Reading: Matthew 13-14, Psalm 87

One of the things I learned in my years as a manager is this: The fact that I said it, doesn’t mean they heard it. When I was younger I really disliked repeating myself (being honest, I still don’t love it), but as I have aged I have come to understand that there are people who hear things differently than I say them. So it is worth my time to try and communicate in different way to different people. That is one kind of communication difficulty. There is another one. Occasionally I would run across someone who, though I tried a wide variety of communication tactics, always heard the same thing. And it was not what I was saying. This kind of person has already made up their mind about what you are going to say before you say it, and nothing you can do will change what they hear. That kind of communication difficulty is rarely overcome.

We come today to a passage where Matthew begins to relate the communication difficulties between Jesus and the people following him around. Matthew has Jesus opening this section with the famous story of the four soils- each responds to the seed thrown by a sower differently, but in ways that are predictable if you know anything about the soils involved. It is one of the easier sermon texts because immediately after telling the story Jesus both explains why he told it the way he did and what he meant by it. Pretty great when you are prepping a message that Jesus offers commentary on himself. But that is a digression. Matthew is setting us up for the division that will happen in the rest of the book. There will be those who accept, and those who reject. Some people will hear what Jesus has to say right away. Some will need to hear it a somewhat different way. Some will need to hear it a bunch of times. And some already know what they think and will hear something completely different than what Jesus is saying no matter how many ways it gets communicated.

Jesus then launches into a series of parables all on the same theme. The Kingdom of Heaven is like…. a field full of both grain and wees. A tiny seed that will one day grow huge. A tiny measures of yeast that impacts a huge amount of flour. A treasure hidden in a field. A pearl of great price. A net full of good and bad fish. Do you see a pattern? Jesus talks of the coming Kingdom as things not immediately obvious- seeds, yeast, hidden treasure. He also speaks of it as a mixed bag of good and bad, which is which only to be known at the end, when everything is being sorted out. I think Matthew wants his audience to understand that Jesus knew his teaching would cause division. That there would be people who could never hear what he was saying. That there would be those who appeared to believe it but turned out bad in the end, but that there would be no way to tell in the moment.

Matthew then tells us that John has been killed by Herod in order to not embarrass himself in front of dinner guests. Jesus hears about this and withdraws from the crowd, it seems clear to mourn the death of his cousin. But the crowds follow him into the desolate wilderness, leading to the well known miraculous feeding of the five thousand, and then to the story of Jesus walking on water. I think Matthew is continuing his theme in putting these stories together. Though there are crowds involved, all of Jesus’ messaging here is to his disciples. He tells them to feed the thousands of people in the wilderness. While they do not entirely get it, they bring Jesus what they have, and before you know it, the little they have has become enough. Almost as though something small and apparently innocuous, like a seed or a little yeast, can be made to grow to unexpected proportions. Then, when the disciples are being pushed out to sea by winds, Jesus walks out on the water to them, freaking them out. But Peter has a moment where he gets it, and asks Jesus to call him out to walk with him. So he does, and Peter walks on the water. Perhaps he just needed to hear the message that Jesus was the authority over everything in one more way before he believed it enough to obey when he says to walk on water.

The next several chapters of Matthew’s Gospel will have a great deal to say about the separation between those who hear what Jesus has to say, and those who cannot or choose not to. This is hardly surprising when we look at our history. Everyone never agrees on anything. In the grand Story that Matthew believes Jesus is the climax of, he sees a great division forming between those who accept the New Creation, and those who cling to the old, fallen world made by the human problem. It won’t get any less divisive from here, but it will grow increasingly clear that things have changed forever because of Jesus, whether one accepts him or not.