6th Sunday After Pentecost: The Sower Sows Love

Jesus Unmasked

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So remember, if you’re not fertile ground for the seed, the devil will take you away! This is not good news… and it’s not the Gospel. For the sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Lindsey and Adam discuss an oft-misunderstood parable and how interpretations of it can be dangerous or life-giving depending on the perspective from which it is approached. This is the Parable of the Sower, Matthew 13: 1-9 and 18-23.

“Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”

What a difference an interpretive lens makes. If we see God through a lens of harsh judgment, presider over a might-makes-right world, capriciously saving and damning whomever, we might envision God recklessly scattering humanity in dangerous places… but some just happen to fall into good soil. This makes it sound like God is fickle and much of humanity is doomed.

If we interpret this parable to mean that most of the time faith won’t take root in poor conditions, we may end up struggling very hard to create what we perceive to be the “right environment” for faith. And very often, that looks like staying away from “troublemakers.” Maintaining purity by forming outcasts. Becoming judgmental.

Doing the exact opposite of what Jesus does.

Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t make it clear exactly what the Sower sows, but Mark’s does. “The Sower sows the word.” What is the word? Jesus.

It’s Jesus – it’s Love – that goes through the world with reckless, abundant generosity. Love will go where the soil is rocky or where the thorns are overgrown. Love goes to the margins, to those perceived to be condemned, love goes even to the enemy! Love goes through the danger and the trouble, and we never know where love will be received.

But where it is received, it yields results. Love grows and multiplies.

We can read this parable through a lens of fear or power, or we can read it through humility and love. Parables are tricky, and how they are read and interpreted makes all the difference.

Go deep into this parable with Lindsey and Adam in this week’s episode of Jesus Unmasked!

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