21. Matthew 13: Parables of the Kingdom (1)

Jesus announced the arrival of the kingdom of heaven (4:17). Yet his subversive, counter-revolutionary practice of this kingdom confused even his mentor John the Baptist (11:2ff.). What kind of kingdom? What kind of Messiah? There are the4 questions swirling around Jesus as we reach the center of Matthew’s account.

He uses his favorite teaching device, parables, to reveal (but see 13:10-17) the nature and scope of this kingdom to his disciples and the “great crowds” coming to hear his message (v.2).

Now, parables, far from being the simple earthly story with a heavenly meaning, are more like a grenade lobbed into the settled convictions of the people about what God was like and what he was doing through his people in the world. As such, a particular disposition was required to “get” what they are about. Jesus calls this disposition “having ears to hear” (v.9).

We all have earlids that close and keep out anything that does not compute with what we already think or believe we know. And most Jews thought they knew what God’s kingdom coming looked like and what Messiah would do to set things right. The kingdom would come in power (as generally understood). Messiah would rout the Romans and run them out of town, rebuild the temple, restore Israel to worldly prominence, and God would return to his people as king. Jesus announces a kingdom with similar goals – defeat of Israel’s enemy, rebuilding the temple, the return of God to his people – but described/defined them rather differently. Perhaps it was his evident authority that kept some listening. Or maybe his healings and exorcisms keep their earlids up.

“They came because they were starting to guess that the judgment was already beginning, and that Jesus was part of it. They came because they hoped he would tell them more about the way in which the one true God was beginning his work of rescuing them from their enemies then and there, and wanting them perhaps to help in the process.”[1]

Whatever it was, in the mystery of God’s dealing with us, some remained open to Jesus’ message. And had to - for it continued to challenge even the most open of ears to keep up with it.

The Parable of the Sower (13:3-9)

“These stories draw together all that has been going on so far in the gospel story, and point ahead to what is still to come,” writes N. T. Wright.[2] And they comprise the third of Matthew’s five great blocks of Jesus’ teachings. Leithart reviews the typological significance of each of these discourses:

“The five large discourses of Matthew fit into this scheme. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is Moses delivering the law from a new Sinai. When Jesus sends out the Twelve to the tribes of Israel (Matthew 10), He is a new Joshua heading up a new conquest of the land. Telling parables of the kingdom (Matthew 13), Jesus is the philosopher-king Solomon, and when He gives instructions to His disciples about forgiveness and community life (Matthew 18), He is like Elisha leading a company of prophets. He denounces the temple like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, warning of its imminent destruction because of the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 23-25).”[3]

“Solomonic” Jesus (12:42) begins with the Parable of the Sower. He sits as befits a new Solomon, a royal figure, who teaches wisdom to his people (v.2).  God has frequently “sown” his people as an image of their return from exile (Isa.61:11; Jer.31:27; Ez.36:9; Hos.2:23). 

This sets a context for our interpretation. This parable is not simply a general story about God sending preachers into the world who get a varied reception from their hearers. That story is well-known and hardly seems worth telling. But if Jesus is addressing the highly-charged and dramatic situation of exiles returning to the land and still facing the need to respond to God’s last-ditch effort to regather and reconstitute them as his Abrahamic Israel, the story is fraught with great interest and import.

We have just seen how the opposition to Jesus has already reached a mortal tipping-point (12:14) against him. His end, so far as the scribes and Pharisees are concerned at least, is set. These words, then, already assume a sort of “deathbed” gravitas. Returned from exile, back in the land, Jesus word (“seed,” v.4) to Israel to reclaim its destiny, receives a varied response: rejection (v.4), inadequate reception (vv.5-7), and full reception (v.8).

Reception of his word is not a matter, however, of simply human action. Enemies contest its reception (v.4), and the world is inhospitable to it (vv.5-7). In spite of this opposition, though, some seed finds faithful reception and offers an abundant yield (a God-blessed yield, Gen.26:12).

This parable directly addresses the existential need of Jesus’ hearers. It does not seem to directly address any need in today’s situation in the church. And indeed it doesn’t. That’s why we usually settle for the general interpretation mentioned above. At least we can draw some “lesson” from it for today! But as we’ve seen all the way through Matthew this is the Jews of the 1^st century’s story not ours. And we do better to read it like that and accept its historical distance from us. To read it as part of our story, no doubt, as a portion of our family history, and give thanks for it, 

-especially for God’s persistence in coming to us again and again,

-overcoming the enemies and resistances that keep us from laying hold his word,

-promising a God-blessed harvest, and

-remind us we are a part of that story and that God will use us to bring about its great harvest.

Jesus Explains his Use of Parables (13:10-17)

Jesus breaks off this parable without explaining it at this point. He’ll come back to its explanation in vv.18-23. Meanwhile his disciples pose to him the question as to why he teaches in parables (v.10). And his answer throws us readers today for a loop: it’s because unlike the disciples “it has not been given” to the whole people of Israel to know the “secrets” (or “mysteries”) of the kingdom of heaven (v.11). What in the world can that mean?

Is this a predestinarian passage teaching that some respond to God’s word and some don’t because God chooses them for that fate? Some read it that way. But I think closer attention to the context gives us another and better way to read it. V.12 means, I think, that those who respond to the word in faith will reap the benefits of the faithfulness of all those who labored faithfully up till then and will continue to grow in that faith. Those who fail to receive it in genuine faith will never experience its blessings but only the judgment that is coming. Or in terms of the parable, the good soil will yield an excellent harvest while the three inadequate soils lead only to disaster.

In v.13 Jesus gives the reason his disciples ask for. He quotes from Isa.6:9-10. Here the prophet receives a commission to prophecy to a rebellious and idolatrous people. A people who will not hear and understand or repent and return to God. Only judgment awaits them. And hope awaits them only on the other side of that judgment. The mystery of the kingdom has not been given to them because them are not willing to receive it. The statements are two sides to the same coin.

The disciples, however, has heard and embraced Jesus’ message. They are living in the time that many “prophets and righteous people” longed to see and experience but did not (v.17). 

This is just what Jesus’ was sent for. In regathering and reconstituting Abrahamic Israel he effects a division as well as a regathering, indeed, a reconfiguration of Israel which will henceforth include both Jews and Gentiles.

                                         Jesus Interprets the Parable (13:18-23)

After this interlude and clarification of the purpose of what Jesus is doing, Jesus returns to the parable and provides an explanation of it (vv.18-23).

-The bird that eats the seed sown on the pathway is the “evil one” (v.19). He keeps the word from getting any foothold in the hearer’s heart.

-The word received joyfully yet without roots to sustain it is the seed sown on rocky ground. At the first signs of difficulty or opposition it withers (vv.20-21).

-the thorns which choke out the seed sown among them is the word received but choked out over time by the “cares of the world and the lure of wealth” (v.22).

Jesus’ interpretation bears an uncanny likeness to Paul’s description of the Gentiles in Eph.2:1-3:

“You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses.”

The “ruler of the power of the air” resonates with the “evil one of the parable. “World” resonates with the rootless seed. And the “cares of the world and the lure of wealth” with what Paul calls the “flesh” (not our physical bodies but that within us which drives us to will and to act counter to God’s will and way). The witness of both Paul and Jesus make us confident that these three are primary sources of what keeps us from following Jesus and dog us every step of the way on our journey.

Those who embrace Jesus’ word, who become a part of his reconstituted Abrahamic Israel, bear fruit in bringing God’s blessing to the world in the measure of their gifts and calling. And those of us who have throughout history heard and embraced Jesus’ word and gospel gives thanks for them and their openness to hear and receive his word and carry out his ministry through the centuries. This engenders a gratefulness that, in my judgment, far exceeds anything we might derive from the general and rather bland usual interpretation I sketched at the beginning.  

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[1] Wright, Matthew for Everyone, 2963.

[2] Wright, Matthew for Everyone, 2955.

[3] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew, vol.2: 50.