Br. Keith Nelson

Luke 8:4-15

Some truths – about ourselves, about those we love, about the world around us, even truths about God, who is the heart of all Truth – can be very hard to receive.

Sometimes this is because our present perception is based on lesser or partial truths. It can be threatening, destabilizing, or at the very least inconvenient to accept a larger, more complete encounter with truth.

On a global and political level, we might consider the human causes of climate change. In this, we face (or flee) at least two uncomfortable truths: the severity of its consequences and the grief we experience at our complicity.

Everywhere Jesus went, the kind of Truth he offered provoked a response in others.

For some, Jesus offered a challenging but exhilarating invitation into a freedom they had never imagined was possible. Even for those who would welcome it, this grace could be shattering, as when Peter responds to Jesus: “Lord, go away from me, for I am a sinful man.”

For others, the words, the actions, even the simple presence of Jesus felt intolerable – as if a potent allergen had been introduced into their bodies. The force of this presence was so threatening, so destabilizing, so inconvenient that they could only respond by retreating into a willed refusal to see.

Their hearts were like ground where no seed could grow.

The parable of the sower, in both Luke and Matthew’s version, contains a challenging interchange between Jesus and his inner circle. Luke reads: Jesus said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets (or mysteries) of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables, so that, ‘looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand.’” These last words are a quotation from the prophet Isaiah, whose mission was to provoke from the people of Israel this allergic response to God’s Truth.

One scripture scholar writes that the parable form “arrests the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought.” Parables introduce uncomfortable questions. Meditating on a parable invites the disciple, in every age, to put on the mind of the master: the mind of Christ. By gradual and partial glimpses, we come to behold more of the Truth, until “we see him as he is.” To that end, the parable is like an irritant: the grain of sand inside the oyster that eventually produces a pearl. We become like him by learning to see the world as he sees it.

But a parable could also diffuse or absorb the unalloyed shock of Truth in the midst of those who, frankly, couldn’t handle it, or simply weren’t ready to change their minds and enter the kingdom, there in their midst, in the person of Jesus.

Jesus always respected the freedom of others to choose what to do next: whether to turn toward Truth or to flee from it. As the Way, the Truth, and the Life, he always intends the discomfort or strangeness he brings to our lives for the purpose of our transformation.

In his company, seed is scattered, with astounding generosity, in every direction, in every condition, on every kind of ground.

Its growth depends on how receptive or resistant we are to Truth.