But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it… Matt 13:23 (NIV)
Seed and Secrets – Parable Series 2 – Part 2
Go to PART 1
(OR go to Parable Series 1)
In Matthew, Jesus tells the story of a Sower who scatters some seed. When the seed falls on soil that's not conducive to growing, it doesn’t, well, grow. But when it falls onto good soil and takes root, it generates an abundant harvest.
His disciples don’t quite get it and they ask him why he talks in parables. Jesus explains that the Kingdom of God is like a secret that's being told – there are people who look, but don’t see. Those who hear but don’t understand.
“For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.”
He goes on to explain (kind of) the parable and we discover that the seed is the word of God, the good news, the Kingdom itself. A seed wrapped in a secret.
If I have a secret it’s because I don’t want many, if not any, people to know it. I keep it hidden, under wraps, untold, close; only revealing it to a few that I trust. Is this 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.” That sounds quite exclusive. It doesn’t quite match up with what we believe about God loving “the WHOLE WORLD (so much so) that he sent his only son so that WHOEVER believes would be saved.” (John 3:16. Ironically, Jesus told this to Nicomedus in a secret midnight meeting… a whisper of a seed that was about to be sown into the whole world.)
The interpretation of this word in our modern Bible neglects the full meaning it had to First Century Jews. The more correct translation is “Mystery”… and NOT some weird, out there, hard to find mystery. But one that requires faith to be seen. A mystery that leads one to silence… to “be still and know that (he is) God…”
God’s word, which John says is personified in Jesus, is not a secret God is trying to keep. It’s a mystery he is trying to reveal to a world that has lost faith and hope. A world that has eyes but is unable to see, and ears – God created, God designed, God-given ears – but can’t for the life of itself, hear a single word God is saying.
Have you tried telling someone what God has done for you? Why you believe? How God's healed you? What he's said to you? And in response, you get eyes that can’t see and ears that can’t hear? Have you ever been that person yourself?
I think I have the potential to be both at the same time – a vessel receptive to the mystery and a deaf and blind person to the glory of God all around me.
To live alive to the mystery, to be able to hear and see, to receive the seed that The Sower plants, is a life of faith. But how often does fear play on our faith, knocking it around a little, causing a touch of blindness and an ounce of deafness. But does our ability to hear and see effect God’s ability to keep on revealing his mystery? Has he turned off the sun and sent the moon to bed simply because some cannot see him in them? Does he silence blessing and hide his generosity because there are those who can't see it for the goodness that it is? Does he hide the cross because some cannot fathom its power?
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).
The Sower is relentless.
Go to Part 3 – Soil and Seed
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