Sow What?

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Introduction

We have never been great at gardening. We have had a few small attempts at growing vegetables with mixed success. It has never been quite what we had hoped it would be. But I would like to tell you about the time that we had the greatest harvest of any place where we lived. We were renting a home in St. Catharines. One night we had a massive windstorm and it blew one of the sheds right off its foundation. It was in the middle of the yard and was soon taken apart and discarded. But a number of weeks later I noticed something in the space leftover from our destroyed shed. There was a large plant and it was covered in cherry tomatoes. Not just a few but dozens and dozens of tomatoes. And it just kept producing. We would never have guessed that the most produce we would ever get would be from that patch of ground, which did not look very impressive. But with some space created by a windstorm, we had our greatest success.

I think of this experience when I think of Jesus telling the parable of the sower and the seed. We will get into the meaning of it in a moment but right now I want to comment on Jesus’ parables. Jesus took complex theological truths and explained them with stories from everyday experience. This was something that everyone could understand. Whether the person was a fisherman or carpenter, they would be familiar with the image of sowing seed. They would have seen others do it and probably would have done it themselves. 

It was a different way of planting than what we do today. We prepare the soil, perhaps even buying special soil to add to what is there already. We dig little holes and carefully place the seed in the hole and cover it up, hoping that something will eventually appear. For Jesus and his contemporaries, sowing was much more haphazard. Seeds was scattered liberally and the hope was that something good would come from it. Of course Jesus was not just sharing agricultural practices here, he was making a spiritual point. Let’s dive into this passage and try to understand what this means.

The Seed is Sown

In the parable, there is a sower who is sowing seed. The seed is cast out on different types of soil. The seed is sown on the path, on rocky ground, and among thorns, all with unfortunate results. We would not expect seed to grow fruitfully in such areas. Jesus interprets this as being spiritual seed being sown in people’s hearts. Because of different experiences and attitudes toward the seed of faith, there ends up being a lack of true spiritual growth. 

I suspect we can all identify with this passage, knowing people who have encountered the message of Jesus and for some reason have not responded the way would like them to. For some people there is no reaction, for others, there is initial embrace but then the faith withers away, and others are choked out by the cares of life. What Jesus said two thousand years ago is not so different from today.

But Jesus also tells us of a different kind of soil, one that produces a real harvest of various levels. Thankfully there are many people who do respond to the message of Jesus. There is an embrace of the gospel and people grow in their faith. This is what we hope and pray for.

This is a memorable parable but one that leaves us with many questions. Is Jesus saying here that only one in four people will come to faith? Not likely. A more serious question is about whether those other people ever had a chance to believe. Are some people’s hearts just naturally like a path, or rocky soil, or thorns, so much that seed can never grow properly?

Here we need to remind ourselves that there is a difference between an allegory and a parable. An allegory creates a hidden meaning for every aspect of the story. An allegory means you can take the pattern of one story and map it perfectly onto another deeper story. That is not the kind of story that Jesus tells, although there were Jewish teachers at that time doing that. Jesus taught with parables. Parables were stories from everyday life that point to another meaning. In a parable, we are not looking for the meaning in every detail but the big picture of what is trying to be communicated.

The Sower Sows

So what is the point of this parable? Many people call this the parable of the soils. They see this about the hardness or the openness of our hearts to the gospel. If we see someone reject Jesus, we can dismiss them as being one of the bad soils. It has often been used this way.

However, Jesus actually describes this parable as the parable of the sower, making the sower the main character and not the soils. But who is the sower? At times I have thought of the sower as being individual Christians who feel the pressure of getting the message out as widely as possible. While it is good for us to share, it is actually Jesus who is the sower.

If you read this parable carefully and then go back to the Gospels and read the life and ministry of Jesus, we can see that this fits Jesus’ experience of ministry. Jesus shared the message of the kingdom of God widely, to rich and poor alike. Everything that we see in this parable is what Jesus saw as he shared with the people he encountered. This parable is telling us more about Jesus than anything else.

Sow What?

Jesus told this parable for a reason and he explained the parable for a reason. If the parable is about Jesus being liberal with the sowing of seed, despite knowing that not everyone will receive it, what does that mean for us? I tend to think about these things in terms of our relationship with God and our relationship with people.

About a decade ago, there was a worship song released that was about the reckless love of God. Some Christians were offended that anyone would describe God as reckless. There are still people upset about it. But if the parable of the sower is about Jesus wildly scattering instead of carefully examining the types of soil and planting judiciously only in the soil most likely to produce results, how does that inform our worship? It seems to call us to a more passionate worship as we consider God’s amazing grace in calling us to himself.

What about how we treat others? The sower scatters on all the soils. What about us? Do we carefully decide who is worth of our time and attention? Do we see some people as beyond hope? Perhaps we do. However, we actually do not know who is rocky or thorny on the inside. I know that during my late teens and early twenties, I was the last person people thought would become a pastor or a chaplain. I remember people telling me about Jesus while I presented a rocky exterior, completely hiding what was going on the inside. The seed that we are to sow is not just handing out a religious tract or communicating a turn or burn message. The seed is an invitation to know the God who is love and to participate in a community of love. This is why we call it good news. The question we have to ask is: Are we as prepared to be as generous with grace as Jesus was?

Conclusion

The sower and the seed. Often it has been used to dismiss people as rocky ground or thorny bushes. I believe it actually teaches the opposite. Jesus could have easily taught a parable in which the sower purposely avoids casting seed on ground that is expected to be unproductive. Instead Jesus describes a sower that sows with wild abandon. None of us know what will become of the seeds that are planted. Just as we never expected an abundant harvest of cherry tomatoes where our shed had once been, anything can happen with any one of us. The challenge for us is to be as reckless with the grace of God toward others as Jesus is toward us.