We begin, as always, with a little context.
Tonight's reading is a parable, a story that Jesus tells to relate truths that can't be fit into language. “Parable” is from the Greek parabole, which means, “something cast beside.”
Parables are not allegories. There’s a long history of interpreting parables as if they
were, deciding what each item in the story symbolizes and deriving meaning from
that, but parables are much more complex.
Parables disrupt our ways of thinking. As one commentator puts it, “our doubt around their application teases us into active thought.” Parables ask us to stretch our minds. As my pastor Dr. Braxton says, "In order to teach you, I must first disorient you."
*
After college, I moved to the Netherlands to live with my
boyfriend. I was there for over a
year, and for the first couple months, I was completely and totally
unemployed. He would go off to
work in the morning, and for the first couple weeks, it was kind of like a
vacation. I was exhausted after
finishing school, and I’d laze around the house for a while and read, try and
study some Dutch, go visit a museum.
But it wasn’t very fun for very long. Even after I found a job as a nanny, I
felt isolated. I was nervous about
trying to speak Dutch in front of my partner's friends; I feared embarrassment. I was spending a lot of time alone, and
I didn’t have the money to go out to do anything special or fun. The winter in the Netherlands is damp and gray, and I was at the point where, although I was glad to be on this
adventure, glad to be in a new place with someone I loved, I just missed
home.
So I planted some seeds. In the middle of March, I rode my bike to the Tuincentrum, and bought the cheapest seed tray I could
find. I read up on growing plants
from seed, and kept the soil damp and warm by placing the tray on top of the
water heater in this tiny room where everyone hung their laundry out to dry. Every morning I would peer in and check
on them, filled with expectation.
It was as if their survival was somehow linked to my own; if they could
spring up, green and fragile from the soil, then there must be some shoot of
hope and life in me.
Sowing seeds, while it may not be a common experience for us
city dwellers, was deeply familiar to the folks Jesus was preaching to. Many of them made their livelihood from
farming. Most of them knew the
science of carefully prepping soil, the tedium of properly sowing seeds. And all of them knew that, if you were
a sower, you didn’t sow seeds on the path, or on the rock or on in the
thorns. You didn’t just waste
seeds.
Jesus starts this parable with a confusing reversal. What he’s saying doesn’t make
sense from the very beginning of the story. And in the coming chapters,
he’s going to tell a lot of stories that don’t make sense, that leave people
with their eyes crossed.
I think that this first parable that Matthew records is
like a key. It’s a key that helps
us figure out how to unlock the other parables, how to listen. Where all the other parables in
Matthews Gospels begin, “The kingdom of heaven is like...” this parable, the
first parable of the set we will hear, does not.
Bring yourself for a moment back to my improvised nursery in
the laundry room in the Netherlands.
And imagine that, rather than planting your seed in a seed tray and
placing them on top of the water heater, you’re planting them in your
heart. What is the terrain like
there? What fertile soil will the
seed find in which to take root, or how might they struggle to take grow? Where is the soil dry and cracked, or
where is it rich and damp and dark?
We share our sermons at St. Lydia’s. I invite you to share a story from your
experience that relates to the text we’ve explored and the words I’ve shared.
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