SUNDAY 15 OT. CYCLE A
A crisis with five questions and seven parables (Mt 13)
The liturgy devotes this Sunday and the next two to the parables about the Kingdom of God found in chapter 13 of Matthew’s gospel. When the evangelist wrote this, he was reflecting the circumstances of his own time, around the year 80, when Jesus’s followers lived in a hostile environment. They were rejected, seemed to have no future, felt bewildered by their opponents, and did not understand why so many Jews refused to accept the message of Jesus, whom they recognized as the Messiah. Things were not as wonderful as they had imagined at first. How should one act in the face of all this? What should one think? Matthew, building on Mark’s parable discourse, puts into the mouth of Jesus, through seven parables, the answers to five questions that remain valid for us today:
Why don’t all people accept Jesus’s message? — The parable of the sower.
What attitude should we adopt toward those who reject that message? — The wheat and the weeds.
Does this message, accepted by so few, have any future? — The mustard seed and the leaven.
Is it worth committing oneself to it? — The treasure and the pearl of great price.
What will happen to those who accept the message but do not live according to the ideals of the Kingdom? — The net.
This Sunday we read the first; on the 16th, the next three; on the 17th, the other three.
Why don’t all people accept Jesus’s message?
The first parable, that of the sower, addresses the problem of why Jesus’s word does not bear fruit in some people. It draws on an experience known to an agricultural audience. For us, it suffices to recall two basic details: Galilee is a very mountainous region, and in Jesus’s time there were no tractors. The sower faced a difficult task and knew in advance that not all the seed would produce fruit.
Ideally, one would tell or read this parable to people who had never heard it before. At the end they would look at each other in bewilderment and ask: so what? At most, Jesus’s final words, “Let those who have ears to hear, hear!”, would suggest to them that the story has a deeper meaning, but they would not know what. We are dealing with an enigmatic parable, one that aims to provoke the reader’s curiosity.
That is why immediately afterward the disciples’ question arises: Why do you speak to them in parables? And this serves to introduce the most difficult passage in the entire chapter. The liturgy permits the reading of this section to be omitted and I advise following its suggestion, proceeding directly to the explanation of the parable: why does Jesus’s word not bear fruit in all its listeners?
Four possibilities
1) In some, because that word means nothing to them, does not accord with their needs or desires. For them, the formation of a community of free people, equals, brothers and sisters, children of the same Father means nothing.
2) Others accept it with joy but lack the courage and endurance to withstand persecution.
3) Others give greater importance to primary needs (food, clothing) than to the long-term goal (the Kingdom of God). Two opposite and extreme situations, the stress of life and the allure of wealth, produce the same effect, choking God’s word.
4) Finally, in others the seed bears fruit. The parable is optimistic and realistic. Optimistic, because a large part of the seed supposedly falls on good ground. Realistic, because it admits various degrees of production and response in good ground: a hundredfold, sixtyfold, thirtyfold. In this, as in so many things, Jesus is far more understanding than we are, for we consider only the ground that yields a hundredfold to be valid. Even the ground that yields thirty is good soil (an idea that could apply at all levels: moral, doctrinal, Christian commitment, and so on).
A call to awareness and thanksgiving
The parable could also be read as a call to responsibility and vigilance: even the good soil that is bearing fruit should remember what things leave God’s word barren: indifference, inconsistency when difficulties come, the stress of life, the allure of wealth.
But it is more important to give thanks because the Lord has sown his word in us, we have welcomed it, and even if only thirty percent, it has borne its fruit.
A call to faith and optimism: Isaiah 55:10-11 and Psalm 64
Crisis in the face of the present situation may in many cases come from our focusing everything on human action. When we fail, especially when others fail, we think everything is going wrong. We notice only negative aspects. By contrast, today’s first reading, which also uses the metaphor of seed and sower, encourages us to trust in the mysterious action of God’s word, fruitful as rain, which will not cease to produce fruit.
This brief passage seems very simple and theological, almost removed from everyday life. Yet it is the conclusion of chapters 40-55 of the book of Isaiah, which announces liberation from Babylon and return to one’s homeland. How will this be possible? Through a human king, Cyrus of Persia, and through God’s Word, which moves history.
We too must be convinced that the seed planted will not cease to bear fruit. It will be like the Lord’s word, which “will not return to me empty, but will accomplish that which I intend.”
God’s action is underscored by the psalm, which also uses agricultural images. The Lord not only plants the seed but also waters the earth, levels the clods, sends the light rain, blesses the shoots. In the end, “the valleys are clothed with grain which shout and sing for joy.” The future is more hopeful than we sometimes think.