This is the first of 6 sermons on Jesus’ Kingdom Parables in the book of Matthew. This is odd for a few reasons. The first is the subject matter. Jesus tells these parables to communicate about an alternative way the world should work called the Kingdom of Heaven (the other Gospels refer to it as Kingdom of God). The Kingdom of God is a reverse world that stands in contrast to the way that we normally go about life. The other odd thing is the delivery method. Jesus talks about the Kingdom through parables. Parables aren’t just cute illustrations or coded metaphors. The parables are little worlds that are meant to be explored. You live inside that alternate reality a while before coming back to the way things are. But when you do come back, you remember the world of the parable, how strange and different it was.
This parable is perhaps the most well-known. It’s it Matthew 13:1-9, often referred to as the Parable of the Sower. At the outset, it’s a cute story about how people will either accept or reject. It’s like that old saying, “you can’t please everyone all the time.” But if you wade in deeper, if you step inside the world of the parable, it might have a bit more to say. Give it a shot.
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