Jesus went out and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”
Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.
Sermon by the Rev. Carole Horton-Howe
Today’s gospel is the well-known Parable of the Sower. You can’t spend too much time in church without hearing the word “parable.” But have you ever wondered what it means and, more importantly, why did Jesus choose to teach using parables?
I love the definition of parables given to us by theologian C.H. Dodd that a parable is a metaphor that comes out of our common life or nature that causes us to stop and wonder about “its vividness or strangeness, leaving the mind to tease it into active thought.” It's got just enough of the familiar in it to make us comfortable and then teases us into thinking a little longer, a little harder about it. So the listener must actively participate in deciding what the parable means.
With the Parable of the Sower we get some explanation of the meaning of the major components – the sower, the soil and the seed. But even so, we’re not all the way home. We are still teased a bit. There’s still room to wonder where we see ourselves in it and how this teaching fits into our lives.
Here we get an idea about why Jesus taught using parables: if you want to teach people something new, something they might not understand, you’re better off starting with something they do understand. And with the parable of the sower, he presents the people with something so familiar that they can’t help but be drawn in.
The classic interpretation of this parable is provided for us by the gospel writer – there are four different types of soil. Four different receptacles for seeds. And they each receive seeds in unique ways.
There’s the hard packed ground that happens when soil has been walked on over and over again. It’s as hard as stone. When the rain comes it doesn’t soften, it just gets muddy and slippery. Then it gets even harder. So what happens when the seed falls on it? It blows away. Or maybe just gets crushed under foot. Best case scenario, is that it feeds the birds for a day. But nothing more.
And then there’s the rocky ground. How is this any different than the first scenario we might think. In ancient times farming was much different that it is now. For western modern farmers their first task is to clear a field of rocks. They were seen as a hinderance to growing crops.
But ancient people left most of the rocks in the fields because the infrequent rain they had – the only source of water for the crops. The rainwater would pool around rocks giving a sort of reservoir of water long after the rain had stopped. Good insects could thrive in the rocks. But an ancient farmer knew that soil was thin among the rocks. Seeds that fell on these rocky areas of their field would only yield a weak and disappointing crop that wouldn’t go the distance and feed their family.
Then there’s the seeds that fell among the thorns. Ancient farmers would have happily rid their fields of these, but it seems that this was impossible. Thorny bushes grew like weeds. Seeds falling among the thorns were simply lost. Nothing good was going to grow there. And retrieving anything that fell into the thorny bushes was so painful and difficult that whatever fell there was counted as lost. Seeds produced nothing.
And finally there was the good soil. Good soil is soft and crumbly. It’s full of nutrients. As a very amateur gardener I think of good soil as what you get at the nurseries – those huge bags of potting mix marked “organic” with brand names like “Miracle Grow.” But of course for ancient people, good soil meant hard work, consistently applied over time.
But, thanks be to God, it could be relied upon to produce a quality and quantity of crops that assured that you and yours would survive another year. A good harvest was everything. It was life. It is this good soil that God wants all of us to cultivate, to nurture within our own hearts. And not to be satisfied with a stone hard heart, a heart that cares lightly or a heart that let’s love die. But a heart that welcomes the love of God, taking it in – learning, studying the teachings of Jesus so that they grow and thrive within us.
Even if we’ve spent minimal time gardening, we know certain things to be true. One of those is that whatever the way dirt is, is not the way it has to stay. Hard trodden paths can be tilled and nourished into better ground. Rocks and thorns can be removed.
The seeds in this parable are the teachings of Jesus about the attributes of God, the gifts of God for us to learn and take into our hearts. And they are seeds to share, to scatter into the world. They are seeds of mercy, love, hope, forgiveness, joy, compassion, patience that we must first sow into the fertile ground of our hearts. And then spread widely and extravagantly into the world.
So the important part of this parable isn’t about the difficulties that come with planting. There was nothing new or interesting in it for the folks listening that they didn’t already know.
However, there is one thing that was really shocking to the first people who heard this parable. That was the yield, the harvest. A hundred fold was phenomenal, simply unheard of. Even the poorest yield in the parable was beyond their experience and the greatest almost beyond comprehension. To promise this sort of result was more than optimistic, it was a whole different vision of life.
To sow with this sort of hope and vision is to have the perspective of the Kingdom of God. With this vision you don’t mind the rocks or the birds or the thin soil or whatever else may get in the way. All of that stuff just doesn’t matter. It is swallowed up in the promise of the whole enterprise. This perspective, the promise of a vast harvest, is the heart of this little story.
With the seeds we are given, we are teased into the focus of the parable: that, by the grace of God, the harvest will be great beyond measure, great beyond belief, great beyond imagining. What God will make of our efforts is more than we can imagine. The one who sows is simply called to scatter the seeds, to love and to serve, to trust to continually cultivate the good ground of their own heart. The rest will be taken care of. This is not through our abilities; it is through the power of God.
This perspective of hope and confidence is the gift of the parable. There is a carefree abandon to this image. Out of the good ground of our hearts, we are to love and to serve in broadest way knowing full well that some -- maybe most -- of what we do won’t amount to anything that we can see, that bad things that are going to happen in the world. But trusting, none the less, in the incomprehensible abundance of the harvest.
Each one of us individually, and our parish itself, all of us together, have at our feet fields to walk and seed to sow. We are called to do that. This parable is a gift to lighten our step and extend our reach. It gives us the wonderful gift of perspective.
There seems to me to be a point at the end of the parable itself, at the moment when Jesus says “this is the word of the kingdom” – that says to us, to the Kingdom Builders which we are – here “take this bag of seeds and throw them.” Let them fall in the places where these is need of my Father’s love.
There is a story of a Rabbi and his students. The Rabbi told his students that God places scripture on our hearts. He said this frequently – ON our hearts. Finally one of his students asked Rabbi why does God place scripture ON our hearts and not IN our hearts. The Rabbi told them it is on our hearts because, inevitably your heart will break. And when it does the God’s words will fall into those broken places to bind up your heart and to heal it. That’s the gift of being a sower of seeds.
The love we offer in God’s name, God promises, will not return to God empty but it shall accomplish that which God intends for it; and it will prosper in the thing for which it is sent. We can count on that. Amen.