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That's it. My name is Jeremy, and welcome to church. Last week, we started a series, a new series called the world as it Could Be, a series about the parables of the kingdom. And last week, we didn't even look at a parable. I understand false advertising, I know.

But I felt like it was important to begin that series by talking about why parables are so important to Jesus. That if Jesus wants to create not just a kingdom, but a new kind of kingdom and a new kind of world, then more rules or better rules or even understanding the rules in a better way, all of this was ultimately going to fall short. Jesus needs, Jesus intends to spark our imagination for how things could be, how the world could look if we could choose to live well for ourselves. And see, this is important. Jesus' use of the term kingdom of God in his stories is inherently subversive.

First of all, kingdom is an inherently patriarchal word. It presupposes a king, a he that's in charge of things. But second, it actually adopts the language of colonizers. Literally, Roman Empire that stole the land from the peoples it conquered. And Jesus takes this language basilea, a word that connotes strength and military and might and violence.

Remember the Pax Romana or the Peace of Rome was enforced at the end of a sword. And that sword was often pointed at Jesus' own people. But now he takes that word by the leia and he pairs it with the divine theos God. And for a lot of people, that probably did work at first. I mean, they wanted a God as ruthless as Rome, but that's not Jesus' intent.

In his first address, he uses this term and he says that this Basilea belongs to the poor in spirit. There's this fascinating thing where Matthew records poor in spirit in this moment, and Luke records just the poor here. But this is significant because it actually helps us understand Jesus' intent. This is not some weird way of talking about an attribute you want to be, something you want to aspire to. You don't want to be poor in spirit any more than you want to be poor.

Jesus is talking about the underdogs here. Those who don't get it, those who can't make sense of God, those who've been left behind by the economics and the superstitions of the existing empire. And Jesus says, this new kingdom belongs. It's built for those kind of people. Looking back, that probably should have been the moment where we knew what Jesus was up to.

The construction of a kingdom that defied the very idea of a kingdom. But still, we didn't quite get it, and so Jesus starts to push our boundaries a bit more. He starts to tell stories. He works to broaden our imagination to help us understand that this is something different. The antithesis of everything a kingdom we have known stands for.

And so last week, looked at where that imagination leads to, where it ends. This binding and loosing that Jesus speaks of, the keys to the kingdom that Jesus hands to us, the church. Except we talked about the background here to understand that the keys Jesus speaks of, these aren't the ones to the gates to keep people out. It's a reference to Isaiah 22 and the keys to the storehouses or the responsibility to use the resources of the community to care for each other well. That's what the keys are for.

And then to bind and loose is to accept the reality that this kingdom isn't built on rules. It's founded on an imagination of doing good for each other. Because remember, Jesus isn't trying to trade one kingdom for another. He's working to dismantle our idea of empire altogether and replace it with a beloved community. Now, today we actually get to the first of five kingdom parables.

Parables that come from a section sometimes called the Sermon by the Sea. It happens in Matthew 13. First, let's pray. God of resurrection and return, the one who transforms our worst ideas into something beautiful. We set our sights on you in this season.

We also recognize that to truly move toward your vision for us, we must do that together. Using whatever resources and authority and gifts we have to care for each other. Guide us into the difficult spaces that are mysterious and sacred and in some sense unknowable. And yet, as we read your parables, your invitation to explore with you, Would you begin to rewrite our imaginations of the world so that we might glimpse a kingdom that transcends our categories and invites us into completely new possibilities? Also that your resurrection might become more than just a story, but a lived experience in our daily lives.

Pray that our hearts would be good soil today. And that your words would fall where they need to and take root exactly where you intend. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Alright.

The world as it could be. And today, we're gonna talk about families and stories and seeds and soil. But let's start by reading this first parable in Matthew 13. It says this, that same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake, and let's stop here already just for a moment to get a little bit of context. In the previous chapter, Jesus has been talking to various groups of people, Religious leaders who are upset with him, others who are bringing their sick to him.

There are people who want him to perform miracles and prove himself to them. And through all of this, a larger and larger crowd is gathering to see what all of the fuss is about. But then, right at the end of chapter 12, we get this odd little story where Jesus' family tries to get his attention. By the way, one of the reasons that we think that Jesus probably experienced the loss of his father at some point early in his life is this story right here. We see Joseph in the Christmas narratives, but here later in his life at actually one of the most significant moments in his life where he's really starting to step into his identity, his father is absent from the story.

So Jesus' family, at least at this point, seems to be his mother and his brothers and that's it. I don't want to stay here too long. We've got a lot of ground to cover today, but it's important that you know, that I know that if we have experienced the loss of someone close to us, someone we have cared for deeply, this is not something that is unfamiliar to Jesus. That God joins us in the beauty of our memories, but also in the heartache of all of our loss. And right now, where all of us have lost something, and we're sacrificing all kinds of things to care for our neighbor to remember that God is near in that moment too.

That Jesus remembers that motion as well. I think that's important for all of us to hear. That said, this is just before Jesus launches into his parables. His mother and his brothers try to get his attention. And basically, what's happened here is that the crowd is getting bigger and bigger, and the attention is becoming more and more focused, and his family comes out to say, dude, this is getting a little bit crazy.

Can you just chill for a moment? We're getting in a little nervous about all of this scrutiny that you're bringing home. But the thing is, Jesus is talking to a crowd and it's huge and the family can't get his attention and so someone waves him down and says, listen, your mom and your brothers are here. They want to talk to you. And Jesus says, right in front of everyone I might add, well, who is my mother and who are my brothers?

And then pointing to his disciples he said, these are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God in heaven is my sibling and my parent. Then that same day, Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake, which introduces us to his parables. Now, the reason I back up a little bit to that moment is because the parable Jesus is about to tell us today is about, in some sense, the surprising welcome of God's family. And Jesus is, I think, setting that up here.

He isn't dissing his family by including his friends in his definition of family. In fact, we see later in the gospel that Jesus cares very deeply for his biological family. He even ensures that the disciples care for his mother after his death. Now, Jesus is taking this opportunity to expand the category of family for everyone who's listening. And that feels very in line with this upside down kingdom that Jesus is about to introduce us to here.

However, the crowd has gotten too big, and so respecting the concerns of his family, which to be fair, probably valid, he actually leaves the house and he goes down towards the lake and the crowds follow him. But the thing is even there, such large crowds gathered that it wasn't enough. So Jesus got into a boat and sat in it while the people stood on the shore to listen. He told them many things in parables. Now, last week, we talked a little bit about the change in strategy that Jesus employs, particularly in this book of Matthew.

What's really interesting here is that the writer Matthew absolutely seems to get it. When Matthew describes the Sermon on the Mount, he says, when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountainside and sat down and he began to teach them. That's the word Didasco. It means to teach or to explain things, and that's what Jesus does in the Sermon on the Mount. This time Matthew says that Jesus began to speak to them.

This time, he uses a different word. It's the word Lego, nothing to do with the Danish building blocks. It just means to tell something. And it actually does seem like the writer of Matthew wants to make a point here because he emphasizes the word. Literally, the Greek reads something like, and speaking to them in parables, he spoke.

So Matthew is keenly aware of the difference between teaching or explaining and storytelling, which is what the parables are. And the closer we get to the mystery of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, the more he leaves the teaching behind and instead leans into story. I'm paraphrasing. One of my favorite writers for our cape on here. He says, well, Jesus, since they're pretty much misunderstanding everything I say, maybe I should just go with it.

And I should start thinking up examples of how profoundly backward their imagination of me is. If they think that a kingdom is parochial and visible and propositional, a military established theocratic state that simply will be handed to them at some point, well, maybe I could stand every one of their ideas on its head. And I could instead come up with stories of a kingdom that say it is everywhere and mysterious and already present around us. I could tell them that this kingdom is already aggressively demanding their response right now. I wonder what kind of stories I could tell.

And this is the one he starts with. A farmer went out to sow his seed. And as he scattered the seed, some fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places where it didn't have much soil. That seed sprang up quickly, but because the soil was shallow.

And when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they didn't have root. Other seed fell among the thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, while still other seed fell on good soil, where there it produced a crop a 160, or 30 times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let him hear. Now, that's from Matthew 13 verses two to nine. A little bit later, Jesus is going to give an explanation in this parable.

So we'll come back to that as well. But since that explanation is reserved just for his closest friends for now, let's try to put ourselves in the position of those in the crowd on the shore listening as he tells this story. And to do that, we have to start with something that's actually not there in the English. The NIV starts this way. A farmer went out to sow his seed.

And that's nice, a pretty normal way to start a story. In Greek, however, it reads a little differently. There's this word that's left untranslated in English. I think it was actually Yelena that talked about this word this summer, but it's the word edu. And what it means is that Jesus actually says something more like, look, the farmer went out to sow.

Now, it could be that that edu is just there to get everyone's attention, but some scholars actually say, they suggest it's likely perhaps that what is happening here is that Jesus gets in a boat, pushes off, sits down, and he sees a farmer off in the distance. And he says, look, there's a farmer going out to work. Let me tell you about farmers and seeds and soil and how even that can teach us something about God. And it's a small thing. It doesn't really change the story, but I think it helps us get into the vibe of how Jesus sees the world.

Someone points out his mothers and brothers trying to get his attention, and he talks about the surprising inclusiveness of divine family. He sees a farmer in the distance and he tells a story about its seeds and soil reminding us of new possibilities. Jesus has this way all through the gospels of pulling our world into our imagination of the sacred. And I don't think it's just because it's a good teaching hook. I think it's because that slowly informs how we see everything around us.

That God speaks in the language of regular life and that the more we recognize that, the more easily we come to see the divine surrounding us always. Remember this. As much as I love to talk about history in context and translation, good news, good news, real good news comes in the language of what's already familiar to us. And ironically, think sometimes that's actually why we miss it. As Jesus says, whoever is hearers, let them hear.

However, to really dive into what Jesus is saying, we're gonna need to talk a little bit about ancient farming practices. Because, and we can be honest here, this guy just does not seem like a very good farmer. Now granted, I know very little about farming. As we talked about few weeks ago, I know about f one and fried rice and maybe how to make a pretty good pizza. Certainly nothing about farming though.

But even I can see that this guy is not good at his job. He's putting seeds on the road, he's putting seeds on the rocks, he's throwing some seeds into the weeds in the bushes, and only after he is seemingly exhausted about three quarters of his seed supply does he even get around to any soil that's worth planting in. This guy is not good at his job, especially in an ancient world where seeds are actually an important part of life. So I did some reading. And part of the problem here is simply that ancient farming practices were, well, they weren't very efficient.

There were essentially two ways of seeding in ancient Palestine. The more dedicated way was for a farmer to actually take seed in a bag and hand scatter that seed where he wanted it. This sort of poor farmer might do if they had a small plot of land. And of course, inevitably, some of that seed would get blown onto the course of perhaps the path, or the rocks, or the seeds, just like Jesus described. But for the most part, most of the seed would get exactly where it was intended to go.

The second way that was actually more common in ancient Palestine, this was for larger operations that probably had more than one field, was that a farmer would take a bag of seed and tie it to an animal like a donkey. And they would tear a small hole in the bottom of that bag, and then they would lead the animal up and down the fields while the seed trickled out. You kind of bang the bag every once in a while, make sure it was falling. And given the way that fields were arranged in ancient Palestine in these sort of long narrow strips with a right of way, a footpath between them, inevitably what happened was seed would fall along the paths as you would cross across. You can imagine, you got a donkey and you lead it up and down, and then you cross to the next field, and the seed just keeps trickling out as you cross over the path.

It's just the way Jesus describes, except this is a pretty common image. And people would understand this immediately when they hear the story, except the one difference being that in Jesus' story, this seems to be a farmer who's actually scattering the seed by hand. So seed falling on the path, pretty normal, not too surprising, at least not on its own. A farmer with more than one field to tend to doing it all by hand, that is surprising. And intentionally farmers not caring about where their seed goes, that definitely is a surprise.

So right from the start, this is an image of sort of a wasteful extravagance in Jesus' story. Okay. Second image, grokky ground. This probably is not a reference to unmanaged land that's full of stones. This isn't just a lazy farmer.

What this is a reference to is the fact that in Palestine, you have these large limestone shells that often sit just a couple inches below the surface. So there is soil, and seeds definitely will grow, but what happens is they're only able to grow a couple inches down before they hit the limestone, and that stops them from then really growing up. And so really, only the most desperate farmer would even bother planting in this kind of soil. Next, you got a farmer who throws seed on soil filled with weeds and thorns. Now, it could be that the image here is meant to give us the idea that the owner doesn't know that there are weeds in the field.

And it's only after he plants, and the seeds sprout, and then they're overtaken that he realizes the mistake that he's made. That actually would be a common problem for a lot of farmers. There's even rules in the Talmud about mixing seeds together, and largely that was about preventing this kind of thing from happening. But the thing is, Jesus next parable is about precisely that scenario. A farmer who doesn't realize that there are weeds in his field, and we'll get to that story next week, so hold on to more exciting farming knowledge.

But since Jesus is specifically gonna talk about that next, it's likely not what he's talking about here. In fact, if you take all of these stories together, it seems pretty clear to me at least that what Jesus is going for here is a hyperbolic image. It's the image of a successful farmer with lots of fields to cover, who's got more seed than he can possibly exhaust, and so he just goes crazy with it all. And he tosses it everywhere just to see what will happen. He even tries throwing some into the bushes just on the off chance that it might take root.

What we're reading here is an image of extravagant hand delivered grace tossed everywhere. And this is important because this isn't a parable about what kind of soil you should be. It is an image of the kind of God who makes an investment in everyone. There is no one that is not worthy of God's grace. There is no one that God won't take a chance on.

There is no one that God won't lavish God's self upon. That's what the story is about. If you ever heard this parable and come away with the impression that you need to be better soil, you missed the point of the story. Because the point of the story is that God is coming after you regardless of what kind of soil you are, and that sometimes, maybe even most of the time, we don't know what soil we are until God finds us. Now fascinatingly, a few verses later, Jesus is actually going to explain this story.

It's one of the only stories he ever does this for, and this is what he says. When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown on the path. The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy, but since they have no root, they only last a short time. When trouble and persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.

A seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word making it unfruitful. And by the way, side note here, I love this phrase, the deceitfulness of wealth. Often, I think we think of the deceitfulness of our culture that tells us wealth will make us happy. That's a problem. But it's not the one Jesus is talking about here.

He's talking about the way that wealth actually distorts our view of the world itself. And that the more we have in the absence of great effort, the less we will actually see. And that's a challenge for every one of us listening right now to work to ensure that our wealth does not insulate us from the reality that surrounds us in the world. And finally, Jesus says that the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears this kingdom word and understands it. They produce a crop yielding a 160, or 30 times what was sown.

Now, I don't know about you. I don't know if you hear this the way that I do, but something just sounds backwards here to me. Right? I mean, it sounds wrong to my ears. A 160, 30 times what was sown.

I want to read the good seed produces a crop of thirty, sixty, a 100 because I want this to feel like it's building to some kind of climax. Right? Yet, I almost get this sense that Jesus is doing this on purpose to say, look we're not going to play that game. Comparisons are for people who are stingy with their seed, and harvest is good. Yes.

But if you're worried about return on investment, that's not how this kingdom works. Good soil produces, that's the beauty of it. But where that soil is found, what it looks like before it is planted, what it produces in your life and those near you, none of that is the measure of what good soil looks like in my life. And so thirty, sixty, a 110, five, one, Jesus says, don't get into this comparison game. It won't serve you well.

Celebrate good soil, whatever it produces in your life. But see, ultimately, this is where I think we missed the point of the parable. Because we hear a story about a farmer who sows good seed. We hear a story about all these different soils who receive it. And automatically, I think sometimes we imagine that Jesus is talking about something like what I'm doing right here right now.

I mean, this is every preacher's favorite story to say, listen to me. Except here's the thing, none of us are the farmer in this story. God is. This is not a story about preachers. It's not a story about sermons.

This is a story about the goodness of God that shows up all around us all the time, everywhere. And Jesus actually says it right here in the explanation. He says, listen to what the parable of the sower means. When anyone hears this message about the kingdom, that's what it says in the NIV, but more literally what the text says here is when anyone hears the kingdom word. Because this is Jesus' point.

That the divine is out there right now investing in lost causes, wasting seed in places that you and I think are pointless, Believing that a new story of a new world with new possibility and purpose can actually make good soil out of any of us in the right day in the right moment. This story is about the wasteful love of God that saves the world. And see this story tells me two things. First, that God will take a chance on me no matter what anyone else thinks the prospects are. And second, that when that seed takes root in me, I will slowly become the kind of person that will do the same for you.

That's what the story is about. Let's pray. God, thank you for these stories that invite us to imagine not just your kingdom, but this world in a new way. This kingdom that pops up in our relationships, in our conversations, in the ways that we interact with each other. This kingdom that is at work right now in the world demanding our response to it.

God, might we understand that your kingdom is not interested on a return on investment. It's interested in lavishing grace and love upon all of us, of the time in places that we don't even know to look for you. And God, by your spirit, when you grasp our attention and you get us to look and see the sprout, the root of something good in our lives, would we learn how to celebrate that? And when that takes hold of our imagination and we begin to see good growth all around us in small places all the time, might we then become the kind of people who would follow your way and path in the world, Extending ourselves in generosity to all those near us. Laying the wasteful love of God on every conversation and interaction.

Trusting that there is good soil even when we don't see it. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.