Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 | Göttinger Predigten im Internet

Eighth Sunday After Pentecost | July 23, 2023 | Mt 13:24-30, 36-43 | Paula Murray |

⁴{Jesus} put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, ²⁵but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. ²⁶So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. ²⁷And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ ²⁸He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ ²⁹But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. ³⁰Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”

³⁶Then He left the crowds and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” ³⁷He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. ³⁸The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, ³⁹and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. ⁴⁰Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. ⁴¹The Son of Man will send His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, ⁴²and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ⁴³Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.”

The readings of the past weeks have provided a rich feast in the form of parables, teaching stories which use that which is familiar to us to help us understand that which is less familiar. There could be few acts more familiar to the agricultural society of the days when Jesus walked the earth than the act of sowing seed, for most people would have seen seed sown by hand from baskets or bags and may also have performed the same necessary task themselves. Sowing seed was also a deadly serious work, as any mischance that came about during the process could lead to lean months over the winter and spring, and even greatly impact the sowing of next year’s seed. The harvest from the seed that was sown at the start of the planting season must be good enough to feed people over winter and spring and also provide seed for the next season’s planting. There were, remember, no Tractor Supply companies or a local cooperatives like the Mill with seed available for purchase. In today’s Gospel reading as in last week’s, Jesus uses this life critical activity to illuminate another activity that is even more critical, one having to do with our salvation.

These two agricultural parables are a little unique in that they are part of a set of parables that begin with the line, “The kingdom of heaven is like.” Those other parables are much shorter, and in the form of a simile, that says one thing is like another. So, the kingdom heaven is like the lost coin a woman tears up her house to find. The two seed and sower parables do not start like those similes; there is no simple and transparent comparison of the kingdom of heaven to some familiar object. Instead of similes, what we have in the two parables having to do with seed and its sowing are allegories, longer narratives or stories that lead us to a deeper and richer understanding of the God’s kingdom or empire, especially when judged alongside the kingdom of this earth. The longer parables give us more to chew on spiritually; a bit like the difference between white and whole wheat bread to continue the agricultural drift of the Gospel readings this week and last. We’re going to look first at what is the same between the two parables of seed and sower, and then at what is different.

The similarities between the two parables are glaringly obvious, because in both parables Jesus Himself gives us the description of the actors and their roles. In the second parable as in the first, the Sower of the seed or the Master represents Jesus Christ, who in His preaching of the kingdom of heaven and His validating acts of healing and exorcism proclaims the Word of God to those both ready and unready to hear it. The Sower could also represent others who do the same, who also proclaim the Gospel, everyone from the first set of disciples to the people sitting here in the nave now. Again, like the first parable the field is the world, this world, the world of sun and soil, sin and death, where the powerful and the wealthy control the destinies of those who are neither.

Here, though, is where the differences begin to appear. First, the Master sows the seed, not his servants. They do report to Him concerning the conditions of His field, but they are not responsible for its condition, the evil one or the devil is. Just as creation was created good by God in the beginning, and then was corrupted by idolatry and sin, so the field, originally sowed with good seed, is corrupted by the very same entity who led Eve and Adam into disobedience and deception. The seed is divided into good and bad. The good seed are the children of the kingdom of heaven, and the bad seed are the children of the evil one.

Now if it were not odd enough that the Master sowed His own field rather than having his servants do it, things get odder still. How many of us enjoy gardening? The gardening year goes kind of like this. You get the seed catalogs in January and then you lay out your garden beds in your head or on paper and you either order your seed or you pick it up. Then you prepare the soil, enriching it, lightening it up a bit with peat, and you let it sit for a while and percolate. Then, you plant your seed. Now, do you sit back and do nothing but water your prized plants until the tomatoes ripen and you have more zucchini than any one neighborhood can use? No, you do not, because inevitably, it will not be just the seeds you planted growing in your beds. Your garden beds will be infiltrated by all sorts of unwanted growing things that take up the nutrients, water, and space intended for the vegetables you are growing for your kitchen table.

What then do you do with those noxious, unwanted plants? Why you weed them out of course. In fact, much of the summer is spent, or should be spent, weeding. Unless you are driving past our house, when I want you to think just like this parable Jesus tells us, because we do have a lot of weeding to catch up. Yet the Master of the fields forbids his servants from doing what every other servant would do, remove the weeds from the fields before they take over. Well, that’s odd. Clearly, Toto, we are no longer in Kansas, or any other field or garden a person in any part of this earthly world would maintain or harvest.

This harvest will be different, for this field will be reaped by the angels, and the good seed planted by our Lord and Master Jesus Christ will be brought out and brought home, to be cherished for all of eternity by God. The bad seed, on the other hand, those who do evil, will be burned, just as some of us burn the weeds we take out of our gardens. This parable, then, is about the final judgement, when Christ comes again, and both the living and the dead are judged. The language is beautiful, in that “the righteous shall shine like the sun in the kingdom of the father.” And it is terrifying, because all causes of sin and all sinners will be thrown into the fiery furnace, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The two parables of the sower and seed work together. The first of the two parables reinforces Christ’s constant call to work in His mission fields, to prepare the soil or the spirits of others to receive the saving Word of God. The second of the two parables shows us why it is so very important that we participate in this work God has given us. We do not preach the Word and enact the Word in our lives to save ourselves, for that is in God’s hands, but that God might save others. There is an end to this earthly life, but for those who believe there is new life, life beyond the grave, life that is joyous and loving, without any shade of sin or death.

Once upon a time, as when the justified saints that are the founders and sustainers of Saint Jacob’s Lutheran Church, theologians, pastors, and God’s people took the words of Jesus that spoke of judgment seriously. They did not try to rewrite the Gospel to suit their own notions of what is right or wrong, politically correct or not. They worried that we understood that judgment is real, not to punish the people around them who lived less than perfect lives, to point fingers at them or to assert their own spiritual superiority. They understood that they too, sinned, and were every bit as much in need of God’s mercy and correction than any one else. At least, they understood that when they paid attention to Scripture and pastor’s sermons past Sunday.

No one begins to understand the grace of God until they understand what God has forgiven them. Then comes gratitude, and joy, and a willingness to use our own lives to prepare another’s heart or spirit to receive the Holy Spirit. This congregation yet lives because those who came before us took care of business, of the business Jesus Christ gives us all, that we may pass the faith to others, that they may know the joy of Jesus in their lives. The seed we sow, the Word of God, in the fields that are our neighborhoods, are every bit as important to life than those seeds sown in the dirt, for they are life, and life everlasting.