It's Parable Season!

Like my friend and colleague, Evan, I love Summer Parable Season.  It helps fill the void between the end of Wimbledon and the start of Fantasy Football Season.  Y’know that time when, unless it is a World Cup year, all we have to talk about his awful baseball is and how the season will never, ever end?  As I opened the Lectionary Page this morning, my heart skipped a beat to see that this Sunday we move from the doldrums of Jesus’ expository preaching to the fertile fields (pun intended) of parabolic preaching.

Before we can dive into this week’s parable, however, I think it is wise to spend a few moments in a section of Matthew that the Lectionary skips.  In Matthew 13:10-17, we hear, from the lips of Jesus himself, why he chooses to use these little gems, which I have likened to auditory hand grenades dropped by Jesus in our brains just waiting to explode with meaning.  He does so because, well, his disciples don’t get it.  “Why do you talk in parables?” They asked Jesus.  “Because,” he says, with an obvious tie in to last week’s Gospel lesson, “I want the people to listen, to see, and to think.” (author’s paraphrase)