“… blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear.”
So that’s good – our eyes and ears are working, we’re seeing and hearing what Jesus is saying. And that’s a lot better than all those who are not. So we should be pretty pleased about that, yes?
For sure.
But if we assume that this situation reflects any special ability on our part then I think we would be mistaken. Jesus is not telling us we can pat ourselves on the back for this. The disciples and the rest of the crowd are all hearing the same parable. The disciples don’t have any special ability to understand what Jesus is saying – it’s Jesus who goes on to explain the parable to them. The only thing that differentiates the disciples is that they have been given the gift of hearing the message spelled out, Jesus explains it directly to them. And as he points out, plenty of good, and maybe better, people have gone before them who didn’t get this special treatment.
We have no way to understand why Jesus calls some and not others, why God speaks clearly to some and not to others, but what is clear is that this is a pure gift to those who receive it. It does not imply that the recipient is in any way better or somehow more accomplished or more worthy than the others. It is also apparent that some people push back against this opportunity, as Isaiah had pointed out. It’s like they are going out of their way to avoid seeing or listening. Absurd as it seems we can maybe identify times when we are stubborn in that way, we tie ourselves in knots to avoid acknowledging or recognizing what is obvious in front of us.
Reasonably enough Jesus points out that if we engage in such self defeating behavior we are going to go backwards. At this point we should remind ourselves that he’s not saying this as some sort of threat: do what you’re supposed to or I’ll take something away from you. It’s the other way round: if we refuse the gift of understanding then we will be worse off. That’s the consequence of our own choice and action, not something being done to us.
So we can delight in the fact that we see and hear what many prophets and righteous people hope for but don’t get to experience. We should always remember that that this is a consequence of God’s pure and inexplicable love, pure gift, and nothing we can claim as based on anything we have done or deserve.
When we fully appreciate and accept this we stand a good chance of being that tall, strong wheat, living in rich fertile soil, part of the great harvest planted by the Lord.