Again beloved, are we listening?
Matthew’s gospel explains what the things of the parable, explains what the words mean. What do they mean to you? Yes, we will have to read the parable and then allow our imaginations to move the words into our lives.
That kind of listening is the heart listening. Allowing the text to sink into your heart. For many of us these kind of exercise are as painful or as difficult as cross training, lifting 50 pound weights. I know that. For others, the contemplative side of life is more comfortable.
The parable is itself a tool to draw in the listener, it invites an interpretation of the word beyond what we have always heard, what we have always believed.
If nothing else these last weeks (months) have been an opportunity to fine tune our hearing, our listening, our heart listening.
There is a praise song –
Open the Eyes of My Heart, it’s a catchy number for sure, although the theology, while not terrible, is a bit self-centered for me, but I was imagining it as open the
ears of my heart. (not sure Michael Smith, who wrote the song, would approve) yet I want to hear God. In new ways. In ways that lead me to act.
I remember hearing a lecture by Old Testament scholar and theologian, Walter Brueggemann, some years ago now. His affection for the Old Testament was so compelling it completely changed the way I read Hebrew scripture. The permission I felt in that one lecture (and in subsequent books and lectures) to hear the word of God; yes as history, definitely as poetry, as instruction, as mandate; opened the ears of my heart to the possibility that God still speaks to us.
This is the change I seek in the parables, in this parable of the weeds and the wheat.
So read this parable again, out loud, or go to this
podcast where you can hear it read.
Explain it to us! This parable gets an explanation in the lectionary and yes I want that too, especially this parable that is about evil and good growing together. Open the ears of my heart lord! Help us to hear the word of God for this age.
May it be so.
July 19
Rev. Alison
