Description
Twelve Months of Sundays – Year A
Ordinary Time
Proper 10
Genesis 25.19–34
Romans 8.1–11
Matthew 13.1–9, 18–23
The next chapter of Genesis offers a striking echo to this parable: Isaac sowed seed, and reaped a hundredfold, for the Lord blessed him(26.12). But the key background, I think, is Isaiah 40.6–8 and 55.10–13. All flesh is grass, but God’s word will last. It will not return to him empty, but will accomplish his purpose, making the desert blossom like the rose.
The Sower, in other words, is not simply an earthly story with a heavenly meaning, a moral lesson about listening carefully (though it is that too; there are many Esaus in today’s Church, despising their birthright of hundredfold blessings through hearing and understanding the word). It is full of the music of the Kingdom, the new song of God after the long silence of the exile. It encapsulated Jesus’ challenge to his
contemporaries to be Israel, because God was at last ‘sowing’ them again; and the warning that if this final word was not heeded the alternative would be catastrophe...
Taken from Twelve Months of Sundays Year A by N T Wright
Published by SPCK