Matthew 13:1-23 (NIV)
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.” The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”
He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables: though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.
“Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”
Before we start, I need to issue a correction to last week's sermon. I've aalready amended the blog, but last week I said that there was no indication that Jericho had ever had a great wall that had been brought down, with or without trumpets. It seems I had misread or misremembered something, because Jericho definitely did have a wall, and there is evidence of its destruction, but the scholarly consensus seems to be that this didn’t happen during the period indicated by scripture. The wider point about the biblical and archaeological records not always matching, and about accepting the Bible for what it is not rejecting it for what it’s not, still stands but I wanted to correct the detail. I apologise for a moment of carelessness, but perhaps it might be a reminder to me and to you to fact check what I say. These reflections are always intended to be a starting point for your own engagement, so please do test what you hear (or read!).
---
With that out of the way, let's come to this morning's reading. Over the last few weeks we have been taking a big picture overview of the Bible, thinking particularly about the different types of writing it contains, so I have chosen scripture about scripture and just let it speak for itself, but I do want to say a little about this passage. In Godly Play, which is an imaginative way of telling and exploring Bible stories, parables are represented by golden boxes, because they are lessons wrapped up in stories, and we have to open them up to get to the treasure that is inside. The parable of the sower is a rare occasion on which Jesus does the unwrapping for us, and even more unusually, he takes the opportunity to explain why he teaches in parables to begin with.
He says that it is “because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them”, that the people's hearts are hard so they will not understand and turn so that God can heal them. It's one of those passages that makes me feel a bit twitchy, because it seems so at odds with the generosity and inclusivity we see elsewhere. Jesus preaches to huge crowds, he calls the little children to come to him, he eats with those who seem furthest from religion, he speaks of having sheep of another flock that he must bring in. Over and over again he seems to be reaching out, and yet here he seems to be slamming the door shut. How do we make sense of that?
Well at the heart of the parable of the sower is the idea that the word of God is meant to grow within us. It is a seed and it needs good soil in which it can flourish, so it can become the tree with many branches in which the birds take shelter, which we see in the parable of the mustard seed. I don't think this is about Jesus choosing to give knowledge to some and not to others, but about recognising that it cannot simply be given. It must be received and nurtured, and not everyone is willing or ready for that. Perhaps we might read judgement into these words, but I think we might read sorrow instead. Surely the one who declares “I am the God who heals you” longs for the people to see and hear and understand and turn, so that they might be healed. Surely this hardness is not what God wants to be but what God laments is so.
But there is hope in the parable, for birds can be controlled and stones can be removed and thorns can be pulled up. The soil can be made good so that the seed can grow, and hearts can be softened so that the word of God can be received. Jesus wrapped his meanings in stories not to keep us away from them but to invite us into them, though he knew that not everyone would choose to enter. The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven is not for the chosen, but for those who choose, for all who will accept the gift and prepare the ground.
---
So let's come on to the matter of genre in the New Testament now. The gospels are a unique literary classification, with crossover from both history and prophecy, as they are part biography and part collection of teachings. Manuscript evidence suggests that the material that forms the gospels was passed down orally for a number of decades before it was written down. This may seem a flawed system to us, but in a culture that was predominately oral, the collective memory was far more reliable than we could ever imagine, and compared with other ancient historical documents, the gospels were actually written pretty close to the time of the events they record. Of course Jesus could have come to twenty first century Britain and had the crucifixion live tweeted, but that's not how he chose to do things, and I’m not sure that would have given us a better record than the gospels anyway.
I think the gospels were perhaps written in a sweet spot, soon enough that they can claim a reasonable degree of accuracy, but late enough that there had been time for some retrospection. Because while we might talk about ‘gospel truth’, it's important to remember that we don’t have a gospel, we have four gospels, and I think the reason for that is that they offer us four attempts at interpretation. The disagreements that spring from this pluralism can be troubling, but no two articles or textbooks record the same event in the same way, and in their discord as much as in their commonality, they enrich our image and understanding of the life and person of Christ.
The differences that do exist come from different perspectives and different emerging theologies and ecclesiologies. For example, the synoptics and the fourth gospel disagree over whether Jesus was killed on the day of Passover (when the paschal lamb was eaten) or the day before Passover (when the paschal lamb was killed). They all understood that there was an important relationship between the Old Testament story of redemption and the events of Good Friday, and they wanted to write it into the narrative, but they understood that relationship slightly differently and shaped the story accordingly. It doesn’t detract from the power or the truth of the story, but encourages us to think about what it means. That is why it is important that we avoid harmonising the gospels, and instead see them as whole and distinct narratives, with each author having their own insights to offer.
---
Acts brings us back to history, as it presents a narrative account of the early church. Much of what we said about history last week still applies, so do look back at that on the blog if you missed it. What I will add is that we must be especially careful to remember that not everything it describes is normative, as our increased nearness to it means we can have a tendency to read it as a precedent or a paradigm in a way we do not always do with the Old Testament.
---
The letters compiled in the New Testament were the means by which the early church was held together as it spread across the known world. They were vital for communicating about belief and practice, and so they are loaded with theology, but their contextual nature means it is often in the form of practical advice, and while we do find credal statements, we do not have a complete or systematic doctrine.
Letters are occasional documents written at a particular time to a particular group for a particular reason, and so context is everything when it comes to reading them. Every text has a wider context that it can be set in, but while most texts at least give us the narrow context of the events they relate to, the letters are often missing even that as the writer takes for granted that the recipients know the situation, and we only have one side of the conversation so we often find ourselves trying to fill in the gaps. It’s a little bit like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, as we have the answers but not the questions.
The letters are divided into those written (or thought to be written) by Paul and those written by others, and presented in order of length within each division. That’s important to remember, because understanding develops over time, but we are reading it out of order. All of this means we must read the letters with great care, not assuming that every word is meant for us, not least because the original writers probably never expected us to read them, but looking first for what they teach us about God, and then weighing the instructions carefully to decide if they are still relevant and helpful. They are a fascinating and edifying insight into how the early Christians expressed their faith, and the fact that they were kept suggests they were deemed to be important, but they make no claim to be an eternal handbook for the church, and we do them and us a disservice if we read them as such.
---
The final genre we find in the Bible is apocalypse. The Old Testament book of the prophet Daniel contains apocalyptic elements, but the clearest example is Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, and so that is why we have come to it here. Apocalypse translates as revelation, hence the title of the book, and like prophecy it both speaks truth about the way things are and looks to the future saving activity of God. It is distinguished by its emphasis on vision at least as much as speech, and its heavy use of symbolism and metaphor. We studied Revelation together at the end of last year, so if you want to know more, you can dig into that series on the blog.
---
Well that’s a little bit on each of the genres recognised by a standard classification of the biblical texts. Next week we’ll be looking at some alternative approaches to the whole idea of genre, but I did say last week that I also hoped to squeeze in something about translation. I was reminded of the importance of this at the conference I attended this week, when our speaker showed us some medieval images of Moses sporting a rather fine pair of horns. These depictions came about because in the first Latin translation of the Bible, Jerome mistranslated the verse about Moses’ face shining when he came back from seeing God on the mountain, saying that he was ‘horned’ rather than ‘radiant’. In all fairness, he wasn't wildly off, as the Hebrew word he was translating is related to the word for horns, and what was probably intended was a sense of Moses emitting rays of light, rather like horns coming from his head. Still, it did lead to some rather strange iconography, which then got mixed up with some rather unfortunate antisemitic ideas about Jews and demons.
No translation will ever be perfect, because language is not an exact science, but that is why it is important that we are at least aware of the possible issues. Perhaps the greatest difficulty facing translators is that words often have multiple possible meanings, and unless there is an equivalent word that has the same set of meanings, translators have to make a decision about which meaning was primary in the original, and therefore which word will be the best fit in the translated language. Most of those decisions will be made in good faith, but they are not entirely neutral, and they can alter the meaning of a text with significant consequences. To give a bit of a worked example, the Greek word adelphoi means brothers, but it was also used to refer to groups of mixed gender, and so brothers and sisters is an equally valid translation. Paul often addresses the adelphoi in his letters, and we know that he was writing to mixed communities, because he specifically names and addresses women, and yet that is not always reflected in translations. Where brothers is favoured, the presence of women in the early church is diminished, and their continued marginalisation is justified. Where brothers and sisters is favoured, women are restored to their place in the history of the early church, and their present inclusion is encouraged.
So how do we choose which translation to read? Well my first piece of advice would be not to choose a single translation. I think it can be hugely valuable to read multiple translations alongside one another, as this can highlight where translators have made decisions and allow us to consider them for ourselves. It can also help bring out nuances in the original text, which may be flattened out by the need to choose between words with narrower ranges of meaning. I would certainly recommend working with multiple translations for detailed Bible study, and one approach to Lectio Divina could be to switch between translations for each reading, being open to see if different phrases catch your attention in different versions. Websites and apps like BibleGateway make it really easy to do this without needing to have a stack of physical Bibles.
Of course it's not always going to be practical or appropriate to read in multiple translations, so in terms of choosing the translation you keep on your bedside table, it will depend on what you are looking for. Translations like the NASB prioritise word-for-word accuracy, which can make for a challenging read, while translations like the NLT prioritise readability, preferring a sense-for-sense approach. The ESV has become notorious for maintaining patriarchal language, while the NRSV caused ripples with its use of gender neutral language. Our church Bibles are the NIV, which is generally held to be a good balance between accuracy and readability, and has an updated version which uses more inclusive language, which is why you'll sometimes see a difference between what's printed in the Bibles and projected on the screen. I would suggest it as a good starting point, but I do encourage you to try out different versions. You might find it helpful to choose a favourite passage to compare in several translations, and see which you engage with best.
There are other options to consider too. The Message is a paraphrase rather than a translation, so I would never recommend reading it in isolation, but it can shine new light on familiar passages. You may remember that when we studied the Beatitudes, we heard them from The Message as well as from the NIV, and there is something about hearing ‘blessed are the poor in spirit’ rendered as ‘you're blessed when you're at the end of your rope’ that hits differently. There are also a myriad of companions and commentaries and concordances that can be used alongside the Bible to bring reflections on the text and help make sense of the context of a passage and link together scripture on specific themes. I've brought a whole load of books out of my vestry, which you are welcome to have a look at afterwards.
---
So if you want homework for this week, try out some different translations and tools. But before I finish, I want to leave you with this. When I used some of this material in discussion with my previous church in Leeds, one group spoke about reading the prophets with open hands, that is a willingness to hear and accept what God may say to us through those ancient words. I love that image, because it speaks of an eagerness that prepares us to receive from God, rather than an expectation that drives us to find our own meaning. So may we approach the Bible with open hearts and open hands, and may God pour out blessings through scriptures written in faith and love.
Comments