Did you ever wonder what is wrong with people? I don’t mean people who disagree with you or do stupid things or people who have a bad day. There are people out there who just wreak havoc in our world, and that happens within the Church as well.

This is the second of 8 parables in Matthew chapter 13 about the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven. It deals with the very hard and often discouraging fact that people don’t seem to get it. Worse, Jesus indicates that we’ve got “children of the evil one” around us! The image Jesus uses is striking.

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Today’s Gospel covers the first of eight parables in the 13th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, each of them having to do with the Kingdom of God. This one has the advantage of an explanation from Jesus himself, so maybe I should just sit down and save us all some time. But, of course, there is a lot to mine here and so we shall.

Jesus says the seed in this parable is God’s Word. On one level, then, we can take it as meaning we’ve got to be receptive to what Jesus says, especially about the Kingdom of God. Fair enough, that is true.

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We celebrate the baptism of Lorraine Floyd today. She’s a beautiful girl blessed with a loving family. One of the things Meg and I learned as young parents is that infants are never wrong for the first three months. They are rested or tired, clean or need a change, fed or hungry. And they will let you know. But of course their worlds quickly change. Lorraine is almost a year old. Her perception of the world has changed dramatically in the almost two months since we originally planned to baptize her on Mother’s Day. She met her twin cousins who are just a bit older for the first time this week.

That makes me think of all the things you want to say to a baby as they are learning to hear, to understand speech and to engage their family and the world around them: Mommy loves you! Daddy loves you! Rock-a-bye-baby. And my personal favorite, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”

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