On sowing the word
Commentary
Perhaps the most humbling and, at the same time, thrilling moments of the liturgy occur for me when I announce the words of the absolution: "As a called and ordained minister of the Church of Christ, and by his authority, I therefore declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins...." To think that we are given the authority to speak the word of God that not simply describes or defines but actually effects forgiveness is almost too much to comprehend.
Perhaps what makes it so overwhelming is that words come so fast and furious in our day that we have little expectation of them. Like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, we can get "sick of words." We talk about the ambiguity of words, about the motives behind them, and about the tone in which they are delivered. But words are the means by which God's word comes to us, effecting what they say and driving the messenger to humility.
Isaiah 55:10-13
These concluding words of the collected sermons of Second Isaiah are among the most powerful in the Bible. I confess that verses 10-11 in particular hold much meaning and hope in my life and for the world. In fact, some years ago a student at the seminary where I taught heard me say one day how much meaning these words have for me, and so a month later she presented me with her cross-stitched version of these verses. It hangs on the wall directly in front of me as I work at the computer, keeping before me daily the news that the divine word of promise provides.
When these words were written by the prophet we call Second Isaiah, they were desperately needed. The people of Israel, exiled to the land of their captors in Babylon, had not heard a word from the Lord for quite a while (see 42:14). During that famine of the word many had decided the gods of Babylon were riding on top of the world, and so they deserved adoring attention. When the Lord sent this prophet to announce that their Savior was near, many had trouble believing such a message, particularly from a God who had not been present.
Second Isaiah distinguished this Lord from the gods of Babylon primarily on the basis of the effective word. Time after time he announced the Lord's lawsuit against the gods of Babylon for false representation. They claim to be gods but they cannot do what the Lord does: speak in advance what will happen and then make it come to pass (see, for example, Isaiah 44:6-8). That is what makes the Lord a God and renders the idols as imposters.
The word of the Lord that came to the exiles through this prophet was the word of salvation. The time had come for the exiles to go home to the Jerusalem they had left fifty to sixty years earlier. The people could count on it, because the Lord succeeds in the thing for which he sent the word.
That message is repeated in the final words of our pericope, indeed the final words of this section of the Book of Isaiah. The verses remind me of the song called "A Beautiful Noise" that Neil Diamond wrote and sang. A beautiful song it is that makes the people go out from their captivity in joy while the mountains and hills burst into song and the trees join the festivity by clapping their hands. The song of the creation sounds much like that of Psalms 96 and 98 that celebrate the coming of the Lord to bring justice and righteousness to the earth, and Psalm 65, the psalm assigned for the day, describes nature's joyful song over the fertility that the Lord brings to the earth. Indeed, nature itself will be transformed as the thorns and briers do the Cinderella trick and become cypresses and myrtles. In this transformation the preaching of Second Isaiah ends as it began (40:3-5; see also 35:1-10), for nothing can stay as it was when God comes with the gift of salvation.
Romans 8:1-11
Not even condemnation can remain "for those who are in Christ Jesus."
Once again Paul uses the word "law" as though it means principle or even power, as he used it in the pericope last Sunday from chapter 7. The principle "of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death." The transformation is nothing short of dramatic -- qualitative rather than quantitative. Prior to God's justifying act in Christ, sin was the dealer and dealt the hand of death. Paul had already discussed the sin-death sequence in 5:12-14. Now that game is over, and God makes winners out of the losers.
God accomplished this wondrous gift "by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh." Don't let the word "likeness" fool you here! Christ became fully human, shared our limitations, suffered our pain and our sorrow, even our mortality. By so completely identifying with us in our flesh, Christ came "to deal with sin." Who is the dealer now? This simple expression defines the purpose for the coming of Christ: incarnation is the means by which he would take care of this death dealer called sin.
The imagery Paul uses to describe the action of God shows how the tables have turned. Prior to this passage, Paul had argued about the role of sin as condemning us all, Jew and Gentile alike. Now, however, Paul writes that God "condemned sin in the flesh" by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The condemner has been condemned, and so sin's power and influence have seen their day.
The result of the new reality is that the justified live not according to the flesh, as we did before, but "according to the Spirit." As we wrote in some detail on the latter half of this pericope for the Fifth Sunday in Lent (March 21), the Spirit of God and of Christ, dwelling within us, means life here and now as well as life on the day of resurrection.
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
In the preceding chapter Jesus experienced in a variety of ways the rejection of his mission and ministry. The Pharisees chided him for allowing his disciples to break the Sabbath law by picking grain to eat (vv. 1-8). His healing of the man with the withered hand raised still more conspiracy from the Pharisees (vv. 9-14), even though many who followed him had been cured (vv. 15-21). Finally, the healing of the demoniac who was blind and mute led the Pharisees to accuse Jesus of healing by the power of Beelzebul and challenge him for a sign (vv. 22-45). Now in chapter 13 Matthew has bunched together a series of parables that focus on agrarian interests.
The parables are introduced with the words "on that day." The NRSV, following the RSV, translates the Greek words as "that same day." In doing so, those translations date the parables on the same day as the previous incident in which Jesus, faced with a visit from his mother and brothers, redefined family in terms of discipleship (12:46-50). Their obvious justification in rendering the phrase "that same day" comes from the additional note that "Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea." The house presumably was the one he was in when "his mother and brothers were standing outside" (12:46). In Matthew there is no indication that Jesus went into a house, for Matthew does not repeat Mark's words at 3:19b: "Then he went home." Interestingly, Mark says nothing about Jesus' leaving the house, as Matthew does, for Mark begins his account of our pericope simply with the words, "Again he began to teach beside the sea" (Mark 4:1). Mark will save the phrase "on that day" (only slightly different in Greek) until the last paragraph of the chapter, following the parables about the kingdom (see 4:35).
So what difference does such trivia make in the interpretation of the story? The expression "on that day" -- whether at the beginning of the parables about the kingdom of God (Matthew) or following them (Mark) -- is an expression from the Old Testament that introduces a prophecy about the Day of the Lord on which God would establish the kingdom. It is an expression that grew up in the telling of Israel's past (see Exodus 14:31; Judges 20:15, 21, 35, 46). Just as the Lord was victorious "on that day," so also "on that day" the Lord will be victorious over all that oppose the Lord, and so the kingdom of God will begin with their defeat. Amos addressed the people of Israel who were expecting exactly that kind of favoritism "on that day," but that prophet included in the bad news Israel and Judah as well. Particularly significant is the use of "on that day" to introduce the coming victory of the Lord over the serpent Leviathan (Isaiah 27:1), because the passage in which Mark uses the phrase introduces the story of Jesus' stilling of the storm and sea (monster) (Mark 4:35-41).
To begin the series of parables about the kingdom with the phrase "on that day," Matthew sets the entire forthcoming teaching into the context of kingdom's nearness -- which, of course, was the content of Jesus' sermon (Matthew 4:17). Even this first parable about the sower, Jesus interprets, is about "the word of the kingdom" (v. 19). Indeed, the dawning of the kingdom of God "on that day" in Jesus' ministry suggests the kingdom's arrival through Jesus' speaking the divine authoritative word.
Our pericope consists of two parts; the first (vv. 3-9) is spoken to the crowds who had gathered on the beach while Jesus sat and talked from a boat at the edge of the Sea of Galilee. Lost to the hearers by the omission of verses 10-17 is the fact that the audience of the second part (vv. 18-23), the explanation of the parable, is the disciples. That same device of distinguishing the public parable from the private interpretation occurs again in connection with the parable about the weeds (vv. 24-30 and then vv. 36-43). The reason for the distinction lies in the omitted section (vv. 10-17), where Jesus explains that "the secrets of the kingdom of heaven" belong only to his disciples, whereas the general audience gets the somewhat obscure parable.
The parable of the sower and the seed in verses 3-9 describes quite accurately the variety of things that can happen to seed when it is sown on the ground. One need only walk behind a seed spreader filled with grass seed to become painfully aware of the accuracy of Jesus' description. Some seeds fall on the driveway or the concrete walk -- a special dinner for the feathered friends. Some land on the rocks and dry up in the sun's heat before they ever have chance to head for cover. Other seeds land on those nasty thistles and dandelions that squeeze the poor little seeds to death before they have a chance to flex their muscles. Happily, other seeds manage to survive all the obstacles by digging their way into delicious topsoil, and lo and behold, a few weeks later you've got a lawn to mow.
In the material between the parable and its interpretation Jesus quoted Isaiah 6:9-10, a section of the call of the prophet Isaiah to preach the word of God so clearly that the people will hear it but not understand it or obey it. The preaching of the prophet and the lack of response by the people is the Lord's way of making judgment inevitable. It's nothing less than the old "hardening of the heart" motif turned against Israel itself. The emphasis here in Jesus' teaching is on the inability of the general populace to comprehend what they hear. By contrast, the disciples are truly blessed, because their eyes see and their ears hear. As a result the disciples of Jesus are envied by generations of folks, even prophets and righteous people, who without Jesus could not see or hear.
On that basis Jesus begins his interpretation of the parable to the disciples with a resounding call to responsibility: "You, therefore, listen!" Immediately Jesus focuses on the issue: the seed is nothing other than "the word of the kingdom." Hearing it and not understanding it sets the person up for "the evil one" to snatch it away. In the following parable, that of the weeds, "the children of the evil one" are the weeds, "and the enemy who sowed them is the devil" (vv. 38-
39). That identification well sums up the problem in both parables, a problem typical of the dualism in apocalyptic thinking. That "the evil one" appears twice in these parables of Matthew 13 and nowhere else in the synoptic gospels makes the interpretation all the more striking. We have come to expect the expression in Johannine literature (John 17:15; 1 John 2:13, 14; 3:12; 5:18, 19; the only other occurrence is Ephesians 6:16), but not in the words of Jesus in the synoptics. In any case, snatching by the devil is the fate of the seeds that end up on the path.
The rocky ground describes the initial joy over the word, but since the seeds did not take root, the first sign of trouble or persecution sends the person running. The situation must have been well known in the day of Matthew's writing, because the Christian community had already had more than its share of persecution from the lunatic fringe of the Roman Empire.
The seeds that fall in the midst of the thorns are probably the most directly related to the problem in our own day when "the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing." The attention of our society on the ballistic heights of the Dow Jones Industrials far outweighs that paid to the word of God and to acts of love and mercy.
In spite of all that stealing, falling away, and choking, the interpretation of the parable ends on a positive note, for some of the seed falls on good soil. The good soil represents the one who hears and understands the word, bears fruit, and yields anywhere between thirty and a hundredfold. It is that good soil that enabled the church to grow in Matthew's day and every day until our own time. It is the good soil that will continue the growth until the day of the kingdom's harvest. But above all, it is the word of the kingdom that will be spread throughout the worldwide field.
No doubt as this lesson is read on Sunday morning the congregation and pastor alike might easily jump to the conclusion that we are the good soil in which the word has grown and continues to grow. We, after all, are the ones in church. The word has fallen on fertile ground when it was bestowed on us.
Is it not more true to the reality of faith that the various soils are present at one time or another in all of us? There are times when we hear and do not understand so obviously that the evil one snatches away all that the word would bring us. There are times when we are inspired to joy over the word only to bog down in despair because we did not allow the word to penetrate beyond the emotional fling. There are times when we compromise our values and beliefs in order to avoid conflict and trouble and to move with the ever-popular tide. And there are times when our quest for the finer things in life chokes out our commitment to love God by loving our neighbors as ourselves. The miracle is that there are times when we hear and comprehend, act on our understanding, and bear fruit.
Praise be to God who sows so abundantly that the word of the kingdom comes to us and through us and in spite of us onto fields without fences and boundaries.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Genesis 25:19-34
It may seem rather startling to read in verse 20 of this passage that Isaac is forty years old when he marries Rebekah. In the text of Genesis 24 that we looked at last Sunday, Isaac was just a young man of marriageable age, for whom his father Abraham was obliged to find a wife. The disparity in the accounts is due to the fact that we have two sources woven together here. Verses 19-20 of our text today come from the priestly source. Chapter 24 and 25:21-34 come from the Yahwist source, and the two sources differ in their chronologies. Perhaps this is an opportunity for the preacher to explain to the congregation that some of the contradictions in the scriptures are due to the interweaving of separate sources.
This text in chapter 25 forms an introduction to what follows in the Genesis narrative. Once again the background is the promise of many descendants, and this text serves to illumine why Jacob becomes the chosen one of the Lord and the bearer of the promise. It also reflects the lifestyles of the inhabitants of Palestine -- the darker-skinned, somewhat scruffy hunters of the eastern and southern regions, and the more civilized shepherds of Israel.
Always there seem to be obstacles to God's fulfillment of his promise. Rebekah, the beloved wife of Isaac, is barren, which was a matter of shame in ancient Israel. And according to the priestly writer, she is barren for twenty years (v. 26). But then the Yahwist story tells us that Isaac prays for his wife and she conceives (v. 21), which is an explicit notice here, as throughout the Bible, that all human life is created by God.
Rebekah's pregnancy, however, is difficult, and she thinks she cannot bear the stress and pain that it causes her. She too, therefore, goes to a cult center and prays, inquiring of the priest there why she is in so much distress. The word of the Lord, conveyed to her by the priest, forms a prophecy of the future. She will bear twins, but the lastborn will rule over the firstborn. That word is then confirmed not only by the fact that Jacob grasps his brother's heel at birth and is therefore named "supplanter," but also by the name "Edom," signifying the "red" pottage for which Esau, the forbear of the Edomites, trades his birthright.
By right, as the firstborn, Esau should inherit the wealth and honor of his father Isaac. And it is to Esau that the dim-
eyed and dying Isaac should later give his blessing (ch. 27), conveying all his goods and status. But Jacob is a "supplanter," Jacob is a cheat -- a characteristic that marks him throughout his life -- and he cheats his brother out of both the inheritance and the blessing. Esau swears to the transaction -- the oath is necessary to insure it (v. 33) -- simply because he is famished after a day of hunting. Physical hunger determines his actions, as physical desires often determine ours. And what Esau ends up with is not some delicious game, but a mess of cheap lentil pottage that he hastily gulps down.
The little notice that "Rebekah loved Jacob" (v. 28) will later be shown to be a love that saves Jacob's life (27:41-45). But perhaps the basic question that confronts us from this passage is why a man like Jacob -- a supplanter, a deceiver of his brother, a cheat who will continue his cheating ways in his Uncle Laban's house (30:37-43) -- should be the person chosen by God to inherit Isaac's goods and blessing and to bear the promise of the Lord. Jacob has taken advantage of his weaker brother Esau, and he is totally undeserving of any consideration or grace from the Lord.
So are we undeserving of God's care and mercy, are we not? We never deserved that cross on Golgotha and the forgiveness of our sins. We never deserved the promise of eternal life through Christ's resurrection. We never have deserved God's constant watch over us, his guidance every day, his comfort in sorrow, his strength in distress, even his gifts of sun and rain, and our daily bread. But God has lavished them all on us. And what is more, he has chosen us, as he chose Jacob, to be his special people set apart for his purpose. We are elect, as Jacob was elect, through no deserving of our own. Surely, our response to that can only be overwhelming gratitude and a daily desire to walk in God's ways and to be his faithful covenant people.
Lutheran Option -- Isaiah 55:10-13
The prophecies of Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55) begin and end with the proclamation that the Word of God will not and cannot fail. To the exiles in Babylonia sometime after 550 B.C., the prophet announces that all of God's past promises to Israel -- of land descendants, covenant communion, Davidic king, and blessing -- will be gathered up and brought to fulfillment, because "the Word of our God will stand forever" (Isaiah 40:8). And here in our passage, that is reaffirmed. God tells us that the word "shall accomplish that which I purpose" (55:11). God's Word presses on through human history to accomplish God's goal.
Our usual understanding of the Word of God does not begin to encompass what the scriptures mean by those terms. We usually think of the Word of God as identical with the Bible ("the Word of God written"), or as a proclamation from the pulpit, or as teaching passed on, all of which just give us new understandings or new information about the Lord and human beings and the world.
But the biblical understanding of the Word of God is much more dynamic than that. Throughout the scriptures, the Word of God is understood as active, effective force, which brings about new situations, and which influences and shapes the course of history, until that which the word says is brought to pass. To give a simple illustration, in Genesis 1, God says, "Let there be light," and light is created (Genesis 1:3) -- a new situation comes into being.
In our text, therefore, God speaks of this active nature of his Word. Just as the rain and snow come down from heaven and cause seeds to sprout and grow, so God's word causes events. It does that of which it speaks. The word works until it is fulfilled. So Bible and biblical sermon not only convey information, much more, they communicate the powerful Word of God that works to transform human lives. As Paul says, when Christ is preached and faith in him is aroused, that Word of God incarnate makes a "new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). Our past is done away; our sins are forgiven; and we are made into new persons who, by Christ at work in us, are able to do his will.
God speaks many words to us through Bible and sermon and sacrament. And one of those words is: "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live" (John 11:23). And that Word of God will work in our lives, good Christians, until we are, indeed, granted eternal life.
Perhaps what makes it so overwhelming is that words come so fast and furious in our day that we have little expectation of them. Like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, we can get "sick of words." We talk about the ambiguity of words, about the motives behind them, and about the tone in which they are delivered. But words are the means by which God's word comes to us, effecting what they say and driving the messenger to humility.
Isaiah 55:10-13
These concluding words of the collected sermons of Second Isaiah are among the most powerful in the Bible. I confess that verses 10-11 in particular hold much meaning and hope in my life and for the world. In fact, some years ago a student at the seminary where I taught heard me say one day how much meaning these words have for me, and so a month later she presented me with her cross-stitched version of these verses. It hangs on the wall directly in front of me as I work at the computer, keeping before me daily the news that the divine word of promise provides.
When these words were written by the prophet we call Second Isaiah, they were desperately needed. The people of Israel, exiled to the land of their captors in Babylon, had not heard a word from the Lord for quite a while (see 42:14). During that famine of the word many had decided the gods of Babylon were riding on top of the world, and so they deserved adoring attention. When the Lord sent this prophet to announce that their Savior was near, many had trouble believing such a message, particularly from a God who had not been present.
Second Isaiah distinguished this Lord from the gods of Babylon primarily on the basis of the effective word. Time after time he announced the Lord's lawsuit against the gods of Babylon for false representation. They claim to be gods but they cannot do what the Lord does: speak in advance what will happen and then make it come to pass (see, for example, Isaiah 44:6-8). That is what makes the Lord a God and renders the idols as imposters.
The word of the Lord that came to the exiles through this prophet was the word of salvation. The time had come for the exiles to go home to the Jerusalem they had left fifty to sixty years earlier. The people could count on it, because the Lord succeeds in the thing for which he sent the word.
That message is repeated in the final words of our pericope, indeed the final words of this section of the Book of Isaiah. The verses remind me of the song called "A Beautiful Noise" that Neil Diamond wrote and sang. A beautiful song it is that makes the people go out from their captivity in joy while the mountains and hills burst into song and the trees join the festivity by clapping their hands. The song of the creation sounds much like that of Psalms 96 and 98 that celebrate the coming of the Lord to bring justice and righteousness to the earth, and Psalm 65, the psalm assigned for the day, describes nature's joyful song over the fertility that the Lord brings to the earth. Indeed, nature itself will be transformed as the thorns and briers do the Cinderella trick and become cypresses and myrtles. In this transformation the preaching of Second Isaiah ends as it began (40:3-5; see also 35:1-10), for nothing can stay as it was when God comes with the gift of salvation.
Romans 8:1-11
Not even condemnation can remain "for those who are in Christ Jesus."
Once again Paul uses the word "law" as though it means principle or even power, as he used it in the pericope last Sunday from chapter 7. The principle "of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death." The transformation is nothing short of dramatic -- qualitative rather than quantitative. Prior to God's justifying act in Christ, sin was the dealer and dealt the hand of death. Paul had already discussed the sin-death sequence in 5:12-14. Now that game is over, and God makes winners out of the losers.
God accomplished this wondrous gift "by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh." Don't let the word "likeness" fool you here! Christ became fully human, shared our limitations, suffered our pain and our sorrow, even our mortality. By so completely identifying with us in our flesh, Christ came "to deal with sin." Who is the dealer now? This simple expression defines the purpose for the coming of Christ: incarnation is the means by which he would take care of this death dealer called sin.
The imagery Paul uses to describe the action of God shows how the tables have turned. Prior to this passage, Paul had argued about the role of sin as condemning us all, Jew and Gentile alike. Now, however, Paul writes that God "condemned sin in the flesh" by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The condemner has been condemned, and so sin's power and influence have seen their day.
The result of the new reality is that the justified live not according to the flesh, as we did before, but "according to the Spirit." As we wrote in some detail on the latter half of this pericope for the Fifth Sunday in Lent (March 21), the Spirit of God and of Christ, dwelling within us, means life here and now as well as life on the day of resurrection.
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
In the preceding chapter Jesus experienced in a variety of ways the rejection of his mission and ministry. The Pharisees chided him for allowing his disciples to break the Sabbath law by picking grain to eat (vv. 1-8). His healing of the man with the withered hand raised still more conspiracy from the Pharisees (vv. 9-14), even though many who followed him had been cured (vv. 15-21). Finally, the healing of the demoniac who was blind and mute led the Pharisees to accuse Jesus of healing by the power of Beelzebul and challenge him for a sign (vv. 22-45). Now in chapter 13 Matthew has bunched together a series of parables that focus on agrarian interests.
The parables are introduced with the words "on that day." The NRSV, following the RSV, translates the Greek words as "that same day." In doing so, those translations date the parables on the same day as the previous incident in which Jesus, faced with a visit from his mother and brothers, redefined family in terms of discipleship (12:46-50). Their obvious justification in rendering the phrase "that same day" comes from the additional note that "Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea." The house presumably was the one he was in when "his mother and brothers were standing outside" (12:46). In Matthew there is no indication that Jesus went into a house, for Matthew does not repeat Mark's words at 3:19b: "Then he went home." Interestingly, Mark says nothing about Jesus' leaving the house, as Matthew does, for Mark begins his account of our pericope simply with the words, "Again he began to teach beside the sea" (Mark 4:1). Mark will save the phrase "on that day" (only slightly different in Greek) until the last paragraph of the chapter, following the parables about the kingdom (see 4:35).
So what difference does such trivia make in the interpretation of the story? The expression "on that day" -- whether at the beginning of the parables about the kingdom of God (Matthew) or following them (Mark) -- is an expression from the Old Testament that introduces a prophecy about the Day of the Lord on which God would establish the kingdom. It is an expression that grew up in the telling of Israel's past (see Exodus 14:31; Judges 20:15, 21, 35, 46). Just as the Lord was victorious "on that day," so also "on that day" the Lord will be victorious over all that oppose the Lord, and so the kingdom of God will begin with their defeat. Amos addressed the people of Israel who were expecting exactly that kind of favoritism "on that day," but that prophet included in the bad news Israel and Judah as well. Particularly significant is the use of "on that day" to introduce the coming victory of the Lord over the serpent Leviathan (Isaiah 27:1), because the passage in which Mark uses the phrase introduces the story of Jesus' stilling of the storm and sea (monster) (Mark 4:35-41).
To begin the series of parables about the kingdom with the phrase "on that day," Matthew sets the entire forthcoming teaching into the context of kingdom's nearness -- which, of course, was the content of Jesus' sermon (Matthew 4:17). Even this first parable about the sower, Jesus interprets, is about "the word of the kingdom" (v. 19). Indeed, the dawning of the kingdom of God "on that day" in Jesus' ministry suggests the kingdom's arrival through Jesus' speaking the divine authoritative word.
Our pericope consists of two parts; the first (vv. 3-9) is spoken to the crowds who had gathered on the beach while Jesus sat and talked from a boat at the edge of the Sea of Galilee. Lost to the hearers by the omission of verses 10-17 is the fact that the audience of the second part (vv. 18-23), the explanation of the parable, is the disciples. That same device of distinguishing the public parable from the private interpretation occurs again in connection with the parable about the weeds (vv. 24-30 and then vv. 36-43). The reason for the distinction lies in the omitted section (vv. 10-17), where Jesus explains that "the secrets of the kingdom of heaven" belong only to his disciples, whereas the general audience gets the somewhat obscure parable.
The parable of the sower and the seed in verses 3-9 describes quite accurately the variety of things that can happen to seed when it is sown on the ground. One need only walk behind a seed spreader filled with grass seed to become painfully aware of the accuracy of Jesus' description. Some seeds fall on the driveway or the concrete walk -- a special dinner for the feathered friends. Some land on the rocks and dry up in the sun's heat before they ever have chance to head for cover. Other seeds land on those nasty thistles and dandelions that squeeze the poor little seeds to death before they have a chance to flex their muscles. Happily, other seeds manage to survive all the obstacles by digging their way into delicious topsoil, and lo and behold, a few weeks later you've got a lawn to mow.
In the material between the parable and its interpretation Jesus quoted Isaiah 6:9-10, a section of the call of the prophet Isaiah to preach the word of God so clearly that the people will hear it but not understand it or obey it. The preaching of the prophet and the lack of response by the people is the Lord's way of making judgment inevitable. It's nothing less than the old "hardening of the heart" motif turned against Israel itself. The emphasis here in Jesus' teaching is on the inability of the general populace to comprehend what they hear. By contrast, the disciples are truly blessed, because their eyes see and their ears hear. As a result the disciples of Jesus are envied by generations of folks, even prophets and righteous people, who without Jesus could not see or hear.
On that basis Jesus begins his interpretation of the parable to the disciples with a resounding call to responsibility: "You, therefore, listen!" Immediately Jesus focuses on the issue: the seed is nothing other than "the word of the kingdom." Hearing it and not understanding it sets the person up for "the evil one" to snatch it away. In the following parable, that of the weeds, "the children of the evil one" are the weeds, "and the enemy who sowed them is the devil" (vv. 38-
39). That identification well sums up the problem in both parables, a problem typical of the dualism in apocalyptic thinking. That "the evil one" appears twice in these parables of Matthew 13 and nowhere else in the synoptic gospels makes the interpretation all the more striking. We have come to expect the expression in Johannine literature (John 17:15; 1 John 2:13, 14; 3:12; 5:18, 19; the only other occurrence is Ephesians 6:16), but not in the words of Jesus in the synoptics. In any case, snatching by the devil is the fate of the seeds that end up on the path.
The rocky ground describes the initial joy over the word, but since the seeds did not take root, the first sign of trouble or persecution sends the person running. The situation must have been well known in the day of Matthew's writing, because the Christian community had already had more than its share of persecution from the lunatic fringe of the Roman Empire.
The seeds that fall in the midst of the thorns are probably the most directly related to the problem in our own day when "the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing." The attention of our society on the ballistic heights of the Dow Jones Industrials far outweighs that paid to the word of God and to acts of love and mercy.
In spite of all that stealing, falling away, and choking, the interpretation of the parable ends on a positive note, for some of the seed falls on good soil. The good soil represents the one who hears and understands the word, bears fruit, and yields anywhere between thirty and a hundredfold. It is that good soil that enabled the church to grow in Matthew's day and every day until our own time. It is the good soil that will continue the growth until the day of the kingdom's harvest. But above all, it is the word of the kingdom that will be spread throughout the worldwide field.
No doubt as this lesson is read on Sunday morning the congregation and pastor alike might easily jump to the conclusion that we are the good soil in which the word has grown and continues to grow. We, after all, are the ones in church. The word has fallen on fertile ground when it was bestowed on us.
Is it not more true to the reality of faith that the various soils are present at one time or another in all of us? There are times when we hear and do not understand so obviously that the evil one snatches away all that the word would bring us. There are times when we are inspired to joy over the word only to bog down in despair because we did not allow the word to penetrate beyond the emotional fling. There are times when we compromise our values and beliefs in order to avoid conflict and trouble and to move with the ever-popular tide. And there are times when our quest for the finer things in life chokes out our commitment to love God by loving our neighbors as ourselves. The miracle is that there are times when we hear and comprehend, act on our understanding, and bear fruit.
Praise be to God who sows so abundantly that the word of the kingdom comes to us and through us and in spite of us onto fields without fences and boundaries.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Genesis 25:19-34
It may seem rather startling to read in verse 20 of this passage that Isaac is forty years old when he marries Rebekah. In the text of Genesis 24 that we looked at last Sunday, Isaac was just a young man of marriageable age, for whom his father Abraham was obliged to find a wife. The disparity in the accounts is due to the fact that we have two sources woven together here. Verses 19-20 of our text today come from the priestly source. Chapter 24 and 25:21-34 come from the Yahwist source, and the two sources differ in their chronologies. Perhaps this is an opportunity for the preacher to explain to the congregation that some of the contradictions in the scriptures are due to the interweaving of separate sources.
This text in chapter 25 forms an introduction to what follows in the Genesis narrative. Once again the background is the promise of many descendants, and this text serves to illumine why Jacob becomes the chosen one of the Lord and the bearer of the promise. It also reflects the lifestyles of the inhabitants of Palestine -- the darker-skinned, somewhat scruffy hunters of the eastern and southern regions, and the more civilized shepherds of Israel.
Always there seem to be obstacles to God's fulfillment of his promise. Rebekah, the beloved wife of Isaac, is barren, which was a matter of shame in ancient Israel. And according to the priestly writer, she is barren for twenty years (v. 26). But then the Yahwist story tells us that Isaac prays for his wife and she conceives (v. 21), which is an explicit notice here, as throughout the Bible, that all human life is created by God.
Rebekah's pregnancy, however, is difficult, and she thinks she cannot bear the stress and pain that it causes her. She too, therefore, goes to a cult center and prays, inquiring of the priest there why she is in so much distress. The word of the Lord, conveyed to her by the priest, forms a prophecy of the future. She will bear twins, but the lastborn will rule over the firstborn. That word is then confirmed not only by the fact that Jacob grasps his brother's heel at birth and is therefore named "supplanter," but also by the name "Edom," signifying the "red" pottage for which Esau, the forbear of the Edomites, trades his birthright.
By right, as the firstborn, Esau should inherit the wealth and honor of his father Isaac. And it is to Esau that the dim-
eyed and dying Isaac should later give his blessing (ch. 27), conveying all his goods and status. But Jacob is a "supplanter," Jacob is a cheat -- a characteristic that marks him throughout his life -- and he cheats his brother out of both the inheritance and the blessing. Esau swears to the transaction -- the oath is necessary to insure it (v. 33) -- simply because he is famished after a day of hunting. Physical hunger determines his actions, as physical desires often determine ours. And what Esau ends up with is not some delicious game, but a mess of cheap lentil pottage that he hastily gulps down.
The little notice that "Rebekah loved Jacob" (v. 28) will later be shown to be a love that saves Jacob's life (27:41-45). But perhaps the basic question that confronts us from this passage is why a man like Jacob -- a supplanter, a deceiver of his brother, a cheat who will continue his cheating ways in his Uncle Laban's house (30:37-43) -- should be the person chosen by God to inherit Isaac's goods and blessing and to bear the promise of the Lord. Jacob has taken advantage of his weaker brother Esau, and he is totally undeserving of any consideration or grace from the Lord.
So are we undeserving of God's care and mercy, are we not? We never deserved that cross on Golgotha and the forgiveness of our sins. We never deserved the promise of eternal life through Christ's resurrection. We never have deserved God's constant watch over us, his guidance every day, his comfort in sorrow, his strength in distress, even his gifts of sun and rain, and our daily bread. But God has lavished them all on us. And what is more, he has chosen us, as he chose Jacob, to be his special people set apart for his purpose. We are elect, as Jacob was elect, through no deserving of our own. Surely, our response to that can only be overwhelming gratitude and a daily desire to walk in God's ways and to be his faithful covenant people.
Lutheran Option -- Isaiah 55:10-13
The prophecies of Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55) begin and end with the proclamation that the Word of God will not and cannot fail. To the exiles in Babylonia sometime after 550 B.C., the prophet announces that all of God's past promises to Israel -- of land descendants, covenant communion, Davidic king, and blessing -- will be gathered up and brought to fulfillment, because "the Word of our God will stand forever" (Isaiah 40:8). And here in our passage, that is reaffirmed. God tells us that the word "shall accomplish that which I purpose" (55:11). God's Word presses on through human history to accomplish God's goal.
Our usual understanding of the Word of God does not begin to encompass what the scriptures mean by those terms. We usually think of the Word of God as identical with the Bible ("the Word of God written"), or as a proclamation from the pulpit, or as teaching passed on, all of which just give us new understandings or new information about the Lord and human beings and the world.
But the biblical understanding of the Word of God is much more dynamic than that. Throughout the scriptures, the Word of God is understood as active, effective force, which brings about new situations, and which influences and shapes the course of history, until that which the word says is brought to pass. To give a simple illustration, in Genesis 1, God says, "Let there be light," and light is created (Genesis 1:3) -- a new situation comes into being.
In our text, therefore, God speaks of this active nature of his Word. Just as the rain and snow come down from heaven and cause seeds to sprout and grow, so God's word causes events. It does that of which it speaks. The word works until it is fulfilled. So Bible and biblical sermon not only convey information, much more, they communicate the powerful Word of God that works to transform human lives. As Paul says, when Christ is preached and faith in him is aroused, that Word of God incarnate makes a "new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). Our past is done away; our sins are forgiven; and we are made into new persons who, by Christ at work in us, are able to do his will.
God speaks many words to us through Bible and sermon and sacrament. And one of those words is: "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live" (John 11:23). And that Word of God will work in our lives, good Christians, until we are, indeed, granted eternal life.
