Let the Kingdom Bloom
Let the Kingdom Bloom
Between “Let anyone with ears listen,” and “Hear then the parable of the sower,” are eight verses that the Lectionary leaves out. In those eight verses Jesus’s audience shifts from the “great crowds” to only his disciples, from the outsiders to the insiders. And while, in the explanation that is in the reading, Jesus refers to “the word of the kingdom,” he does not say the “k” word to the crowds. Those who are already serving kings and wannabe kings are lurking in the crowds. So, Jesus spoke this parable of the kingdom of heaven, the first and foremost among His parables in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But avoiding slogans and soundbites, Jesus used cryptic images that those who really knew their Law and Prophets would understand. But a cryptic farming story wouldn’t be self-incriminating enough to pin a charge of sedition on him. And we disciples, who are also the seeds He is sowing, still have the ears to listen.
A Jewish scholar among the crowds listening to this parable might well have heard the echo of the prophet Isaiah, who we hear today speaking of the word coming from God’s mouth in heaven like rain and snow watering the soil, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater. He would have recalled Isaiah delivering this word of the Lord to the exiles of Babylon, encouraging them to go back in peace to their promised land. In his and Jesus’s time, the Jewish people may have been back in their homeland. But under foreign occupation, they were exiled in place. So that scholar might have heard Jesus promising an end to that exile.
But he might also have heard how 3/4ths of the Sower’s seeds would be rejected by their soils, and wondered who the soils might stand for. The Roman Empire? What about the local king, Herod Antipas, handpicked by Rome but perhaps waiting for the opportune time to claim the succession of the House of David? The Temple priesthood, offering the appointed sacrifices in the hope that God might be appeased enough to unleash his heavenly hosts on the occupiers? The moral reformers of their time, the Pharisees, practicing all 600 plus commands of the Law so that God might decide that his people were ready to judge the nations by his might? Or the Zealots, the revolutionaries who had decided to stop waiting for God and take matters into their own hands?
And who was the Sower of the word of the kingdom, Jesus himself? And was he predicting that he and his seeds would be rejected? This parable of parables had a very short fuse. It would explode in that week, which we now call Holy. And the Sower himself would be rejected by all of the above. But that rejection would not be the last word. And so the story of a Sower, his seeds, and the soils where they land goes on and on and on.
“Let anyone with ears listen!” I trust your ears are burning, and that you’ve figured out who the Sower is, and therefore who the seeds are. Perhaps you can begin to think about the soils where you’ve been scattered: the soils exposed to the predatory birds, the soils with too many rocks and not enough roots, the soils with choking thorns. Perhaps you can imagine the kings, the moralists, the revolutionaries who would impose their kingdoms by force of numbers. And yet, here we are, nothing but seeds whom our Sower is planting, nourishing us with his word of faith, hope and love, nourishing us with bread and wine.
The Sower did not and does not confront the wannabe kings of this world with their weapons. The Sower did not and does not meet violence with more explosive violence. The Sower did not and does not raise his voice above all other raised voices. The Sower still plants his seeds, nourished by Word and Sacrament. And where they are planted, they can nourish those seeds around them. And that is enough for the Sower. So, as citizens of the kingdom of heaven, trust your Sower to plant you where you can bloom, and bloom where you are planted.
July 12th, 2026
The 7th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 10, Year A
The Rev. David Kendrick