Photo by Dương Trí on Unsplash
This Sunday Jesus introduces a parable. A parable is a story that is meant to overturn our view of ‘how things are’ and invites us to look at reality through the eyes of Jesus himself. He introduces the disciples and people to the notion of the ‘Kingdom of God’.
The gospel is not locked in the past but addresses our lives today. The human condition does not seem to have changed since Jesus walked the earth and his challenge to us is not ancient but as fresh as today’s sunlight.
St Matthew’s gospel informs us in chapter 12 that hostility was rising against Jesus especially from the Pharisees and other leaders of religion. Now in chapter 13, Jesus is preaching at the lakeside, he is sitting in a boat and a large crowd has gathered.
Commentators on the text make some comments: firstly, he is sitting down which means he has assumed the role of a teacher and secondly, he is not teaching in the synagogue, he has been forced to the countryside. In a sense, he is moving outside of the structured religion which the synagogue represents and he is preaching about the kingdom of heaven which is a free-flowing notion; he does not declare a doctrine or a tight moral code.
To this day, people have different attitudes to how religion ought to be practised. Some would sympathise with the role of the Pharisees who kept tight control of what it meant to be a Jew, and in doing so, helped them to retain their religious identity which was under attack from the powers controlling Palestine. The issue that Jesus had with the Pharisees was losing sight of what God wanted from them, mercy, compassion and justice. These are God’s attributes.
This Sunday we hear the parable of The Sower.
For our purposes, the parable is in the first nine verses. The next 14 verses explain the parable to the disciples.
In our present time, just as then, the power of God’s word is still with us, achieving life. The sower throws the seed to the left and the right, an image with which the people were familiar.
The seed is God’s word, which has the potential to do so much good; we hear that when the seed falls in good soil, the crop blossoms with extraordinary growth. The crop grows through the inner power inherent in the seed. Such is God’s power.
However the seed does not always germinate because people do not listen, they possess stony hearts. The seed cannot contend with other interests and values which choke our feeling for God’s ways and take us away from God. This is part of our contemporary secular situation.
Nevertheless, the seed does grow in good soil! In our day, the Church fulfils its role as a sign of the kingdom when it puts today’s gospel into practice.
Columban Fr Gary Walker is currently living at the Columban house in Sandgate, Brisbane.
