Sabbath and Sabotage

Seeds of Sedition in the Parables of Matthew 13:24-43

I know I have missed the last two Sunday’s for the weekly segment of Soil, Spirit, and Solidarity but that has been because of all the finals I have been writing! Over the next couple of weeks I will be sending out four papers (including this one) to paid subscribers so be on the lookout!

This paper further explores the ideas I wrote about in my posts Seeds of Sedition by taking a more thorough look at the text of Matthew 13:24-43 by placing it in conversation with the Gospel of Thomas and the tools of the historical critical method of biblical study.

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Introduction

            While it is perfectly reasonable for us to understand the teachings of Jesus to be “for us,” before we can arrive at a responsible interpretation of these teachings we must ensure that we do not lose sight of the fact that the texts that contain them were not written “to us.”^[1] All too often in the Christian tradition, we have been quick to forget this notion, leaving the teachings of Jesus uprooted from the original context, culture, and concern from which they were told, shared, and recorded. While the process of arriving at a true interpretation may be difficult, the tools of historical critical method can help pull back the layers of these texts to reveal authentically historical threads while simultaneously helping us to navigate how portions of these texts result from interpolations being made to, and interpretations being made of, earlier oral and written records, some of which have been lost to history.^[2] While it may very well be impossible to know with full certainty what Jesus did and taught, much less what these teachings meant, we must, as those seeking to interpret these texts faithfully, search for the mycelial-like threads beneath the surface of the pages to find “true” interpretations for our own context, culture, and concerns that take seriously the deep historical and socio-political roots from which these teachings have emerged, lest they become domesticated and shallow unable to “transform the world.”^[3] It is with this in mind that I will turn toward Matthew 13:24-43, and the corresponding logion found in the Gospel of Thomas, to examine the parabolic and prophetic pedagogy of Jesus hoping to uncover an interpretation of these verses rooted in the agrarian context of his life and ministry under Roman occupation in first-century Galilee. That is to say, an interpretation predicated on the pruning away of Mathew’s eschatological interpolated interpretation (verses 36-43) so that the seeds of new interpretations may take root, blossoming into sabotage and Sabbath in the face of the destructive forces of empire.^[4]

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^[1] Miglio, Adam, Caryn A. Reeder, Walton Joshua T., Kenneth C. Way, and John H. Walton. 2020. For Us, but Not to US: Essays on Creation, Covenant, and Context in Honor of John H. Walton. Eugene, OR.

^[2] I am using the word “true” here to mean historically verifiable and factual. This usage is meant to contrast the subsequent use of the word as I draw on the work of Brazilian Philosopher Paulo Freire.

^[3] Paulo Freire, Myra Bergman Ramos, and Donaldo Macedo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 1993)

^[4] This is not a paper specifically about ecotheology, but I want it to be a paper about ecotheology. There is so much here loaded within my use of “present context” that I will be unable to elaborate on within the context of the paper, but I thought it best to make note of it here. For me, the interpretation that I am hoping to put forward is by its very nature one that is rooted in a response to the present ecological crisis.