Seeds & Soil: Rootedness

Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

“Rootedness”

What if our becoming who we hope to be in Christ changes us almost beyond recognition? Jesus reminds us that the good word roots where it can get a purchase. Seeds that fall into the richness of a good heart are utterly transformed. Hear the word and grow. 

Artwork: Vincent Van Gogh

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Trinity.

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July 12th, 2026. Our primary reading today is Matthew 13, 1 through 9, 18 through 23. Yesterday I was in Ashland, Oregon with five folks I know. One of them was running a 30-mile foot race on trails crossing national forest lands, including up to the peak of Mount Ashland. These friends have all run 30-plus mile trail races. I have brought snacks for people running 30-plus mile trail races. And all of us were cheering. This race is called the Siskiw Out and Back. Trail runners call it the SOB. This race takes all day long. And when you finish, you are awarded the honors of one who completes an SOB. A pizza? Not a slice. They make a full pizza just for you, beer, and a mug. I like the trail running crew. They are funny. They are practical. Long distance trailrunners do not consider walking quote unquote cheating. If you haven't given up, you are still in the race. You all know the story of the tortoise and the hare, right? It's a fable by Aesop, a storyteller from ancient Greece. A self-important rabbit, a hare, challenges a slow turtle, a tortoise, to a race. The hare quickly outruns the tortoise. It gets so far ahead it stops for a nap. Meanwhile, the tortoise just keeps moving forward, slowly, without stopping. The tortoise wins. Slow and steady wins the race. Now the tortoise and the hare isn't a parable. A parable is a plausible scenario offering up alternate spiritual understandings. The tortoise and the hare isn't a parable, it's a fable. It makes a point using a made-up scenario. For three weeks, we are exploring teaching parables of Jesus in chapter 13 of the Gospel of Matthew. In these parables, Jesus is teaching about both the kingdom of God as an outrageously generative multiplying force, and about boundaries, differentiation, and consequences. Today we hear a parable about different kinds of soil. Next week there will be different kinds of grasses, wheat, and weeds. Following that, we have questions of scale, mustard seeds and yeast, and also questions of worth, great pearls and good fish. Now, Matthew understands Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. He wants those people listening to his gospel to see it as clearly as he does. He wants Jewish followers of Jesus to recognize: one, Jesus of Nazareth is the prophet Moses predicted. Two, to see in Jesus the Christ, the Messiah named by Isaiah. And three, find in Jesus Christ the Messiah who flips the ancient concepts of messianic destiny on their head. The Messiah is not a ruler in the line of David who builds up an army. The Messiah is a servant in the line of David who lays down his life. So people can recognize Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. Matthew organized Jesus' teaching sessions into five major blocks, which map to the five books of the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Matt chapter 13 maps to Leviticus. Leviticus is a rule book for priests, a guidebook for how to live in God's world. Yet Matt 13 is nothing but parables. It's also a guidebook for how to live in God's world. How does this match? Can you imagine opening the California Vehicle Code Handbook and reading the story of a tortoise and a hare? Where Leviticus is a rule book. In Matthew 13, Jesus provides a guidebook to the kingdom of God, a kingdom designed for hundredfold multiplication, generous growth, and finally a sorting where goodness is retained and evil and its causes are burned away. Jesus is not teaching rules for living righteously, but trusting that the right understanding can carry us all further toward the kingdom of heaven than blindly trying to do the right things. Some of us groan when Jesus teaches with parables and say, why can't Jesus be more straightforward? Why not? Even Jesus' own disciples said this. Matthew 13, 10 says, Then the disciples came and asked him, Why do you speak in parables? The murkiness of parables can be frustrating. What is the right answer? Just tell us. And Jesus says, the reason I speak to them in parables is that seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand. Jesus speaks in parables not to make things complicated, but to avoid putting stumbling blocks in front of people, people who cannot perceive them. Jesus just keeps trusting his students to get the cohesiveness of God's word beneath the rules of Leviticus, right? The real cohesiveness of God's word found in the parables is a way to perceive the scaffolding on which the rules hang. Jesus wants us to perceive the scaffolding. And what is that scaffold? The scaffold is the good news. God is right here, alive and present among us. We are not abandoned. There is nothing needed but to live rooted in God's love. We are enough. God will not leave us alone. So here in Matt 13, Jesus tells us that we are called not to be seeds, but to be soil. There is nothing needed but to live rooted in God's love. We are enough. God will not leave us alone. We are called to make our hearts amenable to the good news that the kingdom of God is near. That fact, when fully grasped, brings great courage and great hope. Now here another level of hope in this story. The good news is scattered everywhere. The good news is shared everywhere and freely. The good news is never wasted. Not even when it is cast onto the packed soil of an ordinary path where it can't root. Even there it will be used to nourish the birds. Did you catch that? The good news nourishes even the evil one. Because even bird poop can be a blessing. Even if the word cannot grow in rocky or depleted soil today, the dying root and a little seeds worth of bird poop both will enrich the soil, so the word has a better chance of taking root in another season. Even death and evil are composted into life in God. The good news is in plain sight. The good news is not saved for the hearts most able to hear it. God is right here, and that message will keep falling on our hearts until conditions are right for it to take root. But where a heart is ready, a single seed is transformed and magnified and returns a hundredfold. We are called not to be seeds, but to be soil. It is not our job to worry how that seed grows. It is our job to soften our hearts. Because Jesus teaches with parables, trusting his students to grasp the underlying coherence, not the specificity of the law. Our willingness to wrestle with the deep strangeness of Jesus' words is essential. Aesop's fable of the tortoise and the hare is about human effort, pride, and persistence. The fable of the tortoise and the hare is about how you run your race. Jesus' parable of the scattered seed is about the nature of the kingdom of God. The parable of the scattered seed is about how the good news is poured out everywhere and on everyone. The tortoise and the hare is about how to live. The scattered seed is about how God lives. Understanding how God lives reveals to us the intent beneath the rules. Here in Matt 13, we have a guidebook to the kingdom, a revelation of God's action and intent, not a Levitical rule book of what is permitted and what is not permitted. These parables guide and enrich our understanding in ways a straight-up list of rules would not. For example, if the good news takes root when a heart is ready, evangelism has very little to do with conversion. The intent of God demonstrated here in Matt 13 shifts evangelism from membership roles and quote-unquote saved souls to self-cultivation of one's own spirit and service to others so that their hearts might also be enriched. The intent of evangelism is now understood as enriching hearts, not rules around baptism. This is just one example of what happens when we read Matthew 13 as a guide to the kingdom and God's intent for our lives. So these next few weeks, let us hear the intent beneath the rules. Let us hear the good news and let it root itself in our hearts.

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