You Have Some Explaining To Do

23 July 2025  Matthew 13:1-9  

“Whoever has ears ought to hear.” Matthew 13:9

The Parable of the Sower is about hearing, specifically about things that interfere with hearing. That’s what all the different kinds of soil are about.

Later on, Jesus explains that the Parable of the Sower is about things like ignorance, evil spirits, persecution, greed, and anxiety, and how they can keep people from hearing the word about the Kingdom of God. But it is unclear that the large crowd that had gathered to listen to Jesus ever heard this explanation. Jesus gets to the end of the parable, and simply announces, “Whoever has ears ought to hear” (Matthew 13:9).

The End. Roll credits.

Even the disciples were puzzled by this and approached Jesus, asking, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” (Matthew 13:10). They wanted to know if Jesus was ever going to explain it to them, what all the different kinds of soil were referring to. He did wind up explaining it to the disciples, but it is not clear from the text of Matthew 13 that Jesus ever explained it to the assembled people. All they got was, “Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

It is a pretty common biblical pattern that when God recognizes a problem, he raises up people to address the problem. He heard about the slavery in Egypt, and how the Israelites were groaning because of their taskmasters, and He raised up Moses to liberate them. He heard about how certain kings were defiling the Temple by setting up altars to false gods, and He raised up prophets to explain the problem to the kings and correct it. During the Exile (596-538 B.C.), when the people realized they had gotten into that jam because of their faithlessness to the Law of Moses, God raised up for them the Scribes, who provided copies of the Law they could study, and explanations of the Law that they could understand and follow. After the Parable of the Sower and the disciples asked if the story were ever going to be explained to the people, Jesus pointed out to the disciples that they, the disciples, had been blessed with the capacity to understand the Good News of the Kingdom (Matthew 13:11). Then He explained the parable to them(13:18-23), the implication being that they were to do the explaining to the people. Jesus did not call the disciples to be an audience for the things He was doing. He called the disciples to do the things that He was doing, even more: “Whoever believes in Me will also do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12).

Jesus has always had a complicated relationship with crowds, even the crowds at Church. Some will be there to worship, give thanks and pray, but others will be there out of habit, others because their parents made them go, others because the music is good, others may have no idea what they are doing there. In every congregation there are people who need to have things explained to them in language they can understand, so there need to be people who can do the explaining. Many think that is the job of the priests, and to a certain extent that is true. But the reality is that there are not enough priests to do the explaining that needs to be done, and even if there were enough, priests don’t have access to all the places where the explaining needs to happen. It isn’t just in Sunday School, but even more importantly at dinner tables, schools, and workplaces – all the places where people don’t understand what Jesus has said, or think they understand, but are dead wrong.

It is the job of priests and ministers to sanctify the Church. It is the job of the lay faithful to sanctify the world, and that means, at least in part, training up enough people to explain what Jesus says.