Several weeks ago, I baptized a young boy and his baby sister

The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

July 13, 2008 Proper 10A

St. Peter’s Church in the Great Valley

The Rev. Nancy Webb Stroud

Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

And he told them many things in parables . . . .So begins the section of Matthew’s gospel where Jesus teaches the crowds about the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is like this; the kingdom of heaven is like that . . .. And usually, at the end of each little commonplace story, Jesus says something just a bit edgy. At the end of the parable we have in today’s gospel, he says, Let anyone with ears listen! Now, there were great crowds gathered around him, to hear what he had to say. Of course they were going to listen! It is almost as if he is daring[1] them to really hear him. It is almost as if he said, “Are your minds and hearts really open to what I have to teach you?”

Now what Jesus wants to teach about is the kingdom of heaven. And the truth is the crowds that were following him had much more experience with kingdoms than we do. Kingdoms are about the few who have power and the many who are oppressed. Kingdoms are about the few who have enough wealth to get what they need and the many who struggle to get through the day on what is left over. The crowd who followed Jesus around and heard his parables for the first time knew about kings—the king, or at this time in their history, the emperor in Rome—had all the power and all the wealth. And just in case there was any bit of power or wealth left anywhere in the known world, the emperor sent his legions in to occupy the territory and plunder whatever they could find.

I look around this room and I have to wonder, how much meaning do we get out of the image of “kingdom”? We got rid of the last king that was bothering us, and that was over 200 years ago! Oh, we in this room might not have all the power and money we want. We might feel oppressed by our tax burden, or wish we had more power when it comes to getting into college, or getting an insurance company to pay a claim. But the kind of oppressed, even dispossessed, understanding of kingdom that Jesus’ first listeners had? Probably not.

Well, when the people first hear this parable, they may know more about kingdoms than we do. But we know more about Jesus than they did—yet. We know about the cross and we know about the resurrection. We know that Jesus came to the people—not to save their lives from a few years of tyranny and oppression. Jesus came to give them something altogether new—new life lived in the Spirit of God.

Listen! says Jesus. And then he tells his little parable. This one is about a farmer who is sowing his seed. He doesn’t seem like a very efficient farmer, does he? Because he throws that seed about with abandon. It is a method of sowing called broadcasting. The sower takes a handful of seed, and with a wide sweep of his arm, he scatters it in a broad arc. And the seed goes everywhere. The seed goes onto the prepared soil. It also goes out along the edge of the field. The seed falls on the rocks, and the seed falls along the footpath next to the field. Some of it even goes into the field in the next farm over. It takes a lot of seed to sow a field this way. Inevitably, some of it will be wasted. So, we learn something about the kingdom of heaven. There is abundant plenty to go around, but it seems that some of it will be wasted.

Like anyone running a business, the farmer has to weigh the wasting of one resource against the use of other resources. The sower could plant the seeds kernel by kernel. But the field is big, and the farmer is just one person. It would take hours, even days, to plant all of the land seed by seed. So the farmer takes big handfuls of seed and broadcasts them through the field, and he is done in a morning, leaving the afternoon to tend to other pressing matters. And if the birds eat some, or if some get washed off the path by a spring rain, well, that is just an inevitable part of the whole business. It will not stop the delight that the farmer will feel as the plants grow, and the field ripens, and the harvest is gathered in. And so we speculate something else about the kingdom of heaven: the abundance that seems wasteful also brings delight.

It seems like such a simple story that it is kind of surprising that Jesus has to explain it. But Jesus doesn’t use the parables because they are easy. Indeed, our Gospel selection today leaves out a couple of verses in the middle of the chapter. Between telling the story of the sower and then explaining what it means, Jesus explains that he is using the parables precisely because the people are having such a hard time understanding about God. He quotes the prophet Isaiah,

“For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn—and I would heal them” (Matthew 13:15). Jesus tells the parables to try to find a new way into the minds and hearts of the people. Later in the chapter, Matthew tells us, Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing (13:34). That is, Jesus is telling us everything he has to say about the kingdom of God. Jesus is telling us everything he has to say about the new life lived in the Spirit of God—but it will be hard for us to open our minds and our hearts.

So, Jesus explains this parable, using a neat allegory. The seed is the word, the good soil is this person, the rocky soil is that person, and so forth. We have heard it all before. But have you ever noticed, that Jesus left an important part out of his neat allegorical explanation? If every part of the story is standing in for something else, why doesn’t he tell us who the sower is? Come to think of it, just who is the sower?

Several weeks ago, I baptized a young boy and his baby sister. The little boy was just about three years old, and so I asked his mother to bring him over to the church, so that he could see and practice what would happen to him. We put water in the font. We practiced touching it, and getting his face wet. We talked about whether I would pick him up, or whether he could stand on a stool all by himself, and he chose the stool. We opened the oil stock and felt the holy oil inside. We talked about the fact that I would put water and oil on his head and on his little sister’s head, too. As we practiced, his mother and I said things like, “This is how we join the church. This is what mommy and daddy did when they were children. When you are baptized, then you belong to Jesus.”

“When you are baptized, then you belong to Jesus.” That was as close as I got to theological teaching with my young friend. As he ran around the church, as he dabbled his hand in the water, and stopped to talk to his mommy, and dropped a toy in his sister’s car seat and then took a long exploratory walk around the altar, it was absolutely obvious to me that this little boy and his sister were full of life. It never occurred to me to say that to him. It never occurred to me to say to him what we will say in a few moments about Anna, that through Baptism we are reborn by the Holy Spirit, and raised to the new life of grace. As I met and talked and played with the little boy so full of life, I never thought to say what was so obvious.

Well, it may have been obvious to me, but after his baptism, the little boy’s grandparents told me that in the car, on the way home from our baptism rehearsal, the little boy was heard to say, “I am going to be ba-tized. Then, I will be a bat!”

Clearly, the little boy was ready to hear what seemed so obvious to me. When you are baptized, it is like being born again. When you are baptized, we see all of the wonderful life that is flowing through you in a new and holy way. When you are baptized, your life is changed into the new life that Jesus has for all of us.

Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. Jesus tells us that the seed in the parable is the word. And he tells us that the word is sown in good soil and rocky soil, on hard soil and among thorns. And we know the Word. The Word is more than just the words of the Gospel story we have heard today. The Word is more than the words written down and recorded for us in Holy Scripture. The Word is those words, and more. For in John’s Gospel, we hear that the Word became flesh and lived among us (John 1:14). The Word is Jesus. That seed that the sower is broadcasting so abundantly? That is Jesus—Jesus going where the people are prepared to know him and Jesus going where there is no preparation or knowledge. Jesus going where people’s hearts are hard and Jesus going where the people are so distracted by cares and concerns that they do not recognize him at all.

And finally, we know Who the sower is. It seemed so obvious to Jesus, that he did not say it. Because the sower is the One from whom all good things come. The sower is God the Father, sending out the grace of new life with a broad sweep and a generous hand. It is a gesture that is so wide and loving that it might almost seem wasteful—but we know that with God, nothing is wasted. God sends us abundant new life in Jesus, whether we are prepared or not, whether it seems obvious or not, whether we are infants or elders. God sends us abundant new life in Jesus. And God is delighted that we receive the gift.

Amen.

[1] This would be as good a place as any to say that I am indebted to the Rev. Robert Farrar Capon for his insightful interpretation of this parable. See especially his three-part work, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), 2002. Fr. Capon is a retired Episcopal priest who also writes elegantly and deliciously on food.