July 12, 2026

Years ago, when I was training to be a psychotherapist in my professional counseling degree, I was taken with a rather obscure and kind of fringe psychotherapist named Milton Erickson, who spent most of his career working in Arizona. Milton Erickson had some rather strange ideas about the use of hypnosis in a medical or psychotherapeutic setting, and those are kind of the legacies and the things that people still remember about him most today.

But he had another element of his overall theory that I found incredibly captivating, and one that I still, to some degree, find myself utilizing in my own pastoral context. It was said that his office, where he would receive clients and work with them, was filled with knickknacks and little items and remembrances from his life. As someone who struggles very significantly to get rid of things, there's a part of me that still resonates with that.

Erickson would encounter people in the places that they were in in their life—the struggles that they were bringing to him to process in therapy—and he would listen with this attentive, engaging ear, and then often respond to them by telling a story. He would use one of his little knickknacks or pull something down from a shelf to talk about the implication and the memory that this item had for him, or the thing that it came from in his life experience. This was rooted in a deep belief that sometimes what breaks people open is not a kind of blunt, direct assessment of their condition, but this sort of roundabout way of addressing their issue through telling a story, giving an example, or offering a parable that helps them see their circumstance anew—to see it in a different light and reflect on it in a totally new way.

That kind of storytelling mechanism, that rather roundabout way of working with people and meeting them where they are, is quite foreign to our way of being in our cultural and societal life in the United States. We're pragmatic people. We're straightforward and blunt people. We like to deal with the concrete, material things of this world. And yet sometimes, what is most impactful, what is most life-changing and transforming, is story.

I'm thinking about that this week because we're beginning to shift into a new element of this season of Ordinary Time after Pentecost. You may remember—and I've talked about this a lot over the last few weeks—we are coming out of this middle section of St. Matthew's Gospel where we have these very explicit, concrete admonitions that Jesus is offering, especially in the commissioning that we encountered in chapter 10 where he says, "Go to communities and do this." You can't get much clearer than that.

But now, beginning this Sunday, we enter into this period where we are going to be receiving teachings from Jesus that are couched in story, in parable. This, overarchingly, was Jesus' teaching mechanism throughout the whole of his earthly ministry. The great New Testament scholar from Lebanon, Kenneth Bailey, observed that this was at the heart of how Jesus preaches and teaches in the world. Dr. Bailey observes:

"Jesus was a metaphorical theologian. That is, his primary method of creating meaning was through metaphor, simile, parable, and dramatic action, rather than through logic and reasoning. He created meaning like a dramatist and a poet, rather than like a philosopher. In the Western tradition, serious theology has always been constructed from ideas held together by logic. In such a world, the more intelligent the theologian, the more abstract he or she usually becomes, and the more difficult it is for the average person to understand what is being said. In contrast, the popular perception of Jesus is that of a village rustic, creating folktales for fishermen and farmers. But when examined with care, his parables are serious theology, and Jesus emerges as an astute theologian."

I want to reflect on that and spend some time on it this morning, because I think we find ourselves in a similar context today. I'll give you an example of how we don't always think about these things in the most helpful of ways.

In the post-war years after World War II, much of what had been done theologically in the United States and in Europe fell by the wayside. There was no example or framework for understanding the depth of the suffering, the pain, and the destruction wrought by the Second World War. Theologians were struggling to figure out how to account for that. You had a whole slew of folks—probably names that few of you recognize—who began to try to wrestle with that philosophically and theologically: the Niebuhr brothers, for example, Paul Tillich in Europe, and Karl Barth. They had a lasting impact on the work of theology, and they are people that those of us like me still read in seminary to this day. But the power of those observations is rather limited to the people who can understand the dense theological positions that they are articulating.

In another way, though, two great storytellers also wrestled with the exact same realities, the exact same challenges to their faith. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, and C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia. In their own way, these works are just as rich, just as dense, and just as meaningful theological reflections on the horrors and atrocities of the world wars as any dense theological treatise. Yet, what they did in those works of fiction—in those parables, in those stories—impacted generations of folks that came after them. They helped us to more robustly and fully acknowledge the places of corruption and death that the world so often puts before us, while simultaneously pointing to the hope and the everlasting promise of new life and transformation that is also around us. It's in the power of those stories that so many found a path forward, perhaps through social times of darkness or even personal times of struggle and lament.

And so today, as we are presented with one of the first parables of Jesus' ministry that we encounter in this liturgical season, I want us at the outset to think about the power and meaning that story can have in our lives to shape and form how we encounter our faith in new and renewing ways.

Today's parable is a rather straightforward one. Almost as a kind of entry into this way of teaching theologically, Jesus gives us an easy out because, at least with this parable, he gives the story and then tells you exactly what it's about. He gives you an explanation immediately after offering the parable. He says that we have a sower, and this process of spreading and planting seeds, some of which fall on paths, some of which fall on rocky ground, some of which fall among thorns, and then those very few that fall on the good soil that is cultivated and brings forth growth.

Unfortunately, in explaining this parable, Jesus kind of frames it around the individual experience of faith. He explains that there are some who receive the word inconsequentially because it makes no sense to them; it's a completely foreign language and they have no context for understanding. There are some who understand to a degree, but are either upon rocky ground or in the thicket of thorns where that understanding cannot deepen, flourish, and grow into something greater. And then finally, there are those who have the context, the support, and the system that nourishes and strengthens them so that they grow most robustly and completely in their faith.

Where I think Jesus' explanation can sometimes be a little bit unhelpful for us in our context today is that, in a society and culture that is so individualistically focused, we hear this parable as a parable strictly about us as individuals. We tend to hear it in a limited, bifurcated way where we, as individuals, are permanently categorized: we are either those who have fallen on good, nourished ground, those who have fallen on rocky or thorny ground, or those who have no context for understanding any of this and are simply lying on the pathway of life.

At the end of the day, I don't think that is completely what Jesus is talking about. Certainly, there is an element of individual, personal faith experience that we can reflect upon in our own journeys through our life experiences. But there's an immense power and value in assessing this same parable in the life of who we are as a community. What does it mean for us to be nourished in good soil, to be able to grow and thrive with good systems of support and good networks of nourishing relationships?

Furthermore, if we extend this metaphor out, seasons of growth are not singular; they are cyclical. This may be a season in which the sowing didn't go as planned and wasn't as productive as we wanted it to be. But there's always another season on the horizon, another opportunity to attempt again, to sow again, and to plant anew. In the spiritualized experience of our faith, these seasons are immediate opportunities; we are not beholden to the seasonal patterns of the physical world.

The moment that we assess that the seeds we have sown have fallen on rocky ground, or have fallen on a pathway where what we attempted has no comprehensibility or viable path forward—or maybe we've sown into the thickets where we've seen some initial growth but feel the weight of the material, oppressive systems of the world around us—we have an immediate opportunity to sow again. We can try again, attempting to cultivate anew a good and rich season of planting and flourishing.

All of this comes back to this sense of story. So often, we can get wrapped up in the material, concrete things of this world. We can see the seasons of life in the parish and in our lives measured purely in the order of balance sheets, numerical attendance in worship, or other concrete metrics of growth in our community. But more powerfully and profoundly, we have an opportunity to think about what this says as a narrative journey of who we are.

What does it mean not to have our minds set on the flesh, as St. Paul talks about—the things of this world and the material concerns that can so often consume our attention—but rather to have our minds set on the Spirit? To focus on the overarching story that God is unfolding in our world and in our community—the story of completion that God is about in each and every moment.

We live in the reality of the ways that we have seeds to cultivate, and the ways in which we are the seeds being cultivated. It is not either-or, but both of those things at the same time. How is it that we are being nourished, or seeking nourishment through systems of support and finding those places of rich soil to root ourselves in within our own community? And how are we also, then, being the rich soil for other seeds to take root and grow?

So my invitation for us today, friends, as we step into this season of storytelling—this season of great metaphor in these parables that we will encounter from Jesus in the months ahead—is to begin thinking about our life journey as individual Christians and as the community of St. Anne's through this great framework of story. Think about who we are and what it is that we do. How do we share the joy and the fullness of what God is doing here? How are we that narrative, that song of creation going forth ahead of us to renew and refresh the earth around us?

How do we focus, not on the material, substantive things of this world, but on the things of true joy and life? The things of transformation that will address and relate to the material things of the world, but will not be limited by them, and will forever seek to put them in their proper context within the larger, unfolding story that God is telling in this place, in all places, at this time, and at all times.

And so, friends, to go back to that admonition from St. Paul today: as we seek to both be good seeds and rich soil, and rich soil for good seeds to grow in, let our minds not be set on the things of flesh and death, but may they be set on the mind of the Spirit, which is life and which is peace.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.