Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Proper 10 (15) - Year A
The same day that Jesus redefines family as relationship with GOD (12:50), he tells a story.
The story has GODseed scattered prodigally about. It is scattered on the worn, thin, wild, and receptive places of our life. [Note: "our" is both my or your individual life as well as the lives of other individuals and our common life.]
In this model we miss 3/4 of what GOD has already cast into our life. We are so caught with routine and so tired and so angry that the arriving GODseed rolls off and burns up and is overshadowed. Yet GODseed is arriving as much in our worn, thin, and wild parts as in our readiness to respond to it.
So it is with others and congregations and cultures.
A question for us is how the fertile part of us will interact with the bored and habitual and strangling parts? Will that fertile part put up a fence to keep the compression and erosion and raging of others at a distance? Will that fertile part, having more fruit from GODseed than it can hold, also join in the scattering of good upon the blind and shallow and hurtful?
Have you seen grass growing through cement? A tree growing with no soil from the side of a cliff? A flower growing in the wilderness? If so, don't give up on those parts of our own life and that of others where the GODseed has not yet flourished. GODseed can be joined with the blessing of your life and yet make a difference - even where we have labeled that there is no soil, infertile soil, or already occupied soil.
Jesus' biological family and GOD-willed family can yet be one. Believe it, live it.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/july2002.html
On a patriotic July 4 comes the parable of the sower/the seed. It would be so easy to begin noting the wonderful soil that is us. How we have blessed the seed sown in us. How the seed had found its rightful home.
One of the characteristics of creation is its profligacy. Seeds go everywhere. They travel by bird and squirrel and wind and catching on pants. Seeds end up everywhere.
We could claim that there is no place for seed eating birds, no place for that which we call weeds, no place for rocky ground. But consider how ugly, monocultured, and defeatist that would be.
We would miss the beauty of the finch, dandelion wine, and those lone flowers on the side of a desert butte.
Truly this is not just about good seed triumphing. That's eugenics at its worst. Let's consider for a moment that Jesus was most truthful when quoting Isaiah (in the elided part of this week's pericope) "we listen, but never understand" and was least truthful in drawing a one-to-one correspondence between an evocative tale and one particular take on it.
See if you can go back to the story alone and see what it says about your current state of affairs. If possible for you, forget you heard an explanation that has cut off every other option. Simply see if you have ears to listen.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/july2005.html
After a telling of the parable of the sower, verse 9 ends, "Let anyone with ears listen!" Verse 18 begins, "Hear then the parable of the sower." Implication - the missing portion is significant in making the transition.
So how will Jesus deal with the slow-to-catch-on disciples? He could throw up his hands and lump the disciples in with all the rest who hear but don't get it. He could simply go on to something else, having just planted an idea in their heads that life happens in a variety of ways.
Here he chides them, but they probably don't get that either, that others would know what to do with his parable and other teachings and healings and confrontations. But those who would get it quickly are gone, so he has to deal with what is at hand, such as you and I.
It appears Jesus goes back to the primer approach that "this means that". Of course this cuts down on the multi-valency of the parable, but it is more at the learning level of the disciples.
When folks don't get your message, you have some choices. Will you write them off? Keep repeating yourself and getting the same result each time? Back up and give them a bit of what they can get their heads around, knowing that the Spirit of Understanding will come later to teach them things too difficult at the moment.
Let's engage at the level available to us. Let's use the KISS method, "Keep It Simple, Sinner."
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/july2005.html
What would it be like to read Paul as a frustrated parablist who simply can't get past his juridical language base?
We need a midrash cyclotron that can speed Paul and Jesus to light speed and smash them into one another. Then we might see Spirit as seed and Flesh as seed. We might understand soil as Spirit and soil as Flesh. In so doing new sparks will fly off into our lives today and we would care less about any traps of our own or others devising and simply pay more attention to a joyful heritage of a good creation and universal salvation and simply incline our hearts to both short- and long-term good at the same time.
- - -
brother wrestler
heel grabber
stew chef
lineage stealer
flock grabber
G*D wrestlergo out
anguished loneliness
to accomplish
more than you purposed
to return
a brother's embraceeven here
instead of a thorn
a sound of singing
in the myrtle
an everlasting sign
none are cut off
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html
Just prior to this passage we have Jesus responding to questions about who is part of his family. If it weren't for the artificiality of chapters and verses we would see Jesus' blood family outside. After redefining family as those who are paying attention to G*D in a similar way to Jesus, he goes outside.
Does he glimpse Mama Mary on the way to the sea? Are his sister or brother able to make their way through the crowd set loose to look him in the eye to see his rejection of them?
For purposes of this note we might wonder about the connection of the sower parable to a continuation of the family insight preceding it. This would push us to the power of the soil ('adam/'adamah – human/humus) to determine the fruitfulness of the seed or breath of life given into its care.
Following back to the Genesis 2-3 story, it is all too easy to read the sower as a story of blame. 3/4 of the seed is focused elseways than the well-being of the seed. This obliviousness to creation care is all too familiar.
This issue of blame/constraint is important in every family structure. What is the long ago heritage of your family? How does that compare with more recent experiences? Where did the breath or seed of life enter in? Can that be reclaimed? What cosmic responsibility have you worn and are you still expanding that or has it been narrowed from fear of others?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html
After a year and a half of significant work on the Witness Team for Rev. Amy DeLong, LoveOnTrial.org, and the relief of a restorative justice decision by the trial court, I found myself exhausted and amazed. Now it is time to see if I can get back in the swing of consistent lection comments (that they come regularly, not that they are consistent, one comment with another).
= = = = = = =
A parable explained is not a parable - it loses it parabolic arc when squoze down to an explanation and ends up a mere analogy. This is still a good, but no longer a better.
Here's another way of coming at the story, from the point of view of the storyteller. This from Provoking the Gospel of Matthew by Richard Swanson:
But the moment that catches my ritual eye most is the moment in the story when Jesus reports the harvest produced by the seed that falls on beautiful soil. Some seed produces a hundredfold. I imagine that the audience laughs at this point. Any farmer in the audience would have known that, if this seed is wheat, no wheat in the ancient world could produce a hundredfold. So, after the chuckle dies down, Jesus says: Well, then, how about sixtyfold? Another laugh. Sixty fold is still too high. Again the chuckle dies down. Again Jesus takes another try, and this time names a yield that would (at least nearly) lie in the realm of possibility.
. . . Now all that remains is to figure out why he's telling stories about farming when he is sitting in a boat with a shore full of fishing folk in front of him.
In that sort of incongruous setting, here is a parable of the lesbian pastor found at Crossing the Lines blog by Tyler Schwaller:
She was one of those liberated folks, one of those people who knows and trusts the love and grace God brings into her life, even in ways that others don’t expect. But this one went too far. She was nourished by love for, from, and with another woman, and this was against the rules. You know how those United Methodists are about their rules! The rule keepers asked how she could do what was not lawful and still remain in the church.
She answered, “The church was made for humankind and not humankind for the church.”
Then, as she stood within that church, two women approached her. They had been harmed by the church before, but through the grace and mercy shared by this spirit-filled pastor, healing began. Because they believed in God, they sought the blessing of the minister for their holy union.
The pastor asked those who would stifle her, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm in the church, to save life or to kill?” Though she was grieved at the hardness of hearts in the United Methodist Church, she extended a hand of blessing.
Who might the audience be? Will they laugh in solidarity, recognition, impossibility?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/07/matthew-131-9-18-23.html
learning abundance
to fisherfolk
farmers are crazy
and vice versa
for fisherfolk to listen
to a farm story
chuckles begin
a sower
sowed everywhere
what a foolish farmer
a sower sowed
on a highway
expecting ocean smelt
farmers - what can be done
with such stick-in-the-muds
but be comic relief
a sower sowed
on rocky ground
hoping for trout in the sea
yes farmers cause us
to lift our face to the wind
and laugh and laugh
a sower sowed
on thorny ground
looking for salmon in a bathtub
oh my farmer friend
monkeys can type a masterpiece
you’ll get it yet - guffaw
a sower sowed
on good soil
a proven fishing ground
finally a farmer finds fruitfulness
whew, couldn’t have taken much more
poor farmer but we’re OK
sheep vs cattle
fisher vs farmer
Esau vs. Jacob
echoing
G*D vs. Adamah
Cain vs. Abel
anticipating
priest vs. prophet
nature vs. nurture
and later asea
no fish today
a rocky day
nets tore again
caught in weeds
all too empty
Hmm
condemnation
haunts our way
our laughter
comes back at us
asking for a new way
no condemnation
for fisher or farmer
trusters both
trusting
this old story
got abundance right
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/07/learning-abundance.html
What a great day! I think I’ll get me a few rays here on the beach.
Whoa! Where’d all these folks come from?
Hey there, what’s up?
You're hungry for another story?
Oh, not a bedtime story, but a waking up story.
Well, OK.
Let me think.
Try this one. “Once upon a time, a sower went out to sow. . . . Let anyone who wants to wake up, listen.
Here’s what’s real, there is no guarantee in life, no technique that will work every time. We are messy people in the midst of a messy world. Everything is still developing. Some things work and some don’t. Engage anyway.
Some of your work will go down a dark hole. Some of what you attempt will seem fruitful at first, but fade over time from lack of your own trust in it. Likewise some of your attempts will fade because of external factors out of your control that indicate you sowed at the wrong time or place. And, believe it or not, some of your growth will nurture and be nurtured by others and actually make a difference for now and for generations.
In the midst of uncertainty, engage anyway. This story is has no ending other than your waking up and engaging. So, off you go to practice. Come back again some time to let me know how it went. No matter how dark or faded, some of what you do will be crucially important.
Hmm, not a bad story. A few more rays for energy and it’ll be time for me to practice what I preach.
Ahh.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/07/matthew-131-9-18-23.html