There’s something that
bothers me about the parable of the Sower: why does he waste seed planting it
where he knows it won’t grow or flourish?
I’ve read the commentaries that talk about the differences between
ancient and modern agriculture – we plant very carefully in neat little rows
while Jesus’ contemporaries planted by tossing seed out as they swung their
arms. Their system works well enough in
fields, but surely they were smart enough to know not to toss grain that had
been carefully stored and prepared onto rocks and roads and into brier
patches. With famine always a
possibility, why would anybody waste a single grain of wheat?
So
here’s a much more sensible version of this parable. Listen!
“A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the
path, so he scraped them back with his foot so that the birds would not eat
them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground the previous year, where they
did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of
soil, so he steered away from that area this time. He knew that if they
had no root, they would wither away. Then
he marked off where seeds had fallen among thorns in the past, so that he could
get back and do some weeding before he planted there. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought
forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with
ears listen!”
Now isn’t that better?
Let me ask you this, however – and it’s a
series of questions that I ask myself, too, with answers that I don’t always
like. And I’m assuming here that
everybody understands and has heard what Jesus calls “the word of the kingdom”. That
is, that God loves his people, every one of them, with all of his infinite
being, and himself has taken on the world’s infinite suffering so that the poor
in spirit are given the kingdom of heaven, those who mourn are comforted, the
meek inherit the earth, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are
filled, the merciful receive mercy, the pure in heart see God, the peacemakers are
called his children, and those persecuted for righteousness’ sake also receive
the kingdom itself. [Matthew 5:3-10]
So, if Jesus is going around, and his Spirit
still goes around today, sending out this kind of good news left and right, and
if you and I have, presumably, really taken this good news to heart, have there
not also been times when
“the evil one comes and snatches away what is
sown in the heart”? [Matthew 13:19]
Or
“when trouble or persecution arises on account
of the word” [Matthew
13:21]
have fallen away? Or who can say that they have never
experienced how
“the cares of the world and the lure of wealth
choke the word, and it yields nothing” ? [Matthew 13:22]
It seems to me that it
is not just the world, or society, or life, or whatever you want to name it,
that is composed of all these different types of soil. It’s our own hearts, too, that have all kinds
of different conditions. Maybe at a
given point in life on type or another will predominate, but they are all
there, all hidden within our souls. If
Jesus is to plant the word within us, and if it is to spring up so that it
“bears fruit and yields, in one case a
hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty”, [Matthew 13:23]
then some of it is bound to fall into places
where we don’t see it doing any good.
But,
you know what? Sometimes we ourselves don’t
know where the good and bad places are until the seed starts growing there. Just try – I dare you – to keep the weeds
from growing in the tiniest crack in the pavement, for even a week. It isn’t that Jesus doesn’t know where the
good seed will not grow. It’s that we
don’t know where it will.
We
look at someone and have in mind the conditions that Jesus rightly points out
are dangerous to the good news, and we think we can see their hearts. But only he can.
So we see someone who lives in the midst of
temptation and we assume we can write them off.
The addict will never be able to escape the trap they have fallen
into. But you know that isn’t true. Maybe a huge percentage of people will be
lost to the dark side that way, but what about the ones who are not? Do they not count? And do you know who they are, or how many
tries it may take them before “the word
of the kingdom” finally takes root?
Or maybe there’s a prominent actor who finds
religion or a sports figure who gets saved and there’s this little, cynical
voice that says, “No way will this last for very long.” Maybe a political type starts mentioning his
or her faith and we (okay, “I”) start thinking, “Here we go. Whose vote are you trying to get?” What if, dare I say this? – it’s for real? Jimmy Carter isn’t the only one.
Even more than that, don’t overlook Jesus’
ability to change the very conditions that he is up against. His teaching of the good news was joined
together with his living the good news and in an essay called “In Which Life
Meets Life’s Enemies”, E. Stanley Jones points out,
“He came that [people] might have life and that they might have it more
abundantly. But three things kept
[people] from knowing life; three things shadowed and shattered life – sin,
suffering, death.”
(Aren’t those the things Jesus talks about in
this parable?)
“All his teaching, all his living, all his miracles, all his tragedy at
Calvary were to get rid of these three things.
He hated sin. He hated suffering. He hated death. When he performed miracles of
healing upon suffering [people] it was not, as some have thought, to attest his
claims to divinity. He healed them
because he hated suffering. He simply
could not bear to see [people] suffer.
But he knew he could not rid the world of suffering by individual
healing, so he went deeper, went to the utmost limit and at the cross became
suffering that [people] might be saved from suffering; became sin that sin
might be ended; became death that death might be banished. He took it upon himself.”[1]
The
Sower knows what he is doing.
“Other seeds fell on good soil and brought
forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with
ears listen!” [Matthew 13:8-9]
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