But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it… Matthew 13:23 (NIV)
Secrets Often Unravel Slowly – The Seed Series – Part 3
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
In Matthew 13 (verses 1-23), it's recorded that Jesus told a parable about a farmer who had some seeds to plant and went out to the field and sowed them into the ground. Some of the seeds fell on soil that wasn’t ready for them. It wasn’t prepared well, and not the kind of place a seed would flourish in, and in turn, nothing grew there. But, some seeds found their way into good soil. Soil that was ready and healthy and prepared. In that ground, the seeds took root and generated an abundant harvest.
Even by the end of the parable, Jesus disciples couldn’t find the message in the story.
Why couldn’t Jesus just tell them what he was trying to say, straight up?
(Because, of course, that’s how life is, right? Uncomplicated, straightforward, black and white… note the sarcasm).
Jesus then explained to them that the Kingdom of God is like a secret that’s being told. And we discover that the seed is the word of God, the Kingdom itself.
A seed wrapped in a secret.
Generally speaking, secrets are not for broadcast. I keep my secrets hidden, buried and tucked away, untold, close; only revealing them to a few that I trust. Is that what Jesus meant by “It has been given to you to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them, it has not been given” (Matt 13:11)? That sounds too exclusive for the inclusive and expansive nature of The Divine.
Our modern interpretation of the word “secret” neglects the full meaning it had to First Century Jews. A more correct translation is “mystery.” Not some weird, out there, hard to find mystery. But one that comes with the invitation to explore, pursue and discover… a the-doors-open kind of mystery. It’s an invitation to engage your faith.
The Divine isn’t trying to bury his secrets or hide himself away, to be found only by the elect and elite few. God is actively sharing his mysteries with us, broadcasting secrets through the world around us, through our own lives, through our own joy and suffering. He’s even telling them to those who have lost faith and hope; that have eyes but are unable to see. Ears – God created, God designed, God-given ears – but can’t for the life of itself, hear a single word God is saying, from close up all the way through to the outer edges of the cosmos.
At any given time, I have the potential to accept the invitation of mystery, but also live in deaf-blindness to it. I can be asleep to The Divine at work in me and around me, but also a receptive vessel.
Secrets often unravel slowly, in unseen places, before they break through the surface green and alive and blooming.
To live alive to the mystery, to be able to hear and see – even if just the little bit that we can right here, right now – to receive the seed of a secret that The Sower plants, is what I call a life of faith.
Does our ability to hear and see effect God’s ability to keep telling his mysteries secrets? Has he turned off the sun and sent the moon to bed simply because some cannot see him in them?
Paul reminds us that “even if we are faithless, he will still be full of faith, for he never wavers in his faithfulness to us!” (2 Tim 2:13 The Passion Translation).
This isn’t a really a parable about soil. It’s a farmer who relentlessly sowed his secrets hoping that some would catch hold, even in the most unlikely places.
Go to A Never Ending Story – The Seed Series – Part 4
Written by Liz Milani
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