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Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time A
July 10, 2011
Reading I: Isaiah 55:10-11
Responsorial Psalm: 65:10, 11, 12-13, 14
Reading II: Romans 8:18-23
Gospel: Matthew 13:1-23 or 13:1-9
July 10, 2011
Reading I: Isaiah 55:10-11
Responsorial Psalm: 65:10, 11, 12-13, 14
Reading II: Romans 8:18-23
Gospel: Matthew 13:1-23 or 13:1-9
What’s with these corny stories?
The reading contains its own question: Why do you speak to them in parables? A little
reflection leads me to the idea that perhaps this episode of the gospel is not about how a farmer sows wheat or how the Father scatters his Word, seeding all of humankind with equal generosity, but about how people learn, and how a teacher might get a message across to people who don't want to listen.
The reply on the lips of Jesus raises other questions and the quotes from the prophet do little
to answer what the disciples ask; they only extend the puzzle. In fact there is no clear and
definitive answer to the question in the whole passage. Is it then the role of the homily to spell
it out point by tedious point, rocky ground, shallow soil, and so on, in case the reading has
been cut short and the gospel’s own explanation has not been included?
What’s with these corny stories? I wonder are they just little puzzles. I wonder if we are
meant to spend the coming week just turning them over and over and over... I wonder if there
is something in them that will speak to us eventually.
I wonder if the gospel is not laying down a principle of the teaching/learning process that is
so obvious that we always miss it.
The human mind seems to be fairly resistant to being force-fed. There needs first to be a
wondering. Curiosity is hunger in the head. We get nourishment from food only if eating is
primed by appetite; likewise understanding comes from asking WHY?
Teaching children formulas of religious doctrine as they learn to read and write and count
may be counter-productive if it puts ‘god’ in the realm of unquestioned fact instead of living
mystery.
The child of course has no resistance if it is force-fed (indoctrinated), which raises questions
about the way children are taught some matters. There is no record of Jesus ‘teaching’ or
‘instructing’ children. He spoke to adults, often in puzzles, to give them something to think
about, leaving them to discover their own understanding, and leaving them free to make their
own response. It would be hard to find a book that is less ‘dogmatic’ than the
gospels. For all that they give an ‘account of all that Jesus said and did', we end up with a lot
to think about and very little clearly decided or defined.
Through the next three Sundays we will read a lot of parables in church, and we might find a
lot to think about in them if we take them as puzzles to be solved, each in our own way.
Ynot (Tony Lawless)