Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 – 7/26/2026 – The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
“Have you understood all [these parables about the kingdom of heaven]?” They answered, “Yes.”
Matthew 13:51 (NRSVue)
I laughed as I finished reading the Gospel for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost. Jesus finishes telling a few brief, enigmatic parables about the kingdom of heaven and then asks if the listeners understand what he is trying to teach them. The complete answer of Jesus’s listeners as recorded by Matthew is “Yes.”
Matthew’s is the only Gospel where Jesus asks this question; I am not surprised Jesus asks it, but I am surprised at the terse affirmative response. I am also surprised that this response goes unchallenged by Jesus. Have I been understood? What a thing to ask when one speaks in parables. Even the parables Jesus provides explanations for remain open to vastly differing interpretations. For this reason I laugh at their simple yes. What do they understand? Do they understand that the kingdom of heaven is an elusive idea that cannot be grasped with straightforward concepts? Do they comprehend that they cannot fully comprehend the radical nature of what Jesus is teaching?
As I have returned to the life of the church after a long absence, I am struck by an overwhelming thought that overshadows almost all others. The Good News that Jesus preached and the ministry he inaugurated are far more radical than any have been able to comprehend, far more life-changing and world-transforming than any of the disciples could have imagined or any theologian comprehened. When the disciples answer yes that they have understood Jesus’s rapid fire teachings that are anything but straightforward, the only way I can take their unqualified claim to know what Jesus is doing seriously is if I take their answer somewhat paradoxically.
Perhaps the disciples, through listening to parable after parable about what the full reign of God on earth was supposed to look like, came to realize that they were never going to fully get it, never going to be able to make full sense of what Jesus was starting among them. In this reflection then, I don’t reflect on any particular interpretation of any of these parables, not yet. For now I reflect on how expansive they are. In their indeterminacy and their openness to varied and contradictory interpretation, I want to highlight how they expand our knowledge, not by dictating what we know but by enlarging the possibilities of what is known. What we are trying to know, what it is that God is doing on earth through Jesus, is too enigmatic and radical to be taken in by any one way of understanding it. The parable form reflects the size of the Gospel in its life-changing polyvocal multiplicity.
Therefore, when you read the parables, let them wash over you. Interpret them, but don’t feel the need to unlock them. These teachings can never fully be unlocked, and that too is good news!
Revised Common Lectionary Readings for 7/26/2026, the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost:
1 Kings 3:5-12
Psalm 119:129-136
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-32, 44-52
Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary by Justin Marquis
Dionysus on a Bike 
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