This coming Sunday is the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time. In the context of Jesus’ ministry the parable serves to explain why it is that the good news of the kingdom meets with such a varied response as we have seen in chapters 11–12, from enthusiastic acceptance to outright rejection. The fault lies not in the message, but in those who receive it.

People are both inadequate in themselves to respond as the word of the kingdom requires (compacted and shallow soil), and also exposed to competing pressures from outside (tribulation and persecution, anxieties and lures, and behind them all the evil one himself). The wonder is not that some do not produce fruit, but that any do. But here lies the parable’s encouragement both to Jesus’ followers then and to all who since then have preached this same gospel; not all will respond, but there will be  some who do, and the harvest will be rich.

Image credit: “The Sower” Vincent van Gogh (June 1888), Van Gogh Museum, Public Domain

This coming Sunday is the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time and we have been considering Jesus’ parable of the sower who went out to sow. In the parable there are three primary images: sower, seed, and ground. While there may be some differences in emphasis or specific details, the general understanding of the three images and their interconnection can be summarized as follows: Continue reading →

What did they hear?

This coming Sunday is the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Matthew 13 is a “day of parables.” The parable of the sower is spoken in public to great crowds (vv. 1–3), but its explanation and the teaching about parables are spoken only to the disciples (vv. 10–11). More parables are then spoken to ‘the crowds’ (v. 34), but the crowds are again left behind (v. 36), and the second explanation and further parables are spoken to the disciples in ‘the house’ (which Jesus had left in v. 1). The unresponsive crowds are thus clearly distinguished from the disciples to whom alone explanation is given, and this distinction is spelt out in vv. 11–17. Continue reading →

This coming Sunday is the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time. “A sower went out to sow.” As France [2007, 504] notes, in a primarily agrarian society the choice of agricultural imagery for parables needs no special explanation; three of the parables in this chapter are set on the farm. It is estimated that 90% of Israelites worked in some aspect of agriculture. There was also already a tradition in the prophetic books of using agricultural imagery, primarily in judgment narratives (e.g., Is 32, 35 and 44; Jer 31 and 51; Joel 3; and Amos 8). Continue reading →