Matthew 13:1-9; July 16, 2023; Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Our passage from Matthew today is known as “The Parable of the Sower”
And there is so much in here, in these four different scenarios and outcomes that Jesus speaks of, that a minister could easily preach four or five different sermons; though I promise, for our collective sanity, that I’ll only give you one, or maybe two, in the end. Deal? Deal.
But just say for a second that I wanted to go insane, and bring you all with me… well, I could, in theory, dissect each of the four conditions that Jesus outlines and say something on them all.
For instance: I could give you a lovely little message on Jesus’s last scenario and outcome, of the seeds that fall on good soil; drawing an immediate connection between fertile ground and say, healthy spiritual discipline, church, and growth. And indeed, that would have probably been the most accessible and hopeful message to offer you today. But, it also seemed so darn obvious, and seeing right now that I have a reputation amongst some of you for not being so darn obvious, I thought it best to leave that for like year-12 of my ministry here, when I’ve run out of all other cleverer ideas, and you’re tired of me, and looking for something more obvious and straight-forward. So yeah, maybe come back for that one in like, 2035, okay?
Conversely, I guess, I could have preached a more challenging sermon on Jesus’ second condition of the parable; and namely, the fragility of some of our faiths, and the brittleness of some of our spirits; such that when things in our church or regular life get rocky… we fizzle out, fade and whittle, because the depth and substance of our belief is much too shallow. But I thought to myself, why depress you further on this rainy, dreary, gray, summer morning?
Just the same, I could have gone with Jesus’ third condition and offered you a scathing rebuke of the thorns in our lives; of the power systems around us that control and choke us, that stunt our development and prevent new and creative growth. But so much of last week’s sermon dealt with that, in the harmful constructs that occupy our worlds, that I figured it best not to be redundant, lest you think I was phoning it in and packing for Cape May a morning early.
And just the same then really for Jesus’ first condition, about the birds that he names, or rather the vultures and the people in our lives who snatch up our joy, just when we begin to show some green, some promise, and some life; and thus kill our spirit reverting us back to things that we hate. But, I mean, a minister only wants to preach on “hate” once in a blue moon or two, lest you think Grace was becoming all Hell, fire, and brimstone on you. So nah, I think we’ll just let that one be as well.
But then, as you might be wondering…where does that leave us? If you’re not going to preach on any of the outcomes of the parable, Brian, then just what are you doing up there today?
Well, you see… I’ve been trained by my degree, but first by the gospel, to look at the text, and indeed all of life, with new eyes. To look for people that might have been overlooked, and to reexamine details that might have been too easily passed by.
And so, when reading and re-reading our passage this week, and then studying and praying for illumination afterward, it seemed to me that we too readily skip past these first two verses. That we go straight for the entrée while ignoring the appetizer. But sometimes, my friends, the appetizer is the best part of the meal! So, you know what, forks up and knives out; let’s share this small plate together and see if there are other messages that God wants us to hear today.
The first two verses of our text, you might remember, go like this: “That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the lake. And such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach.” – Matthew 13:1-2
And while this may seem rather plain if not uninteresting, I assure you, this beginning to our parable is just as critical for our understanding. For look, the whole crowd is standing on the beach. Not just some of them. Not a minority or even a majority of them, but the whole of them. Jesus didn’t discriminate then when separating himself from them; he left all of them there together on that shore; together in earshot of the parable he was about to teach them; together at distance with some amount of sand and sea between them and him.
And I think there’s at least two lessons in that, that we need to hear.
First: there’s unity in community, if not humility.As in, we stand together. On the beach. For none of us are in that boat with him. None of us are any closer to him than any other. Not me, nor you. Sure, some of us might pretend like we are, but really, we aren’t. Yes… among us there are some good seeds and some good soil, but there are also some thorns and some weeds and some soil that has been spoiled, and some that just isn’t any good. But together we are mortal all the same, standing on the same shore, stuck in the same sand, sown by the same sower, who is God, and not us. And that separation between him and us, with him in the boat, and with us on the beach, only reinforces that.
Right before our passage today, before these two verses in chapter 13… chapter 12 closes like this: 46 While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him. 47Someone told him, ‘Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.’ 48But Jesus replied, ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ 49And pointing to all his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! 50For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’
And it’s on that same day where he told them those words, that our passage from Matthew 13 begins. With this acknowledgment that we are all one, all part of the same family. And as family, as brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, despite our differences, we are asked to stay together and remain unified on the shore.
So that’s the first lesson for today, okay? Unity. And the second is this: distance.
“That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the lake. And such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach.” – Matthew 13:1-2
Again, I just love that opening. The visual of Jesus opening a door, walking right past a bunch of people without saying a word, and then loading himself into a boat just to sit there. I don’t know about you, but I just find that image to be so funny. I mean, it’s like something one of our uncles would do when hearing all the family was coming over and electing to go fishing instead.
But you see, like that uncle, like us, Jesus too needed some distance… He had been pressed in by the crowds for a while now, wherever he went. Inside or outside, they were following him. And while that was all great and good, that human side of Jesus, just like the humanity that defines us, needed a moment of separation. To breathe. To recoup. To regather.
See, oxymoronically, sometimes in order to be unified, we also need distance from each other. In order to then remember why we were gathered together in the first place.
For as it often goes, when you get too near to a person, and spend so much time with them such that you are almost inseparable, you then get to see them as they truly are. Which means, sometimes agitated. Sometimes irritable. Always fallible. Always mortal. And all of that joint time together, rather than always drawing you nearer, well, sometimes begins to pull you apart. And I suspect some of our married people here know what I’m talking about all too intimately.
The cliché goes then: distance makes the heart grow fonder. And the older you get, the more you realize that these clichés became clichés for a reason, for they are often truer than they are false.
So our community-unity remedy, ironically, is often found in self-elected, self-chosen, self-appointed independent time away; spent on our own lake, sitting and drifting in our own boat. Where you can just be you, rather than say, mommy or daddy, husband or wife, accountant or minister, or in Jesus’ case, the Christ and Savior to all.
Now Matthew doesn’t tell us how long Jesus sat there for, but I like to imagine it was for enough time to recompose and recharge, before launching again into another parable and sermon. For just like God needed that seventh day to rest; the Son of God needed that time away on that boat, to say, just give me a moment, and just let me be.
So my friends, if you must, go to your summer homes. Go on your vacations. Create those little separations of distance both here and far, so that you can come back to this place, and to those you love, both renewed and reenergized, refocused less on the little weeds and nuisances that bother you, and more on that which is actually important: on the gospel and his example, which gives us fertilization and growth.
And with that, Cape May calls. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.
Hallelujah!
Amen.
