I was reading through the Gospel of Luke today. I have in mind to just write a bunch of sermons based on the parables of Jesus; some sermons that are not connected to a series and I’d find useful when I’m invited to guest preach at churches. So while it’s not the first parable in Luke, sandwiched between the parable and its explanation is this weird dialogue:
9 Then his disciples asked him what this parable meant. 10 He said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but to others I speak in parables, so that
Luke 8:9-11 NRSVue
‘looking they may not perceive
and hearing they may not understand.’
In this rationale for speaking in parables, it seems like Jesus is saying that parables are both clear and obscure; that it’s possible to hear them but completely miss their meaning. In some ways I feel like I heard the stories all my life, but somehow had the wrong lens… or I was given the wrong prescription… so everything had a hazy glow.
When I look back at my spiritual upbringing, the question was often, “How do I get to heaven?” And thus spiritual life centered around believing the right things about Jesus and, by extension, sharing those same right things so that others could get to heaven too! So I lived my life that way, shared my faith that way, and read the Bible that way. But as this meta-explanation of parables says, could I have misunderstood? not-perceived the message?
When I go back to the actual parable (v4-8, 11-15) that envelopes this aside, I realize this parable now reads very differently to me. In the past, I would have thought about individuals and the circumstances that surrounded their hearing of “the word” (assuming that the word was a message of salvation: how to get to heaven). If the word did not “bear fruit with endurance” — which meant they stayed in the faith for the long haul — it was because the receiver had other influences on their lives — hardships, pleasures, temptations, etc. This often meant that shame follows those who leave the faith. They didn’t have enough faith. They weren’t disciplined enough. They succumbed to temptation. This, combined with the belief, “once-saved-always-saved,” led me and others around me to constantly think about our salvation status. I doubt that’s what Jesus intended.
Today, because of where I am in my faith journey, I see this parable applied to myself as a person with parts: parts that received a word with joy, parts that started out great but then was choked by both the hardships and pleasures of life, parts of me that never accepted certain words that were shared with me (or at the least received them with hesitation/suspicion). Now I ask, what part remains? What part still bears fruit with endurance”? And I hope I don’t sound trite when I say, What remains is love (1 Cor 13). At some point I may have rejoiced that I was saved — part of the in-crowd — but now I’m not always excited by those associations. At another stage of my journey, I may have been confident and certain about some theological/ethical positions, but now I find those views repressive. And still other dogmas I had reluctantly accepted, but now as I’ve grown I see that they’re not necessary. Only love remains.
And lastly, what of the sower?!
All my life I only thought about the seeds. I had always assumed the sower was God and need not be questioned; he does what he does, and we must respond. But now, reflecting on this parable, I realize this sower is pretty bad at his job. He’s trying his best to bear fruit but isn’t following best practices; he’s just scattering seed everywhere. He’s throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. He just doesn’t know what he’s doing. I now think the sower is the church.
While well intentioned, the sower has a low success rate. Not everything that he scatters bears fruit. But some of it does. While I regret the somewhat tribalistic nature of my spiritual upbringing, I can’t deny that I did experience love. I learned about the love of God and I experienced love and connection within a church of sinners — broken people imperfectly trying to bear fruit in the ways they know how. We have Alpha courses, Sunday School, children’s songs with body motions, sermon series that miss the mark and sermon series that don’t. There are missions trips and conferences, retreats that always end the same. We schedule prayer meetings and late night vigils. Some of them worked. Some of them didn’t. Some worked maybe half-way. It quite humbling to think that God would work through such structures and people to demonstrate to me a love that endures.