Jesus came to this world with a life changing message of love. His top priority was to establish the just and loving rule and reign of our Father in heaven and He invited any who would listen to His message to join with Him in that endeavour. Many flocked to hear His message with joy, but many more closed their ears and their hearts and refused to listen. He began by reaching out to His people through the synagogues and temple, but those doors were soon closed to Him and so He took His message to the people into their everyday working settings. Today we see Him preaching from a boat with a massive audience gathered on the lake shore and beach using His main method of communication, story telling.
The Greek word παραβολή is formed from two root words βᾰ́λλω ‘Ballo’ to ‘cast’ and παρά ‘Para’ meaning ‘alongside’. A “parable” is an illustrative story, by which a familiar idea is cast beside an unfamiliar idea. In other words an earthly story with the heavenly meaning. The Parable of the Sower is perhaps one of Jesus’s best known stories along with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, but it would be more accurate to call it the Parable of the Soil as it concerns the willingness or otherwise of those who heard Jesus’s message to respond to it.
In Palestine at the time of Jesus’s ministry, farmers would use two methods of sowing seed. The first was what is known as broadcast sowing, so-called because of the sweeping action of the arm of the sower flinging the seed indiscriminately over a wide area. The same phrase is now used in the world of radio communications, where we speak of radio broadcasting. The second system was somewhat less common and just as wasteful. The farmer would attach this sack of seed to the back of a donkey, slit the sack to allow the seed to dribble out onto the ground as the animal ambled along. Fields were organized in strips intersected by common rights of way which were the paths. Pathways were not created from stone chippings, tarmac or paving stones, but by the feet of the farmers and workers compressing the ground into a hard unyielding surface. Flanking the fields would be uncultivated weed choked ground and in Palestinian fields in the region around Galilee there were often patches where the soil formed only a thin shallow layer over impenetrable limestone. The sown seed would fall indiscriminately on to these types of soil as well as the tilled and prepared earth. Jesus makes the connection between these soil types and the varying attitudes of His listeners.
Some people were consumed with business and find themselves crowding out time with God. Others found that the stresses of life or life’s tragedies caused them to drift away. The path in Jesus’s story, however, represented those who refused to listen at all. An unteachable spirit can result from pride, but also the fear of new truth making a person blind to everything they do not wish to see. Sometimes an immoral character can shut their mind to the truth of God’s word which can condemn the things we choose to do. We recall in another parable Jesus speaking of the difficulty of old wine skins being filled with new wine (Matt 9:17).
What kind of soil are you? I do not want to focus overly on our failings though today. We don’t often need reminding of them do we? I want instead to focus on a message of hope taken from our Old Testament reading from Isaiah 55. God’s Word shall not return empty for not only will it accomplish that which He intended, He delights in a modest crop as much as He does a bumper one.
The farmer knows quite well that some seed will be blown away by the wind, some will be consumed by birds and some will fall in places where it cannot grow; but that does not stop him sowing nor does it make him give up hope of the harvest. Furthermore, the farmer in Jesus’s story is equally joyful over a yield of 30 as he is of 100 fold.
It is easy to feel discouraged when we don’t see the vast majority of our surrounding community becoming part of our church, but we are seeing small yet hugely encouraging signs of interest and support for what we do and are. We must not regard small results as failure and neither should we give up and believe the lie from satan that people are not interested. Many are. It is our task to sow the seed, and to leave the rest to God.
Whilst on placement as a theological student in Durham, I was teaching a class of children when I asked them what they thought that Jesus meant by His story of the sower? A young 10-year-old boy offered his thoughts which were amongst the deepest theological exposition I have ever heard. He said simply “That’s easy. God is longing to pour out his love on the world and we won’t accept it.”
Mobile communications are a feature of every person’s life, not just the military, TAXI and emergency services and we all know how frustrating a poor signal can be when we are trying to talk to someone. All of us with mobile phones know how often it is hard to get a good signal in a shopping mall or supermarket once you’re inside.
We must not only ensure that we remain tender hearted, free of that which would choke our faith, and receptive to God’s word, but we must also play our part in preparing, tilling and seeding the ground in our community too. There is good soil in our community, we just need to find it and tend it. We need to pray that our witness will ensure that satan is not allowed to block our signal and the broadcast of the sower.
Amen