Jesus speaks to the crowds around him in parables. A familiar literary genre to the ancient Jewish people, today we know parables, primarily because they constitute a significant part of the teaching of Jesus.

We are at the midpoint of Jesus’ ministry in Matthew’s Gospel. He has delivered the great Sermon on the Mount and has openly performed numerous miracles. Jesus is still attracting large crowds as he travels from village to village along the Sea of Galilee. Now Jesus shifts his teaching to a series of parables. Unlike the didactic teachings of Jesus which are clear and challenging, the parables always tend to be confusing, leaving the listener with something to think about and to discuss with others.

Jesus delivers several parables in rapid succession, each of which seems to build on the words or ideas of the previous parable. We are left with the impression that the crowd is confused, and used in his conversation with the disciples afterward, it is clear that they, too, were confused by the parables.

As we listen carefully to what Jesus is saying in the parables, we can see that he has grown frustrated with the crowds – and even the disciples – who have heard his preaching, observed his miracles and have failed to become his followers.  Jesus challenges the crowds to do more than to listen and watch. He points out their stubbornness of heart, their intentional refusal to heed the teaching he has given them. They follow more out of curiosity than they do of a real desire to seek repentance, to change their lives and to become his disciples.

The parables, then, are critical challenges to those of obstinate heart who hear and do not listen; who see and do not understand. Jesus accuses the crowd of hearing and seeing but also of ignoring and returning to their ordinary lives untouched by his teaching.

We, too, can often find the parables to be confusing. They hit us on so many different levels that it can be difficult to grasp the point that Jesus is making. When confronted with a difficult teaching of Jesus we can either ponder, discuss, pray, and accept the challenge or we can set it aside and realize it is confusing. Or we can ignore it altogether. All too often we consider the parables as quaint agrarian or fanciful teaching of Jesus, somewhat similar to an Aesop Fable or a pithy story that we can remember but really spend no time pondering in any significant way.

We need to allow ourselves to be challenged by the teaching of Jesus. We are called to open ourselves up to conversion of mind, heart and life so that we might become disciples of Jesus. A disciple is always more than a hearer. A disciple is one who hears and then acts according to the discipline of the teacher or master. This is the call of Jesus. The lack of this sense of discipleship is what seems to have him frustrated at this point in his ministry.

We like to think that everyone who heard Jesus was moved to repentance and conversion. A careful reading of the Gospels shows that such was not the case.

Today we often grow frustrated because those who have heard and seen choose not to follow. They grow hard of heart and reject the Word that has been planted in them. Jesus warns us against this complacency, but he also holds out hope – some of the seed that has been planted will take root and grow, but it might lie dormant for a long time before it grows. Through our prayers and zeal for evangelization, those who hear will become listeners and those who see will come to understand.

July 23 – Jesus offers the promise of the kingdom of heaven to his followers

Outside of the parables of Jesus on the kingdom of heaven, we tend not to think (or write) that often about the kingdom. The Kingdom of Heaven is often thought of as the Second Coming of Jesus at the end of history. For some of the earliest New Testament writing – the early letters of Paul and Mark’s Gospel – the focus on the immanent Second Coming occupies much of their thinking. After the destruction of Jerusalem (70AD) there was a sense that the coming of the kingdom was delayed, and Paul and John each offer insight into the reason for this delay. For Matthew, the kingdom of heaven has taken on a new dimension, one which is more distant and yet, strangely enough, even more immanent.

While we continue with the parable section we began last week, this week’s parables, still using agrarian imagery, take on a different purpose. Jesus turns his attention from challenging the crowd to become disciples to offering them the promise of the kingdom of heaven if only they would be his disciples.

This agrarian imagery is powerful, but for many of us it remains a mystery. Few of us can easily distinguish the various forms of flora that appear in our yards and fields. What makes a plant a weed or a flower, or a fruit, or a vegetable, is determined largely by the judgment of a culture and the use that they place upon it. Some of the most ubiquitous flowers in our fields are regarded as weeds.

A farmer had an enemy who sowed weeds among the newly scattered wheat. The farmhands wanted to pull out the weeds to allow the wheat to grow, but the farmer chose to have them grow together, and wait until the harvest to separate them. A practical decision for the farmer to make, it is applied to real life situations by Jesus as he linked it to the kingdom of heaven.

Planted in the same soil, with the same amount of sun and rain, the weeds and the wheat would have an equal chance to grow. In time, they are easy to separate, but as their roots are intertwined, to disturb one is to threaten the survival of the other. At the time of the harvest, there would be wheat and weeds in abundance.

This parable instructs us not to make judgments about others but to focus on our own place in this garden. Unlike the wheat and weeds we have the potential to reform our lives – the weed can become wheat and the wheat can become weed.  We know, also from the parables of Jesus, that not all wheat is firmly planted.

While we are yet young plants in the garden, not yet distinguishable as a stalk of wheat or as a weed, we must continue to absorb nourishment and to grow stronger in faith.  Like wheat among weeds, we must stand tall, even when we might feel like we are being choked off by the weeds around us.

While the kingdom of heaven sounds like something with which to be concerned only in the distant future, Jesus reminds us that the seeds of the kingdom are planted and growing within and around us at all times.  Jesus subtly asks us the question do you want to be in or out of the kingdom of heaven when the Lord comes to reap the harvest?

Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.