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Join us following worship in the Van Roon Community Hall for the He/SheBrews Café.
- Work on replacing the boiler has begun. Financing for this unforeseen project is being stewarded by The Heritage Fund and will be repaid in conjunction with our loan for last year’s roofing project. A reminder that those monthly loan payments are a new budget expense this year. Your added gifts will help us meet that requirement and stay on budget. Thank you for your ongoing support.
- We were saddened this week to learn of the death of Wayne Sperry, husband of our Senior Choir Director Shauna. A funeral for Wayne will be held near his family’s farm in Alberta later this summer. Please keep Shauna and her family in your prayers.
- CORRECTION – I made a mistake in last week’s letter concerning our newly arrived refugee family. They are mom Esther, son Darius, and daughter Joyce. I inadvertently referred to Joyce by her last name for which I am sorry.
Dear Friends
Welcome to worship for Sunday, July 13, 2025.
The parable of the sower in Mark is a beautiful story. It is simple and easy to remember with a great opening line “A sower went out to sow”. It draws on images familiar to the audience like paths, thorns, and rocky ground. And there is a stark contrast between three difficult terrains in which to grow plants and good soil where fruitful growth occurs. As the Sesame Street lesson goes, one of these things Is not like the others. Easy, right? So how come the disciples don’t get it?
That’s not my interpretation, that’s Mark’s!! Immediately after hearing the parable of the sower in Mark 4 the disciples of Jesus question him about why he uses parables. Jesus is bewildered and says to them in verse 13 “Do you not understand this parable? How then are you to understand any parable?” I think they can be forgiven.
Not only are they hearing about the seed and the sower for the first time (interpretation requires time and reflection) but the nature of parables is that they are always working at a variety of levels at the same time. Thomas Long of Emory University says, “As soon as we reach out to grasp a parable’s seemingly obvious truth, a trapdoor opens and we fall through to a deeper and unexpected level of understanding”.
There is an obvious level to the parable of the sower. It is less a parable and more of an allegory if we stop at the judgemental view that some people are path, and others thorns, and yet others rocky ground while we who believe are the good soil in which abundance grows. Just as we pat ourselves on the back we realize that when it comes to the word of God there are times we may be path or thorn or rock as much as good soil. And then just before discarding the parable altogether, it’s meaning turns once more and we realize that it is more about the sower and that endless supply of seed (grace) than it ever was about us. And so it goes.
Stories have a unique power to shape us and the world we live in. It is with stories that we teach children what is right and wrong. Stories help us recall the past in such a way that it may shine alight on our future. The oft quoted advice from philosopher George Santayana, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, serves as a commission to value stories and to respect their power to transform us. Parables have that power.
But parables are a unique form of story. At least, parables as understood in the teaching of Jesus since the ‘deeper and unexpected level of understanding’ in a parable is nothing less than a revelation of the Kingdom of God. Jesus uses parables to offer glimpses of the future to which God is leading us. It is a promised future which no one can fully comprehend but yet has an undeniable pull on us. Parables draw us into the future for which God is working with an irresistible attraction.
This week we are focussing on perhaps the most familiar of parables, the so called Good Samaritan. Heard it a million times. Learned it in Sunday School. Just a little morality tale.
Or is it?
Grace and peace,
Michael
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- Read this week’s scripture lesson here: Luke 10:25-37
