I would like to share a story that I've read recently.
"One evening during the summer as I was sitting on my balcony, I noticed a young man waiting at the bus stop across the street from my house. He was about seventeen and dressed in a way that I don't understand. His blue jeans were dragging on the concrete sidewalk completely covering his feet. I counted three tattoos on his muscled arms and a complement of pierced ears and eyebrows. Imitating my parents from thirty years ago I thought, "What is wrong with these kids today? Why do they want to look like this?"
As I was manufacturing my own opinions about this boy, an older woman began to struggle across the street with oversize heavy boxes. The young man noticed her too, and as if it were the most natural instinct in the world, walked over and offered to help her. She gratefully released the boxes into his arms and led him to her car. He placed her belongings in the trunk, nodded, and turned to go, but in the most remarkable touching way, the old lady wrapped her arms around him and gave him a warm bear hug of a thank-you. Then she drove away. He stood smiling a moment and returned to the bus stop. Within a minute of that tender exchange, he was aboard the bus, leaving me along on my porch to think about the extraordinary encounter I had just witnessed. Perhaps this young man would never think about the old lady again, and the favor he had done. But the woman certainly would. She had been graced with help that had come out of no where just when she needed it."
In the Gospels, Jesus used stories and parables so well to teach about the Kingdom of God. Why did He do this? In using stories, Jesus is inviting his listeners to a new way of thinking about God and His Kingdom that may otherwise allude us. In effect, Jesus is saying through stories and parables that God's ways may not be our ways. They cause us to rethink our normal attitudes and behaviors and to see and act differently then we might otherwise.
The story above challenges us to rethink some of our old biases and judgement that we may be carrying, and to become open to new possibilities. It is a call to change, a call to an interior conversion. The Kingdom of God begins to open to us as we respond to this need we have to change.
"Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed."
Gospel of Matthew
The purpose of the parable of the seed is presented to us by Jesus for this reason - as an invitation to change. It is to help us realize that at times, we walk only the well trodden path, and crush God's revelations under our feet; that we, at times, allow the anxieties and concerns of the world to choke out God's love; that, at times, we listen to and act upon God's word superficially failing to take it into the heart where it can become integrated into our lives.
If we can remain open to new possibilities, new revelations and incites, then change will happen, and the unfolding of God's plan will be made known to us.
This is the seed that falls on rich soil, the seed that produces a rich harvest and reveals to us that the Kingdom of God is at hand. This is the mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds that, when planted in rich soil becomes a large tree where birds come and nest in its branches.
The invitation of change is extended to all, but there will always be those who resist.
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