The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Matt 13:11 (NIV)
They, Them and Jesus – Parable Series 2 – Part 1
(Go to Parable Series 1)
In “Short Stories by Jesus” Amy-Jill Levine writes: “Jesus told parables because they serve, as Song of Songs Rabbah notes, as keys that can unlock the mysteries we face by helping us ask the right questions: how to live in community; how to determine what ultimately matters; how to live the life that God wants us to live. They are Jesus’s way of teaching, and they are remembered to this day not simply because they are in the Christian canon, but because they continue to provoke, challenge, and inspire.”
Parables are NOT illustrations or fables meant to reveal a certain point. They are provocative stories designed to make us think. They get under our skin, into our hearts and mess around with our world view. They are disruptive, oddly encouraging, and leave you with both questions and hope alike. Today, being so far removed from the cultural aspects of Jesus life, it's easy to read the parables two-dimensionally and not think much of them… But they have depth and meaning that can only be grasped when you understand how they function. Jesus rarely interpreted his parables, and this in itself reveals how they work. The meaning bends and morphs over time, through situations and depending on where you're at when you hear it, making them timeless and transcendent.
In Matthew 13, Jesus tells one of the only parables he somewhat (almost) interprets. The Parable of the Sower:
“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.” (Matt 13:3-9)
If you’re like me, you’ve heard this parable preached on a thousand times, you’ve read in your one year Bible reading plan (if you didn’t skip that day… haha!) and you’ve thought about once or twice in between. Where does your heart land when you read it? What do you focus on? For me, it's always been about the soil. Am I good soil? Or am I a concrete path, a rocky way, or filled with weeds? Then I start this self-tearing-up process where I beat my own heart up for its condition, desperately wanting it to be pleasing to God. At the same time, I start questioning the condition of other peoples “soil” and assign them labels – rocky, concrete, weedy.
After he had told this parable, his disciples asked, “What? Why?” (paraphrased). Jesus answered, “the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.” Matt 13:11.
It's a secret?
Am I a “you” or a “them”?
And if the Kingdom of a God is a secret, then why be the salt of the earth and the light of the world; or why be the lamp set on a stand or the city on a hill that Jesus himself talks about in Matthew 5?
The secret lies not in the parable itself, but in the way we treat it. And it will do us well to remember that the parable is not called “the parable of the soil” or even “the parable of the seed…”
But, this is a story about the Sower. The farmer. He is not stingy with his secrets, but will tell them to anyone who will lend him a listening ear.
Go to Part 2 – Seed and Secrets
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