reid. Parables for Preachers: The Gospel of Matthew, Year A. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 80-85.

[6] Robert Capon also addresses the issue of the seed and the word. He states that the word is fully in action at every step of the story. See Robert Farrar Capon. The Parables of the Kingdom. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmann's Publishing Company, , 1985), 78-79.

[7] Adapted from Sue Singer. "Sowing with Spiritual Ecology." Preaching Through the Year of Matthew. Roger Alling and David Schlafer, Eds. (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2001), 72-75.

[8] Sue Singer. "Sowing with Spiritual Ecology." Preaching Through the Year of Matthew. Roger Alling and David Schlafer, Eds. (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2001), 72.

[9] Sue Singer. "Sowing with Spiritual Ecology." Preaching Through the Year of Matthew. Roger Alling and David Schlafer, Eds. (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2001), 73.

[10] Robert Farrar Capon. The Parables of the Kingdom. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmann's Publishing Company, , 1985), 69.

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