March 19 2023
Matthew 13:1-23
Most people understand that when you go to hear a speaker or a singer, like in a concert setting, you always go with expectations. For my birthday last year, my three kids chipped in and got tickets so that they could take me to a Bruce Springsteen concert which is coming up in April. I have listened to Springsteen since I was a teenager and the year I met Jennifer we went to see him in the old Cleveland Browns stadium which was an unbelievable experience. So, I know that when I go to this upcoming concert, there is more than likely a whole bunch of songs that I can sing by heart. When I had kids, I shared my love of Springsteen music with them and I have great memories of them putting vinyl records on something called a record player so that we could listen to the songs that I had long enjoyed . So I expect that I will not be disappointed when we all show up at this concert knowing that yes, it will most likely be hours of singing along to songs that seem like old friends.
So it goes without saying that when we go to hear someone that we go with expectations. I would be really confused if I went to a Springsteen concert and found that he has now decided to rap all of his music; I’d also be more than a little upset. So, I wonder what expectations the people in this crowd must have had as they heard that this latest Messiah wannabe was going to be speaking at the Galilean amphitheater. They must have wondered if this was at last the guy, you know, the guy who would be the answer to all those prophecies about a king in the line of David, you know, the one who would restore the country of Judaea, throwing out the foreign occupation forces, and reestablishing the holy kingdom of God. Maybe then it at last would feel like the exile was at over and done with. These people who gathered on the hills beside the Sea of Galilee must have expected fiery revolution speak, you know, a talk to set ablaze the hopes of the people crushed under the load of Roman rule. Maybe this is when he would lay out his plan to take back the holy city of Jerusalem, throwing out those unclean pagans from this sacred site. Maybe today this one who just couldn’t wait to be king would speak to how this would be the time of revenge for all of the fathers, and brothers and friends who had died brutal deaths at the hands of the infidels. We know that this must have been some of their expectations because it wouldn’t be very many years until longings such as these boiled over and these very same people who came out that day to hear Jesus would stir up a rebellion against Rome only to be crushed, their Temple torn down and their hopes scattered to the wind.
So, here these people came from miles around wanting to hear of how they would be part of a great rebellion against imperial forces which had ravaged their land too long and then Jesus stood up, cleared his throat and said, “ A farmer went out to do his spring planting. Some of the seed fell on that little path alongside the field and the birds made a quick lunch of them. Some seed fell on those outcroppings of rock and the seed quickly sprouted yet it also quickly died as its roots never got going, so they withered away.Then there was some other seed which fell there in the thistles and the thorns and these seeds, they quickly got choked out by those vigorous weeds. But all was not lost because there was other seed that fell on good soil and those seeds, well those seeds, did they ever produce a harvest, some produced a hundred fold, and some sixty fold and yet others, thirty fold. If you’re listening, you’ll get what I’m saying. Thank you all for coming. Good night. And with that Jesus walks off the stage. Can you imagine the look of dismay and confusion on the faces of those poor people who had dropped everything to hurry over to the hills of Galilee to hear news of an upcoming revolution and all they got was nothing more than the farm report? All Jesus had spoken of was just a typical day sowing seed. Everybody who had heard Jesus that day already knew how the winter wheat and the barley was planted, they surely didn’t have to get all cleaned up and come and sit on a hillside to come and listen to some guy with delusions of grandeur speak to them about planting crops instead of speaking to them about the coming kingdom which is the real reason why they came.
Yet, the truth was that Jesus really had been talking to them about the coming kingdom. You see, there was nothing wrong with what he had said rather their was something seriously wrong with the hearing of those who gathered to hear him that day. Jesus knew perfectly well the expectations of the people he spoke to. The hopes they had had so captured their imagination that there was no other way for them to expect a kingdom to come than for them to choose violence. This is why Jesus reaches back into the book of Isaiah, in the sixth chapter, the ninth and tenth verses, where God told the people who were Isaiah’s audience, “You indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they would see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.” What should make us pause right here as we read these words of Isaiah is that they are found in all four gospel accounts. You have to admit that there are not many sayings that have made it into all of the accounts of the good news of Jesus Christ, but these are one of them. To grasp what God said to Isaiah and ultimately to us, we must begin at the end of this saying where God speaks about healing. Healing is only found in the truth because to be made whole is to become what we were truly meant to be. This is the healing that God wished his people to know, the healing that comes from the hearing and understanding of the truth. What kept them from experiencing this healing is that they were no longer able to hear, their ears had become heavy, and their eyes had become covered over and were no longer able to see. Yet as tragic as these symptoms were it was the horrible condition of the hearts of God’s people which was most shocking. God tells them that their hearts had become dull, the original Hebrew, said that their hearts had become fat, a term that implied being sluggish or stubborn. The condition of the people of God is that even if their eyes could see their hearts would be unable to perceive just what it was they were seeing. The heart then was the vessel where what is seen and what is heard is made sense of, where the raw data of our experiences is at last understood. What those people who had come to see and hear Jesus did not understand is that this is who they were, people who really did not understand what was going on.
You see, when Jesus spoke of what seemed to be nothing more than a day in the life of a farmer, what he was actually doing is speaking about them. It was their ears which could not hear the words of God’s kingdom; it was their hearts which could not understand these words of God’s hope for the world. If the words of the kingdom could be thought of as being seeds suddenly the story Jesus told makes much more sense. If the words Jesus spoke about the kingdom were heard but these words were not understood, then this was an opportune time for evil to come into their hearts so that the words of Jesus were, in effect, destroyed.. Or if these words were heard, and received with joy, yet the person who does so does not have any root in himself, then when persecution or trouble comes, the enthusiasm of these people dries up and blows away like the seeds of a dandelion. And if a person hears the words of the kingdom and they are so caught up with worrying about all of the cares of this world then, yes, that word of the kingdom doesn’t stand a chance. Fortunately, the words of the kingdom, do get heard by a few people and these words are not only heard but these words are understood on a heart level and then this happens, voila, a harvest happens and the person speaks forth words of the kingdom which get heard by others, and not only heard by others but also understood deep within their hearts.
It begins to become clear just why Jesus began to stop just stating that the kingdom of God was near and that people had to turn from what they had thought it was all about and begin to take a fresh look at what this kingdom of God actually was. Jesus was speaking the truth, people had supposedly heard what Jesus was saying yet his words could make no head way against their preconceived ideas of what this kingdom of God was all about. They were street savvy enough to know that if you want a revolution then heads gotta roll and blood has to flow, there just was no other way that real change was going to happen unless through violent action. All of their thoughts about the kingdom and how it was going to happen filled their heads, clogging up their ears and their ability to actually hear what Jesus had to say. And what Jesus had to say was a radically different way that a revolution could happen than anyone had ever thought of. What if God’s kingdom was something that was alive, and growing that a person could get caught up in, losing their life in this new life which flowed out from the heart of God into and about our world. When Jesus spoke about a farmer who went out to do his spring planting, he was, in fact, speaking quite clearly about the kingdom of God. The reason that those who came that day most likely went home disappointed was that they knew all about how kingdoms come about, thank you, and what they wanted to hear is if this one who spoke about this coming kingdom knew what they knew. You see, a person’s expectations can clog up a person’s hearing and make their hearts quite stubborn to understanding that there just might be another way to make kingdom’s happen.
This inability to hear and understand this message of Jesus not only affected how people received his message of the coming kingdom of God but their misunderstanding also affected how they loved God. We must not forget that the heartbeat of the kingdom of God was his holy love for us. This holy love of God was a love which was discovered in the failure of people, not in their success. There in exile when it was so painfully evident that the very people of God suffered from a grave poverty of spirit, there is where God came to them, there when they were far from home with no hope that they would ever return, there God in his holy love came to revive their lowly and contrite spirit. This holy love given to his people is what God expected to be demonstrated back to him. Yet this is not what happened at all. They instead came to God with their hands and their hearts full of hopes and dreams which spouted out of their mouths as nothing more than demands that they expected God to put his stamp of approval on as if he was to have no say in the matter. They desired a bloody, vengeful, overthrow and the reason they demanded that God go along with their scheme is that they had kept the Temple running like a well oiled machine. But God was and is a God who cares nothing for machines nor does he care for carefully plotted schemes of vengeful justice because, of course, he is a God of holy love. God only desired that his people lay down all of their schemes, and demands and life plans and kingdom hopes, take a deep breath and just love him with no expectations. How very novel to just love God for who he is, a God whose love is defined by an unwavering loyalty and faithfulness.
God, right from the beginning of his relationship with his people, only asked that they love him, to love him with all of their heart, with all of their life, with all of they had been given. Here in this story of a farmer setting out to do his spring planting, Jesus connects this desire of God to be loved with all of who we are with our hearing and understanding the message of his coming kingdom, a kingdom where the holy love of God rules over all. Jesus speaks about the word of God’s kingdom being sown within a person’s heart. Yet, because there is no understanding , the holy love of God which God hoped would find a home in the hearts of his people, is ruthlessly snatched away by evil. This word used here,”snatched”, is similar to what Jesus explained in his Sermon on the Mount as being what the wolves in sheep’s clothing do to those who are truly sheep. This gives some understanding as how evil brings forth a violent action that destroys any thoughts of being people who love with the holy love of God. What these evil actions do, Jesus tells us, is to destroy what is sown in a person’s heart because there is no understanding. This word translated here as being, “understanding”, is a very different word than what we normally think as being the figuring out of a problem so that we at last can say that we understand it. No, in this word there is thoughts of a coming or a putting together. In other words, what is being spoken of here is the creation of a unity. This unity is what our hearing of the coming of God’s kingdom is supposed to create. Upon hearing of the holy love of God, how God has loved us in spite of our failure to meet his expectations, we in turn are to love God in the same manner with which he first has loved us, with a love that has no strings attached. In doing so, we become at last united with the God who has first loved us with his holy love. This is what is meant by this word translated as, “understand”.
The words Jesus speaks of the coming kingdom then must not only be heard, but this word of the kingdom must result in a union of holy love between us and God. If this union of holy love does not come about because our heart has grown cold, then evil will come along and remove all hope of holy love from our hearts. This same dynamic is also found in our loving God with our life and with what God has given to us. If we hear of the coming kingdom where God’s holy love reigns and rules, we may indeed jump for joy. But unless we go further and become united with God in a bond of holy love, we will fear for our lives when trouble comes on account of this message of God’s impending kingdom. Only as our lives our bound together with our eternal God with cords made of the unbreakable, loyal, love of God will we be able to lay down our life as a demonstration of the holy love which compels us.
The same truth is found in our dealing with the cares of the world and the lies that whisper to us that great riches are the real source of contentment. If all we do is hear about the coming kingdom ruled by the holy love of God, then, yes, the anxieties created by watching over our earthly treasures will most assuredly choke out the love we desire to give to God. But if we are united in a bond of holy love with the God who first touched our lives with his holy loves, then we will realize that we have found a greater and more secure treasure, a treasure which will allow us to share what has been given to us and in this way demonstrate our love to God with all that he has so graciously given to us.
So, yes, a story of a farmer sowing his field with seed is not what those people who gathered there by the shore of the Sea of Galilee expected to hear. Perhaps such a story is not what we expect to hear either yet if we can come during this Lenten season with fasting, giving up those things we love, and giving up most of all our expectations of what we demand that the kingdom of God must be and instead with clear ears and cleansed hearts, listen anew to a story about a farmer who went out to sow, we may just come away transformed by the holy love of God. May you not just hear the message of God’s kingdom of holy love but may the reality of a union of holy love with the God who wholly loves you be yours today and always. Amen. `
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