Abstract
Amos Wilder, whose New Testament scholarship spanned seven decades of the last century, wrote that in the parables the reader does not meet Jesus, ‘the cloudy visionary’ but the ‘layman’ for whom human destiny is at stake in ‘ordinary creaturely existence, domestic, economic, social’ (Language of Gospel, 82). Here the lives of ordinary people from a distant time and culture comes alive in a way true of little ancient literature. Jesus was familiar with a rural Galilean milieu: outdoor scenes of farming and shepherding, and domestic scenes in simple one-room houses (Luke 11:5–8). The farming is hill-country farming, done in small patches with stone fences and briars (Mark 4:5–7), not that of the broad lowland plains.
We meet this Jesus in today’s Gospel. Close attention to the movement and images of the opening parable draws attention to the travails of farming. The first three sowings convey a rhythmic temporality. Each begins with the mention of a seed, proceeds to the negative situation that the seed encounters—barren path, rocky soil, and choking thorns—and concludes with the failure of the seed. The parable does not hurry to its conclusion and achieves its dramatic effect not by simply listing the three failures in contrast to the great harvest but by depicting a progression in the growth of the seed. The first on rocky ground has virtually no chance of survival and is devoured by the birds before any roots are put out (v. 4). The second seems to be growing—‘immediately it sprang up’ (vv. 5–6) but withers under the heat of the sun. The third grows higher to a stage where the buds are almost ready but is choked off at the last minute (v. 7) This rhythmic and ascending progression involves the hearers in the mystery of growth. A natural conclusion would be that the fourth seed ‘brought forth grain’, and that the harvest was good.
The expectation of the hearers is shattered, and the rhythmic progress of nature, which lulls the hearers into acceptance, is broken in the final verse which explodes with verbs of motion. The seeds ‘fell’ and ‘brought forth’, ‘growing up’ and ‘increasing’ and only then yielded thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold. The contrast between a 75 percent failure and such an extraordinary harvest suggests that there is no comparison between the expectation of the kingdom and its effect. The manner in which the climactic verse (v. 8) explodes, after the lull of the three previous verses, conveys the advent of the kingdom in Jesus’ teaching and activity as something that shatters the way by which life normally operates and the patterns that it involves.
This parable occurs as the opposition to Jesus builds throughout the previous chapter when the Pharisees took counsel on how to destroy Jesus over his sabbath healings (12:1–14), accuse him of being under the power of Beelzebul (12:22–32), and demand an authenticating sign (12:38–42). The parable not only offers encouragement to Jesus’ beleaguered disciples but brings forth images of hope that sustain Jesus as the lethal opposition mounts.
As Matthew 13 unfolds, the lectionary strangely omits Jesus private address to his disciple where he explains ‘secrets of the kingdom’, that are granted to them (13:10–17). Building on the image from Isaiah of the word of God as rain which nurtures a fruitful seed, Matthew wrestles with the failure of the word. In an extremely enigmatic set of sayings Jesus states that this failure is not due to God’s word but arises from unwillingness to listen and be converted (Isa 6:9–10).
The following allegory of the seeds (13:18–23), anticipating challenges in Matthew’s community, illustrates failures of ‘the word of the Kingdom’. Lack of faith arises when the devil snatches the seed along the path; faith springs up but the rocky ground of tribulation and persecution stifle it. Finally cares for the world and the lure of riches choke the word and render it unfruitful. But the good soil of understanding bears fruit in extravagant measure.
Two aspects of the readings may bear some fruit in our world today. Throughout Matthew 13, earth’s processes are images of the marriage of human activity and divine power. Extravagant harvests are unexpected; a field verdant with wheat among weeds images a community struggling with inclusion and exclusion, and the mustard seed of faith blossoms into a tree where all nations can gather. Yet, bountiful earth is destroyed by anxiety over worldly things and the deceit of wealth (the works of the flesh in Rom 8:5–8). Religious leaders such as Archbishops Rowan Williams and Justin Welby, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and Pope Francis have called for care of the earth and diagnosed the greed and exploitation that ‘choke the word’ and ‘render it unfruitful’.
Powerful images of planting and bursting forth of new life echo through the New Testament. Facing his imminent death Jesus proclaims ‘unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds’ (John 12:24). Paul offers hope to a community asking how the dead will arise, by evoking the works of nature: ‘So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable [. . .] it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body’ (1 Cor 15:42, 44). As our world mourns the loss of so many in the Coronavirus pandemic, ‘the beauty of the earth’ is a refrain that can echo in our churches and in our lives.