There are several of these “crossing” scenes in the Gospel of Matthew. The gospel is funny that way: the disciples and Jesus are always on the move, taking a path that doesn’t seem to make sense. Always traveling from here to there, crossing the Sea of Galilee only to go back again. And so these crossings seem to have a deeper, symbolic meaning. A challenging situation often awaits them on the other side—a test of some kind or an encounter that leaves them changed. And on at least two occasions, the challenge comes on the journey itself, when the disciples find themselves out on the water.

I did exactly one year of high school marching band. One. If my high school’s system of pitting academics against the arts wasn’t enough to convince you of the validity of my choice, I challenge you to wear something wool outside for a few hours in Lower Alabama. Our practice field was a regulation football field surrounded by an asphalt track and concrete beyond, an island of grass on which a few hundred teenage souls clung to life in a sea of excess heat. The kind of heat where the mere thought of food sounds nauseating…you would think.

If you have grown up with any knowledge of scripture and the teachings of Jesus, you almost certainly know that parables were Jesus’ preferred mode of teaching: these curious stories or images that, if we read them at the depth they invite, often leave us with more questions than answers. Or at minimum, open our imaginations to a wide array of inferences and meanings.

We continue in the 13th chapter of Matthew’s gospel this morning, with another parable of Jesus that comes just after the one we considered last week about a sower who “goes out to sow,” casting the seed upon different types of soil. This week, we hear of another sower, this time who seems to be growing different plants.

“Due to a connection issue images from worship are not available until 20:50; the entire audio is available.”

A few weeks ago, I wrote a Children’s Worship Hour lesson for today’s text from Genesis. I typically look at the passage that will be preached on a given Sunday, find a good version of the story in one of the Children’s bibles from the collection I’ve curated across the years, and then work from that story to put together a teaching moment, a game and a craft for our 3-5 year olds. The supplies for these lessons are put together in buckets for our Firecracker and Sparkler classes by Jan Wilson, whose 20^th anniversary at Northminster we are celebrating this week, and those who volunteer, or are sometimes voluntold, with our children lead them in the lesson while we are in Big Church. Our hope is that by teaching the same text to our youngest children that is preached with the grownups, we are creating space for continued conversations about the text when we leave worship each week.