May I speak to you in the name of the one, holy, and living
God. Amen.
The Parable of the Sower[1] is
familiar to many of us, though we may find the agricultural references a little
hard to fathom. Except for some intrepid
urban gardeners among us, we don’t spend a lot of time planting or harvesting
much of anything. That’s OK, because I
don’t think Jesus tells this parable to expand our understanding of
farming. Jesus tells this parable, like
all of his parables, to change our way of seeing the world.
The parable’s meaning isn’t found inside of it, so much as
behind it – in the world the parable seeks to illuminate. This parable definitely comes from the mouth
of Jesus, to the extent that we can be sure of such things. The scholars pretty much agree on that. They also pretty much agree that the
interpretation of the parable in Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t come from the mouth
of Jesus. It expresses an interpretation
from the early Church, some 50 to 60 years after Jesus told the parable. There is nothing wrong with that. This is what the church does in every
generation. It is what I’m going to attempt
to do today.
The problem is that the early Church’s interpretation gets
read as Jesus’ own interpretation and closes off other possible ways of reading
the parable; ways that might actually be closer to what it meant in Jesus’ time. This morning I invite you to imagine that
you are a Galilean peasant hearing this parable for the very first time, before
anyone else told you what it meant.[2]
You are a hard scrabble farmer, working the same plot of
land passed down from generation to generation in your family. You are grateful for this land and the sustenance
it provides. It is a privilege to work
the land as God’s tenant, for you believe deeply that the land belongs to God; not
to you, not to the money lenders in Capernaum and Jerusalem, and certainly not
to the damn Romans, who have occupied the country for the past 90 years.
Your people have been living sustainably on this land since
long before the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians, or even the Babylonians tried
to claim it. This little parcel of land
isn’t where you live; it is who you are.
Your ancestors are buried here.
Walking these valleys and hills is like breathing in and breathing out;
it is your life. It is your
identity. But the family plot is getting
harder and harder to hold on to since the Romans invaded. You’ve seen your neighbors lose their farms
because they couldn’t pay back the loans they had to take out to pay the
bills. Now, they work the land like
slaves for an absentee landlord living down in Jerusalem who has never even
been here. You could be next.
It has gotten worse since Herod Antipas started his urban
renewal program. Rebuilding Sepphoris
and creating a whole new capital city, Tiberias; new ports on the Sea of
Galilee; fish factories, roads, and huge granaries to siphon off the “surplus
of the harvest” for export. Once all the
new taxes are paid in kind, plus road tolls and the levy to Rome on top of the
Temple tax, there is barely enough left at the end of the season to feed your
family. Sustainable farming has become
subsistence farming – if the weather cooperates. If it doesn’t; then you are left with the
awful decision of who eats and who doesn’t.
Your own people’s leaders in Jerusalem, who are supposed to
be upholding the covenant with God to ensure justice in the land, seem more
interested in appeasing the Romans and getting their cut in the process. The rich are getting richer and the poor are
getting poorer. Nobody seems to
care.
You begin to wonder if the Zealots, who are trying to start
a war to overthrow the Romans, don’t have the right of it. But then you remember why Herod had to
rebuild Sepphoris: Because the Romans
burned it to the ground and sold captured rebels into slavery during the last
failed uprising. The Romans destroyed Sepphoris and Herod just built it even
bigger. Nothing seems to change.
Then, you hear about this teacher named Jesus, who grew up
just down the road in Nazareth and now lives in Capernaum. He
seems to be drawing quite a crowd; healing people, holding big outdoor
festivals with all you can eat, and talking about a kingdom where folks who are
poor and humble and hungry for justice are blessed. It’s sure not like the kingdom you live
in. Not like any kingdom you’ve ever
even heard of. Your curious. You decide to take a day off and see for
yourself what the excitement is all about.
You gather on the edge of the crowd as Jesus begins teaching
along the shore of the Sea of Galilee.
You are surprised when he begins by talking about a sower, a farmer like
you. From what you heard, Jesus started
out as a migrant laborer working on construction sites around the Galilee. What does he know about farming? But you lean in, because he seems to be
describing your experience.
You know about seeds that fall on the road and are devoured
by birds. Roads are the infrastructure
of an extractive economy. Roman roads
are the instrument for siphoning off a huge part of your crop taken in tax,
tribute and rent payments, and then transported and sold in a global market
where other people get rich selling what you harvested. You’ve seen the eagle on Roman coins and
military standards. You know exactly who the birds of prey are devouring your
seeds.
Rocky ground seems about all that is left of your family
plot since your dad had to sell off the best part of the land so he could pay
off a loan to keep the farm going after the last drought. You were just a child then, but you remember
how your mother and grandmother wept when he had to do it. The Romans take most of the harvest and
wealthy aristocratic families take the best land. You have to make do with the rocky ground
that is left over.
When Jesus starts talking about thorns, it calls to mind the
Torah portion you heard in the synagogue just a few weeks ago. The enemies of God’s people were described as
thorns, and you grew up singing psalms about how the wicked are like thorns.[3] Now, your own leaders seem to be choking the
life out of the land, collaborating with the Romans to squeeze the last cent
out of you and your neighbors.
Roads, birds of prey, rocky ground and thorns: Jesus is describing the kingdom you live
in. He really seems to get you.
Then he starts talking about good soil that brings forth grain, some a
hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
Enough for everybody to live well.
What would that be like? Is it
possible?
Jesus then falls silent.
You are left pondering his words.
He has described your world but also planted the seed of a vision of a
different kind of world. Jesus lets his
words sink if for a minute, and then offers a prayer before inviting folks so
sit down in groups with friends and strangers and share the food you’ve
brought. You memorized that prayer so
that you could teach it to your children:
“Our father in heaven, your name is holy! Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth
as it is in heaven. Give us the bread we
need for today. Forgive our debts as we
forgive each other’s debts. When we are
tempted, free us from conspiring with evil.”
During the meal, you met some cool fishermen and some women
who were supporting Jesus’ work. You
were a little shocked so see women unrelated to him traveling with Jesus. You were amazed to learn that fishing these
days wasn’t much easier than farming.
You had more in common with people who made their living on the sea than
you thought. There was even a tax
collector in your group who seemed a little embarrassed to be there. You tried not to give him stink eye, because he
seemed really interested in learning about your life. What would it be like if you all worked
together to make Jesus’ prayer come true?
The Parable of the Sower is about the sower. It is an invitation to enter into the world
of the sower, to see things from his or her perspective. It is an invitation to imagine the
possibility that God desires a world in which the sower is no longer exploited. It is an invitation to imagine what that
world would be like and then to make it happen.
It is an invitation to sowers to claim their power in solidarity with
those who have “ears to hear” their truth, and an invitation for those who
speak and those who listen to learn to see the world differently together.
The parables of Jesus are exercises in moral sympathy and
moral imagination. We remember these
parables to remind us that following Jesus means having the humility to listen
to those closest to the pain in our communities, to see the world from their
perspective, and to allow that perception to change us so that together we can
change the world. For those closest to
the pain, following Jesus means finding your voice, having the courage and
vulnerability to speak your truth, trusting that you will find allies in the
struggle for justice. It is this
speaking and listening, this sympathy and imagination extended to strangers and
even enemies, that makes a moral community.
This is the subversive practice of the church. We gather to speak and listen, breaking open
the parables of our lives so that we can be broken open to each other. We allow ourselves to be changed by our
encounter with the other. We pray
together and share a meal. And then we
go out and change the world.
We ritualize this practice in the Holy Eucharist as a
pattern to live out in our daily lives.
Whose parable do you need to hear?
What parable is yours to speak?
We hear each other into imagining that things can be different. We hear each other into solidarity. We hear each other into action. We celebrate our victories and we learn from
our defeats. We reclaim the harvest from
the birds of prey, the rocky ground and the bitter thorns, and we share it
together. That is how the kingdom of God
comes.
Amen.
[1]
Matthew 13:1-9; cf. Mark 4:3-9, Luke 8:5-8.
[2] My
reading of the parable is indebted to Ernest van Eck, 2014, “The harvest and
the kingdom: An interpretation of the Sower (Mk 4:3b-8) as a parable of Jesus
the Galilean,” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 70(1), Art.
#2715, 10 pages.
[3]
Numbers 33:55; Psalm 118:12.
