disorientation (Matthew 13:1-9)

"That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables..."

Matthew 13:1-3

Be warned: if what Jesus says doesn't disorient you, you are not getting his point.

Here's what I mean. I think one of the great challenges for someone trying to follow Christ today is what they've learned about him from within the four walls of the church of their childhood. Now don't get me wrong, I believe children's pastors and Sunday School teachers make incredible contributions and sacrifices every single week, if not every day, and should be counted as one of the central pillars of any family church. Yet the fact remains that, for many lifelong Christians, many of the things we learned early on have made the soil of our hearts harder and less open to the seed of the word of the kingdom.

One of civilization's first inventions was the plow. The earliest farmers knew that for a seed to take root, the hardened, dry topsoil would have to be broken up, allowing the fresh, nutrient rich soil hiding underneath to be brought to the surface. What's interesting about this parable, in fact, is that it's kind of a parable about parables. Just as his listeners would have known that good soil required plowing, so Jesus' parables themselves were a kind of plow, breaking up the assumptions they had formed about God and his kingdom, preparing their hearts to receive his word. Those who listened to Jesus' parables carefully and digested them found themselves disoriented, left to rethink what they had previously assumed about God.

So, the question for us is, does Jesus disorient us?

"Wait!" you may be thinking. "But I'm a Christian! Doesn't that mean that I already get Jesus and his parables?"

You're right, except for the fact that, just as the sun beats down and dries out even a newly plowed field, the world we live in is constantly hardening the soil of our hearts. Every day the message of the world serves to attempt to tame the message of Jesus, to put God in a box. In light of this, I for one find the soil of my heart constantly in need of breaking, my assumptions constantly in need of disorientation.

The good news is that Jesus is a tireless farmer. Read his word, put your assumptions on trial, and he will prepare the soil of your heart to bear fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.