Sermon for July 19, 2026

July 19, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43


If Jesus was going to explain parables, there are other parables that need more explaining than today’s parable and last week’s. These parables of seeds, sowing, good soil, and sorting don’t really need additional explanation, not from Jesus, not from generations of preachers that have come after Jesus.


You might be objecting to this parable from a standpoint of Lutheran theology—what happened to grace? We’re using the Revised Common Lectionary, and the idea of a common lectionary is that all Christians are hearing the same text on the same Sunday across the world. Today’s parable will fit in more neatly with the theology of other denominations than with Luther’s ideas of a God of grace.


This vision of the end of time, when God returns to judge the living and the dead, would be one that energized the apostle Paul. Last week, I talked about Paul and how so many generations of Christians have treasured his letters, but he had a very different vision of his mission. He was not writing letters in the hopes of being the chief theologian of a new church. He thought that God would be returning very soon, in his lifetime, to judge the living and the dead. His letters were written in the hopes that they would guide new believers in ways that would save them from the harsh judgment described in this parable’s explanation.


Paul would not be worried about the Jews and their salvation. They have a covenant with God after all. They’ve had a head start. But we see from his letters that Paul is deeply concerned about the salvation of the Gentiles, who don’t have much time to prepare for God’s return to judge them.


When we interpret the parables in traditional ways, we, too, are likely thinking in terms of a human lifespan, not a cosmic span, in our timeline, not God’s timeline. We think about the spiritual practices that are likely to save us from the fire, from the final judgment. I’ve preached these sermons, so I know the pull of that interpretation, how easy it would be to bring my sermon to a close by urging to seek out spiritual disciplines that work and to jettison the habits that are keeping us from being our best spiritual selves.


In today’s parable, we see Jesus reminding us that it’s not always obvious which seeds are which at the time of sprouting. God the gardener takes a wait and see attitude. The interpretation of the parable at the end reminds us that God takes a much longer view, the kind of view that waits to see what the garden produces. The Apostle Paul has always been important to Christians, even in his lifespan. But what about apostles that had their work undermined by those workers who are so ready to yank out weeds?


This week, I have found my thoughts returning to Mary Magdalene. We usually hear about her on Easter, if we hear about her at all. But her feast day is Wednesday, July 22. Hers is one of the first feast days devoted to someone other than the 12 male disciples. Modern Christians have a plethora of feast days to celebrate. Ancient Christians would have had far fewer, one for each disciple, a few for the earliest apostles, and a few that celebrated events in the Gospels, like the Annunciation, 9 months before Christmas, when the angel Gabriel visits Mary the mother of Jesus.


The fact that Mary Magdalene had a feast day early should have told us of her importance, but for centuries, most of us haven’t learned much about her. At best, we were probably told that she was the first witness to the resurrection, important because she alerted the disciples.


However recent scholarship suggests that she was far more important, a woman who was present with the disciples for many of the important events, including the Last Supper. But as early Church fathers became more protective of the faith, in the 3rd and 4th centuries, Mary Magdalene was written out of the Gospels—for a variety of reasons. Scholar Elizabeth Schrader-Polzer has done important work in the last ten years to establish how Mary Magdalene was written out of the Gospel of John so that it would seem less radical and be included with the other 3 Gospels when the New Testament was compiled in the 4th century. Four years ago, in a sermon given by theologian Diana Butler Bass talked about Elizabeth Schrader-Polzer’s scholarly work on Mary Magdalene. That sermon, given at the Wild Goose festival, is now one of 3 of the most watched sermons of all time; the other two were Bishop Budde's sermon at the interfaith worship service after the second inauguration of Donald Trump and the sermon preached at the wedding of Prince Harry and Mary Markle.


Going forward, study Bibles will have a footnote that will refer to Elizabeth Schrader-Polzer’s work—this development is a very big deal. Recognition for the work of Elizabeth Schrader-Polzer has come fairly quickly. But we all know that we don’t always recognize important people in a timely way.


I could give plenty of examples closer to our own time period. Let me choose just one. Summer always puts me in mind of long afternoons in childhood with the luxury of getting lost in a good book. When I was a kid, I was often reading and re-reading Madeleine L’Engle. You probably already know about her book, A Wrinkle in Time. But she wrote many, many more, for children and for adults.


She always said she wrote for readers, not for age groups, and if it’s been awhile since you read A Wrinkle in Time, I encourage you to return to it. It’s a book we need now more than ever, a book that insists on the power of love, and a book with a provocative message that what may seem like our most difficult faults and personality traits may in fact be the way we save the world.


It’s a novel that almost didn’t get published. L’Engle had 10 years of not being published before she wrote the book, and in her 40’s, after writing it, she had publisher after publisher reject it. The rejections were so intense that she almost gave up writing. Thank goodness she didn’t. That book has gone on to win awards and to remain in print, along with most of her other books. We can’t say that for most books published in 1963.


When we look at people like Paul or Mary Magdalene or Madeleine L’Engle through God shaped glasses, we see how successful they were. To keep the garden metaphor going, imagine them as carrying on the work of the Son, the work of Jesus. Jesus gives the disciples and apostles the seeds of the Good News, and those very human first Christians spread them far and wide. Later believers have continued to widen the garden. Some seeds that are sown are obviously wheat, like the Apostle Paul and the scholar Elizabeth Schrader-Polzer. Other seeds may look like weeds, like Mary Magdalene and Madeleine L’Engle, holding on where they don’t appear to be welcome. But time reveals that they, too, have a place in God’s garden.


We all have a place in God’s garden. Don’t listen to the people who treat others like weeds. Instead, grow in the soil of Jesus’ teaching, sure in the promise that we will shine like the sun as we flourish in God’s garden, watered by grace, nourished by God’s love.