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That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the
sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat
there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in
parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some
seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on
rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly,
since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and
since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and
the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought
forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears
listen!” “Let anyone with ears listen.” Don’t we all have ears?
Don’t we all listen? Obviously not. It is just as obvious why we do not. We
not listen because we do not want to hear what is being said. We do not want to
hear what is being said because we do not want to do what we are being told we
must do. Then when we do not hear what has been said, we somehow believe we have
an excuse for not having done what we know we should have done. But we have no excuse. That, I think, is part of Jesus’s message
in this passage, at least at the end of the parable. He is reminding his
listeners, those who stood there and heard him tell that parable, that they had
no excuse for not understanding what he was talking about. The only excuse they
would have is that they were not willing to listen to his words. They were not
willing to take his message to heart and make it their own, make it part of
their own lives. That is one part of what these final words in this passage are
about, the fact that one first has to truly listen to the Gospel message. One
has to be open to what is being said and willing to make it personal and take it
personally. The other part is that what is heard takes work to be understood.
Jesus wants us to not only listen and listen closely to what he says, he wants
us to think about it and think about it deeply, in the recesses of our minds and
hearts. This parable, like all parables, is not simply a good story, and an
interesting one at that, a fine word picture. It has a deep meaning. But to
discover that meaning we have to think about what has been said, what the words
mean, how they apply to our personal lives, what we are to do with what we have
learned, and so forth. Jesus did not tell parables just to hear himself speak.
He spoke so we could hear and listen, could understand ourselves better, could
learn how to live our lives to the fullest. None of that comes from a simply
hearing of a parable. It comes from a life-long listening, listening to and
hearing the parable again and again and again, learning something more each
time. I pray: Lord, help me to always hear your word and listen to what
you have to say to me, discovering more and more what your word means and what I
must do. Amen. |