Mathew 13: 1-23
I always wondered why Jesus spoke to the people in parables knowing that they couldn't understand. It seemed to me that He was intentionally hiding the information. However I never really felt bold enough to question it.
Today the reading came back again and I wondered again "why"? The explanation offered began with the parable which is in the first part of the chapter. The seed falling on the path is eaten by birds, widely accepted as those carried away by the evil one. Basically the word had no impression upon those individuals. Neither here nor there to them.
The seed in shallow soil had no roots so dried at the slightest heat. Again accpeted as those who quickly make a conversion in the churh and at the slightest obstacle slip back into old ways and forget all that they just learned and professed simply because it had no roots within them.
Those among the thorns were choked by the thorns. The thorns are accepted as the struggles of life ordinary and extra-ordinary but mainly understood as the unusual trials. These persons are worn down and out by lifes natural opposition to the Light of Life.
Good soil produces harvests of differing abundances. These people have the root, the nurturing, and so produce good fruit. But are not to be compared to each other in abundance because we are all different and have different spheres of influence and so my harvest may be smaller but is still worthy.
That is the obvious explanation. Seems straight forward to me. But then why hide it in a parable? The fact is that we can think of ourselves narrowly as one of the seeds but we do ourselves and injustice. We should look at ourselves as the field. We all have parts in us that fit each description. We should therefore not despair over bad parts, but work at moving them towards the good parts simply because there is good in each of us. We should not be complacent over good because there is much that needs work.
It also means that when we go out to try to produce our fruit, it will work in some ppl, work ion some for a season, work in some for a tiny while and not work in others at all. Our efforts will produce fruits of different consistency ranging from bitter to sweet.
Make yours count.
Selah!!!
4 comments:
Very interesting analysis.
true - never thought of it like that. Us being the field that is.
i feel as if u were in church with me this morning. That was the gospel reading and our priest really challenged all of us to work at seeing beyond the stories that Jesus told and see the deep underlying meaning. Jesus spoke in parables to ensure that the ppl would work for their salvation. Anyone that's lazy won't analyse the story but will just take it at face value. Thanx for pointing out yet another way of looking at this parable.
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