Shows Up Or Gets Buried

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Matthew 25:14-30, the reward the master offers, deserves more attention than it usually gets, enter into the joy of your master. The key word is the Greek preposition, “eis,” into, not toward, the joy is not handed to the servant like a bonus, the servant is invited to step inside it. The joy already exists, it belongs to the master, it has been there all along and the faithful servant is now welcomed into the experience of it. The Greek word for joy, “charan” is not a surface emotion, it appears at Jesus’ birth, at the empty tomb, in moments of deep settled gladness, the kind that belongs to someone whose purposes are being fulfilled.

When the master says, enter into my joy, he is opening a door into his own inner experience, the master does not say, here is your payment, he says, come inside my joy. The reward for faithful work is not the end of work, it is deeper participation in the life of the one you were working for, the promotion confirms this. I will set you over many things, more responsibility, not less, the faithful servant does not get to retire, he gets brought further in and the master calls the five talents a few things. Five talents, 100 years of wages and the master calls it a few things, if a century of human labor is few, then the many things waiting on the other side of faithfulness are beyond anything the servant has the categories to imagine.

The opposite is equally revealing, the third servant is cast into outer darkness, the darkness that is outside, outside the house, outside the table, outside the joy, the servant who chose distance from the master while the master was away, discovers that distance has become permanent, he wanted nothing to do with the master’s work, now he has nothing to do with the master’s joy. Jesus told this parable knowing he was about to leave, within days of speaking these words on the Mount of Olives, he would be arrested, tried, crucified, buried and raised, he would ascend to the father, he would, like the master in the story, go on a long journey and he would leave his followers with something, not silver, something heavier.

Jesus would leave them with the gospel, with the work of the Kingdom, with the call to make disciples, with the Holy Spirit, with every gift and responsibility that comes with being entrusted by the risen Jesus Christ to carry his mission forward until he returns and the question the parable asks is the question every generation of his followers has had to answer, what will you do with it while he is gone? The interval between the ascension and the return is not a waiting room, it is the trading floor, it is the place where faithfulness either shows up or gets buried and you are in that interval right now.

There is something else in the parable that becomes visible only after the cross, the master entrusted his servants with his possessions and then left, he put his wealth in their hands and walked away, that is an act of extraordinary trust in the other direction. The master risked too, he risked his fortune on people who might waste it, bury it or lose it entirely, the giving was itself a gamble and the master made it anyway, calibrated to each person, because he believed in the capacity of the people he chose. The parable of the talents is not the only place in the Olivet discourse where Jesus raises this question?

 

[Matthias]

 

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Many people sit on the throne of their own hearts and then wonder why everything feels unstable, scripture is clear about the condition attached to God’s promises, Matthew 6:33, Jesus doesn’t say seek God when it’s convenient, it says first seek. First, that word matters, because when God isn’t first, life becomes a constant struggle. We fight temptation without power, we face fear without peace, we deal with uncertainty without assurance, living this way creates a life of instability. We never feel secure, we’re always bracing for the next problem, but that’s not how God designed faith to function, faith was meant to anchor us and when God isn’t first, faith becomes weak by default.

 

[Matthias]

Many people sit on the throne of their own hearts and then wonder why everything feels unstable, scripture is clear about the condition attached to God’s promises, Matthew 6:33, Jesus doesn’t say seek God when it’s convenient, it says first seek. First, that word matters, because when God isn’t first, life becomes a constant struggle. We fight temptation without power, we face fear without peace, we deal with uncertainty without assurance, living this way creates a life of instability. We never feel secure, we’re always bracing for the next problem, but that’s not how God designed faith to function, faith was meant to anchor us and when God isn’t first, faith becomes weak by default.

Parable of the sower.

 

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Parable of the sower.

There is one more place this parable points and it comes into focus when you remember who is telling it, Jesus is the sower, he is the one going out, scattering the word freely across every kind of ground, holding nothing back from the path or the rocks or the thorns. Jesus sows generously, knowing most of it will look wasted, because that is what the word does, it goes out wide. But later, on the way to the cross, Jesus took the image of the seed and did something startling with it, John 12:24, he said, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit, Jesus was talking about himself.

 

[Matthias]

There is one more place this parable points and it comes into focus when you remember who is telling it, Jesus is the sower, he is the one going out, scattering the word freely across every kind of ground, holding nothing back from the path or the rocks or the thorns. Jesus sows generously, knowing most of it will look wasted, because that is what the word does, it goes out wide. But later, on the way to the cross, Jesus took the image of the seed and did something startling with it, John 12:24, he said, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit, Jesus was talking about himself.

His word is the seed. He sends his followers to plant it.

See also the parable of the wheat and the tares.

 

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His word is the seed. He sends his followers to plant it.

See also the parable of the wheat and the tares.

The sower became the seed, Jesus went down into the ground of death, alone, buried and out of that single buried grain came a harvest no one could count. The same logic as the field, something has to go into the dark before anything rises. Hold the two images together, in the parable, the seed that fell and seemed to die in three out of four soils looked like loss, wasted grain, a careless throw, but the whole parable turns on the truth that what goes into the ground and disappears is not gone, it is doing the one thing seed is made to do and the greatest proof to that came when the sower himself lay down in the earth and rose with a harvest.

 

[Matthias]

The sower became the seed, Jesus went down into the ground of death, alone, buried and out of that single buried grain came a harvest no one could count. The same logic as the field, something has to go into the dark before anything rises. Hold the two images together, in the parable, the seed that fell and seemed to die in three out of four soils looked like loss, wasted grain, a careless throw, but the whole parable turns on the truth that what goes into the ground and disappears is not gone, it is doing the one thing seed is made to do and the greatest proof to that came when the sower himself lay down in the earth and rose with a harvest.

See 1 Corinthians 15:35-44.

 

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See 1 Corinthians 15:35-44.

Mark 4:1-20, four hearts, one word, the only variable is the ground, but Jesus does something between telling the parable and explaining it and it is one of the hardest moments in the gospels, the disciples come and ask why Jesus teaches in parables at all. And Jesus answers with words that have unsettled readers for 2,000 years, he says the parables are given so that those on the outside may be ever seeing, but never perceiving, ever hearing, but never understanding. Jesus is quoting the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah 6:9-10 and on the surface, it sounds like God is deliberately hiding the truth, so people cannot be forgiven, but look closer, because the parable he just told is the key to his own hard saying.

A parable is a story with a surface anyone can hear and a depth only some will dig for. To the hard packed path like heart, the story stays on the surface and the birds take it. To the open hungry heart, the same story breaks the ground and goes deep. The parable does not create the hardness, it reveals it, it sorts the crowd not by who is clever, but by who actually wants in. Think about what a parable does that a straight lecture cannot, a lecture confronts you, it demands a yes or a no on the spot and a hard heart simply says no and walks off, more hardened than before. But a story slips past the guard, it sounds like it is about a farmer, so the resistant listener relaxes and the truth gets carried in under cover of a field and some seed, then it waits.

 

[Matthias]

Mark 4:1-20, four hearts, one word, the only variable is the ground, but Jesus does something between telling the parable and explaining it and it is one of the hardest moments in the gospels, the disciples come and ask why Jesus teaches in parables at all. And Jesus answers with words that have unsettled readers for 2,000 years, he says the parables are given so that those on the outside may be ever seeing, but never perceiving, ever hearing, but never understanding. Jesus is quoting the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah 6:9-10 and on the surface, it sounds like God is deliberately hiding the truth, so people cannot be forgiven, but look closer, because the parable he just told is the key to his own hard saying.

A parable is a story with a surface anyone can hear and a depth only some will dig for. To the hard packed path like heart, the story stays on the surface and the birds take it. To the open hungry heart, the same story breaks the ground and goes deep. The parable does not create the hardness, it reveals it, it sorts the crowd not by who is clever, but by who actually wants in. Think about what a parable does that a straight lecture cannot, a lecture confronts you, it demands a yes or a no on the spot and a hard heart simply says no and walks off, more hardened than before. But a story slips past the guard, it sounds like it is about a farmer, so the resistant listener relaxes and the truth gets carried in under cover of a field and some seed, then it waits.

Do you attend church?

 

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Do you attend church?

Consider who was on that shoreline, Galilee was farm country, the hills around the lake were terraced and worked and most of the people standing there either farmed themselves or lived one step removed from someone who did. These people knew the smell of turned earth, they knew the ache of a season that failed and the relief of one that came in. So, when Jesus started a parable with a man going out to sow, every person on that hill had a picture in their head before he finished the sentence, they had watched it happen, many of them had done it that very spring. Jesus was not reaching for some exotic image to impress the people standing on the shoreline, he was reaching for the thing they saw every year, the most familiar sight in their lives and he was about to show them it had been carrying a sermon the whole time.

 

[Matthias]

Consider who was on that shoreline, Galilee was farm country, the hills around the lake were terraced and worked and most of the people standing there either farmed themselves or lived one step removed from someone who did. These people knew the smell of turned earth, they knew the ache of a season that failed and the relief of one that came in. So, when Jesus started a parable with a man going out to sow, every person on that hill had a picture in their head before he finished the sentence, they had watched it happen, many of them had done it that very spring. Jesus was not reaching for some exotic image to impress the people standing on the shoreline, he was reaching for the thing they saw every year, the most familiar sight in their lives and he was about to show them it had been carrying a sermon the whole time.

Ever done any farming?

 

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Ever done any farming?

Mark 4:1-20, here is where the original setting matters, because the way they farm is not the way you farm and the difference changes how you hear the whole thing. In 1st century Galilee, the farmer often scattered his seed before he plowed the field, this is backwards from what you would expect, you picture neat rows and prepared ground, they did it the other way. The sower walked across unworked land, broadcasting seed by hand in wide arcs and then came back through with the plow to turn the soil and bury what he had thrown, which means the seed was landing on ground that had not been prepared yet.

 

[Matthias]

Mark 4:1-20, here is where the original setting matters, because the way they farm is not the way you farm and the difference changes how you hear the whole thing. In 1st century Galilee, the farmer often scattered his seed before he plowed the field, this is backwards from what you would expect, you picture neat rows and prepared ground, they did it the other way. The sower walked across unworked land, broadcasting seed by hand in wide arcs and then came back through with the plow to turn the soil and bury what he had thrown, which means the seed was landing on ground that had not been prepared yet.

I have.

 

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I have.

Mark 4:1-20, listen to how Jesus opens, the very first word out of his mouth, before the farmer, before the field, is a command. Listen and then at the end, after the four soils, he closes with it again, Mark 4:9, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. The whole parable is wrapped on both ends in the same instruction. Hear this. Then, did you hear that? The Greek word underneath is “akouete”, it is not passive, it is not the sound washing over you while your mind is somewhere else, it is hearing that leans in, hearing that intends to catch something. Jesus brackets the entire parable with akouete, because he is telling you, before you even start, that the subject of this parable is not really farming, the subject is how you hear.

 

[Matthias]

Mark 4:1-20, listen to how Jesus opens, the very first word out of his mouth, before the farmer, before the field, is a command. Listen and then at the end, after the four soils, he closes with it again, Mark 4:9, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. The whole parable is wrapped on both ends in the same instruction. Hear this. Then, did you hear that? The Greek word underneath is “akouete”, it is not passive, it is not the sound washing over you while your mind is somewhere else, it is hearing that leans in, hearing that intends to catch something. Jesus brackets the entire parable with akouete, because he is telling you, before you even start, that the subject of this parable is not really farming, the subject is how you hear.

No church attendance and no farming experience.

 

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No church attendance and no farming experience.

The seed is the word, the soils are four ways of receiving it and the difference between a wasted life and a fruitful one, comes down to what happens in the half second after the word lands. Walk the field, four kinds of ground, four kinds of hearts. The first seed falls on the path, this is the strip of ground worn hard by feet, packed down over months until it is almost like stone, people had walked it, animals had walked it, the traffic of an ordinary life had pressed it flat and firm. The seed cannot get in, it just sits there on the surface, exposed in plain view and the birds come and take it away, Jesus says, this is the person who hears the word and before it can sink even a little, the enemy snatches it.

 

[Matthias]

The seed is the word, the soils are four ways of receiving it and the difference between a wasted life and a fruitful one, comes down to what happens in the half second after the word lands. Walk the field, four kinds of ground, four kinds of hearts. The first seed falls on the path, this is the strip of ground worn hard by feet, packed down over months until it is almost like stone, people had walked it, animals had walked it, the traffic of an ordinary life had pressed it flat and firm. The seed cannot get in, it just sits there on the surface, exposed in plain view and the birds come and take it away, Jesus says, this is the person who hears the word and before it can sink even a little, the enemy snatches it.

The devil.

 

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The devil.

Mark 4:1-20, watch what the sower actually does, he goes out to his field, he reaches into his bag of seed, he scatters, then he reaches in again and scatters again. Four handfuls in the parable and every single handful is the same, the same grain, thrown by the same hand, with the same motion. So, if the sower never changes and the seed never changes, then whatever explains the four completely different outcomes in the parable, it cannot be the sower and it cannot be the seed, there is only one thing left in the parable that can change, the dirt. The dirt is the quiet genius of this parable, people name the parable after the farmer, they could just as easily name it after the grain.

The farmer does the same thing four times and the grain is identical four times and the harvest comes out wildly different anyway, which means the parable is not really about the one throwing the seed, it is about the ground the seed lands on and the ground in this parable is you. Jesus said something about this parable he did not say about any of his others, he told his disciples that if they could not understand this one, they would not understand any of the rest. This was the key, the doorway, get this parable and the others open, miss this one and you are locked out of the whole set. So, it is worth slowing down and seeing what he actually buried in the soil.

 

[Matthias]

Mark 4:1-20, watch what the sower actually does, he goes out to his field, he reaches into his bag of seed, he scatters, then he reaches in again and scatters again. Four handfuls in the parable and every single handful is the same, the same grain, thrown by the same hand, with the same motion. So, if the sower never changes and the seed never changes, then whatever explains the four completely different outcomes in the parable, it cannot be the sower and it cannot be the seed, there is only one thing left in the parable that can change, the dirt. The dirt is the quiet genius of this parable, people name the parable after the farmer, they could just as easily name it after the grain.

The farmer does the same thing four times and the grain is identical four times and the harvest comes out wildly different anyway, which means the parable is not really about the one throwing the seed, it is about the ground the seed lands on and the ground in this parable is you. Jesus said something about this parable he did not say about any of his others, he told his disciples that if they could not understand this one, they would not understand any of the rest. This was the key, the doorway, get this parable and the others open, miss this one and you are locked out of the whole set. So, it is worth slowing down and seeing what he actually buried in the soil.

What do you think of him?