Proper 10

Isaiah 55.10-13;

Romans 8.1-11;

Matthew 13.1-9, 18-23

THIS YEAR, our lectionary provides for a sequence of Sunday readings from Matthew’s Gospel. But we do not hear all Matthew has to say. Mindful of our short attention span, the lectionary is selective. Matthew is the longest of the four Gospels, and some of his story is left out.

How did our lectionary-makers decide what to include and what not to? Sometimes it seems as if they were mainly concerned to give us an easy ride. They wanted to make the prophet’s words come true: “The rough country will become smooth” (Isaiah 40.5).

In reality, reading the Bible is always a rugged ride. That is what makes it so challenging and exciting. Removing the humps and bumps from the Bible may make for easy listening, but if what we are left with suggests that we are in for an easy life, the process has done us no service.

This Sunday and for the next two Sundays, we hear from Matthew chapter 13. To ease us gently through this long chapter, the lectionary tinkers with the order of verses, and leaves out two substantial sections. The verses omitted this week tell us why Jesus taught in parables.

What he says is difficult and unpalatable. Like “sleeping policemen” in a suburban side-street, his words make us slow down and go more carefully. Given that the chapter is an anthology of parables, and not much else, the decision to omit the very verses — problematical as they are — that tell us what parables are for was eccentric, to say the least.

Jesus talks about an impoverished peasant farmer, for whom his recalcitrant land at last yields a harvest. Jesus addresses “the crowds”— that is to say, anyone who cares to listen. People must decide for themselves what the parable means, for Jesus does not explain it to them — not that you would know that from the lectionary’s abridged version of Matthew’s account. “Let anyone with ears, listen!” Jesus curtly concludes.

Jesus then explains to his disciples — and only to them — why he teaches in parables. (We are now looking at the passage the lectionary tells us to skip.) Here Matthew tones down what he has taken from Mark. According to Mark, Jesus taught in parables so that people would not understand him (Mark 4.11-12). According to Matthew, Jesus used parables because people did not understand him.

Much turns on what we make of a couple of tricky Greek words. By leaving this section out, our lectionary editors no doubt wanted to spare us all Sunday-morning headaches. But their kindness was misplaced. However we interpret this thorny passage, it makes one essential point clear. Jesus’s parables are not the verbal equivalent of “visual aids”.

They are not just illustrations, homely stories for simple folk intended to help them understand his teaching. Typically, the parables of Jesus are as enigmatic as his miracles. To repeat a mantra used before in this column, the purpose of parables is not to make things easy for us, but to make us think.

The “sleeping policeman” removed from our path by the lectionary will break the axles of any reader careering through this chapter at too great a speed. We have words of Jesus that are perhaps best not read by those in dark places. “The one who has will be given more; from the one who has not even what they have will be taken away” (Matthew 13.12).

Commentators coat these words with sugar by telling us that they express the truth that those who welcome the reign of Jesus are blessed increasingly, but that those who refuse his reign find that whatever else they cling to for security turns to dust. The pious comment is unexceptionable, though it brings little comfort to those who wonder what more their Lord, in his “severe mercy”, will require of them before he is done.

Jesus then explains in detail to the disciples what the parable of the sower means. No doubt, that explanation will have encouraged the churches, where Matthew’s Gospel was first read, to go on “spreading the word”, especially when their endeavours seemed unrewarding.

But what of “the crowds” — those who were left with Jesus’s dismissive “Let anyone with ears, listen!” There was no line-by-line explanation of the parable for them. Yet, among them, there were those “with ears to hear”. They will have brooded on this puzzling tale. They will have been troubled by how commonplace — even banal — Jesus’s simple anecdote is. They will have worried away at the parable, doggedly trying to tease out its significance.

Above all, they will have wondered who this strange story-teller was. They will have persevered, just as the sower did. And their perseverance, like the sower’s, will finally have been rewarded. Jesus’s seminal words will have taken root, germinated, and come to harvest.

They, too, will have known joy at the last — a greater joy, perhaps, than of those who had to have everything explained.

Text of readings

Isaiah 55.10-13

Thus says the LORD:
10For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

12For you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
13Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall be to the LORD for a memorial,
for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Romans 8.1-11

1There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law – indeed it cannot, 8and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

9But 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. 10But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11If 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.

Matthew 13.1-9,18-23

1Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the lake. 2Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. 3And he told them many things in parables, saying: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. 5Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. 6But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. 7Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9Let anyone with ears listen!

18Hear then the parable of the sower. 19When 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. 20As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; 21yet 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. 22As 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. 23But 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.’