The Rev. Brandon C. Ashcraft
Trinity Church in the City of Boston
Isaiah 55:10-13 / Matthew 13:1-9,18-23
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost / Proper 10A (July 12, 2026)
Kingdom Grammar
When I was in high school, I studied Latin. Which meant I arrived at college determined to learn a language I could actually speak, and I set my sights on Spanish. Four semesters later I had a head full of vocabulary and verb conjugations, but I still struggled to comprehend the language. The turning point came when I spent a summer living in Mexico. Somewhere along the way, I stopped translating every word into English. I began to think in Spanish, as the language became the grammar of the world I had come to inhabit. I suspect many of you have had a similar experience. Perhaps, like me, with a foreign language, or perhaps with music, or painting, or economics. When we learn something new, there comes a moment when understanding is no longer about memorizing facts, or mastering technique, but about a new way of seeing the world.
Jesus of Nazareth preaches a new way of seeing the world throughout the gospel of Matthew. He calls it “the Kingdom of Heaven.” And he tells strange stories called parables to help his followers perceive this new kingdom. He usually leaves it to his disciples to interpret these parables, but today, Jesus interprets it for them: “[As] for what was sown on good soil,” he says, “this is the one who hears the word [of the kingdom] and understands it.”1Matthew 13:19 (NRSVUE) By spelling out the parable’s meaning, Jesus removes a lot of the guesswork. But we’re still left with questions. What does it mean to “understand the kingdom?” And how will we know when we’ve truly “understood” it?
This familiar parable is known to most of us as “The Parable of the Sower.” But in German, it’s known as “The Parable of the Four Soils,” a title that more closely follows Jesus’ emphasis.2Das Gleichnis vom vierfachen Ackerfeld He says very little about the Sower but goes to great lengths to distinguish the four types of dirt. And the “good soil,” Jesus tells us, is the one who hears the word and “understands it.” And this is where our modern ears can quickly mislead us. Because our world prizes intellectual understanding. We think we’ve understood something when our proficiency earns us degrees, certifications, and letters after our names. But Jesus hasn’t been going around Galilee giving kingdom proficiency exams. His manifesto for the Kingdom of Heaven, his Sermon on the Mount, is so much more than a new set of rules to master. It is an invitation to inhabit a new world. A world where the poor are blessed and the meek inherit the earth.3A reference to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which comprises Chapters Five through Seven of Matthew’s Gospel and begins with a series of blessings commonly referred to as the Beatitudes. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3) and “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). A world where we love our enemies and we’re not anxious about tomorrow because we entrust tomorrow to God.4Often subtitled “Do Not Worry” in translations of the Bible, Matthew 6:25-34 includes the verse, “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?” (Matthew 6:30, NRSVUE). The Kingdom of Heaven is not a new vocabulary to memorize. It’s an entirely new grammar for living. And you don’t “understand” the Kingdom of Heaven by knowing about it. You understand it when you come to inhabit it.
But if we’re honest, the more we really understand “the words of the Kingdom,” the more likely we are to question whether it’s a world we really want to live in. Indeed, we might think twice before ordering our lives around kingdom values – like humility, forgiveness, and mercy. Because the values of this world can pull us in another direction. Putting ourselves first often seems like the wiser choice. Holding onto resentment can feel safer than forgiveness. Mercy can feel naïve.5“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” (Matthew 5:7) And in a world of nuclear weapons, loving your enemies can feel downright absurd.6“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:43-44) So why would we choose to live by these strange, counter-cultural values?
It’s not because the Kingdom of Heaven is easier or softer. It’s because every other kingdom buckles under the weight of broken promises and false hopes. These other kingdoms promise to satisfy our deepest desires, but in the end, they leave us empty and unfulfilled. What has drawn Christians together century after century, what draws seekers to the font and hungry pilgrims to the table, is not simply the word of the Kingdom itself, but the One who speaks it. The One whose life, death, and resurrection reveal that God’s ways, however strange they may seem, are more enduring and more life-giving than our own. The more we try to inhabit Jesus’ upside-down kingdom, the more we discover that his ways are true. That they can be trusted because he can be trusted. And the more the grammar of his kingdom becomes our own, the more we become convinced there’s no world we’d rather inhabit than his.
So how do we learn to inhabit this world? How do we come to “understand” this kingdom? My fear is that you leave here convinced the parable’s most important message is that you need to become “good soil.” I would have failed at my task if you left here feeling scolded by the parable for being planted in the wrong kind of soil. Because, my friends, that is not a Kingdom word. The word that says just try harder, it’s all up to you, that is not the word of the Kingdom of Heaven. For in the last analysis, the word of the kingdom always points us away from our own effort and back to the Sower. The parable invites us to leave the sowing to him. And to keep returning to the community where the language of the kingdom is spoken. Which, as with any language, is not accomplished by a sheer force of will, but by immersing ourselves in the world that speaks it. It is the work of a lifetime. A lifetime of seeking to follow Jesus, of falling away, and coming back, time and time again. Until one day we wake up and realize, the grammar of the kingdom of heaven has become our own.