Scripture: Matthew 13:24
He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field…
Thought for the Day: As we learned in class this past week, the word parable is the word Parabole in the original Greek of the New Testament. Parabole means to place one thing alongside another, yet when you look at the parables of Jesus, they are more than simple commonsense comparisons. Reread the above verse from Matthew’s Gospel. The kingdom of heaven is like someone who sowed good seed in a field. When you think about it for a moment, that’s nuts! How exactly is the reign of God – the holy vision of the Creator – like a farmer who does what he always does? It was the scholar, Marcus Borg, who called Jesus a “subversive sage.” In Matthew’s Gospel, the most Jewish of the Gospels, Jesus acts in such a way that would have made some of the religious leaders very uncomfortable. He compared the sacred to that which was mundane, yet it was the Gospel writer’s way of reinforcing the Jesus story. Not only did he cross long-held boundaries between sacred and the profane, but the very idea of the incarnation is God choosing to break through these dividing lines that were never intended to be. It is like God telling the world, “I do not wish to be set apart, but brought close.” God is the living parable, the divine coming alongside humanity.
Prayer: Creator of All, how is that you are found in the mundane? How is it that your holiness is revealed in the run-of-the-mill stuff of life? Show me again how you emptied yourself and took on the form of a servant for our sake. Amen.
