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A SOWER WENT OUT TO SOW
In my earlier years growing up in Sunday school, I often thought of Jesus getting up in the morning, going into his olive-wood-paneled study and, at his desk, thinking through what he would go out and teach that day. I mean, isn't that the way most teachers, professors, or Rabbi's do it. You have to prepare for what gems of wisdom you are going to share with your disciples, students, or followers on any given day.
It didn’t take me long to figure out that's not quite the way Jesus did it. Certainly, of course, he spent hours, days and weeks in meditation and prayer on the content of his central message, the kingdom of God, but much of his teaching, particularly the parables, were not composed in the calm of a study where a person could polish the language like a jeweler polishing a fine gem. Most parables were composed on the spot, in the spur of the moment. They were produced instantaneously, usually in the thrust of debate.
According to Matthew, the Parable of the Sower is the first parable Jesus ever spoke. In Palestine, it was the custom for crowds to follow famous Rabbis wherever they went so that they could catch the pearls of wisdom which fell from the teacher's lips as they walked. Here Jesus was standing by the seaside, and such a throng of people wished to hear him that he was nearly pushed into the sea. To escape the press of the crowd, Jesus embarked on a small boat. From this nautical pulpit, he may have looked up at the hillside near the lakeshore, and saw a sower actually sowing, and then and there Jesus took that sower, which they could all see, as a text and began, "Look at that sower up there sowing his seed in that field." Jesus began from something which at the moment they could actually see to open their minds to truth which, as yet, they had never seen.
Interesting that most of our Bibles have, "Look, a sower went out to sow. But the Greek is not A sower, but: "Look, THE sower went out to sow." Was Jesus speaking of himself, saying, "Look, I am bringing to you the word of God, but it's not being heard very well. I want to tell you about different kinds of soil which represent different ways of hearing this word. In other words, the fate of any spoken word depends on the hearers! Have you ever done your best to tell a story or even a joke, put your whole self into it, gave the punch line, and the listener just looks at you with a blank stare? A story or even a joke works to the degree that the hearer gets it.
So, we have four different kinds of soil.
Some seeds fell on the path. We are told by those who know that in Palestine the common ground was divided into long narrow strips which a person could cultivate as they wished. There was no fence or wall around these strips, but between each of them ran a narrow ribbon of ground perhaps not much more than three feet across. These narrow dividing ribbons were rights of way. Anyone could walk up and down them. The result was that they were beaten as hard as pavement by the feet of countless passers-by. When any seed fell on them it might as well have fallen on the open road for all the chance it had of getting into the ground.
There was rocky ground. I at one time thought of this ground like the soil in the state of Maine where our family went every summer. Soil filled with boulders. But it's not like that. In Palestine there is a thin skin of earth on the top of an underlying shelf of limestone rock. The earth might be only a very few inches deep before the rock was reached.
I've had experience with that kind of soil. When Pat and I and the boys lived in Dallas, our son Tim and I decided to put in a backyard fence. The first step of which, after some extensive measuring with a transit, is to dig the postholes. I'm not going to go into this saga, but we began with a shovel, then a posthole digger, than a powered auger, and after we bent that, a jackhammer. That finally worked, but in my mind the next step was dynamite.
Then there was thorny ground. In this ground the seeds of the weeds are still there. The weeds, according to that ancient Rabbinic tradition, Murphy's Law, always grow more strongly than the good seeds. There is only one possible result; the good seed had the life choked out of it.
Lastly, there was the good soil. It was receptive enough to take the seed in; it had depth enough to allow the seed to let down its roots and draw the nourishment and the moisture it needed; it was clean enough to give the seed an unhindered chance to grow.
NOW FOLKS, WHAT JESUS IS TALING ABOUT IS YOU AND ME, AND OUR MIND SETS, OUR ATTITUDES, IN RESONSE TO THE SOWER WHO BRINGS THE WORD OF GOD.
First, there is the seed that fell along the path. This is the person with the absolutely shut mind. We sometimes say of a person, "you might as well talk to a brick wall as to talk with that person." Their mind is shut, and no truth can gain entry.
This is the attitude of the person who is sure they know everything already, and there is no new truth that will be allowed to enter. This was the attitude of the Pharisees to Jesus. They did not want to know anything that Jesus had to say, because they thought they knew it all already. No wonder Jesus called them "white-washed tombs."
We all know people who shut their minds to that which they do not wish to hear. The Psalmist says, "The fool says in his heart, 'there is no God.'" The word for "fool" here does not mean a person with no brains; it means a person who denies the existence of God, not because he or she is intellectually convinced that God does not exist, but because he or she simply does not want God to exist. There is an old Scots proverb that says, "There's none so blind as winna see." The wayside, hard soil.
Then there is the rocky ground. This is the very shallow soil. No depth. In Christianity it is always necessary to think through the implications of one's faith. If there is anything which Presbyterianism has stood for, it is a faith that has depth, that is thought through. That's why we are a people with a Book of Confessions, with statements of thought through faith that have come out of varying circumstances of our history. The one thing Calvin saw to, among others in Geneva, is that the children had a school of faith, and were taught the catechisms, several of which Calvin wrote himself, so that their faith would not be surface deep, but have depth. Unless our faith has depth, when some storm comes or when difficulties arise, our faith will have a hard time seeing us through.
Jesus so often told us to count the cost of being his disciple. Back in the Middle Ages, when a man wished to become a member of the Benedictine Order of monks, the Benedictines took him in. They gave him his cell and the teachings and training that was required. But for one whole year they left the clothes he had worn in the world in his cell. At any time in that year he was free to take these clothes, put them on again and walk out. Only after a year did they take his clothes away and give him his monk's habit. They wished to make quite sure that the man had counted the cost and knew what he was doing. To have a sure and certain faith, it has to be deeply rooted.
Then there was the thorny ground. This is the life so crowded with other things that what is central, Christ himself, gets crowded out. It is possible to be so busy living, that we do not think HOW we are living. You know those Christmas letters we get from friends and relatives, those letters that summarize the year's events. Have you ever received one that did not start with "this has been a very busy year for the Jones family."
Some years back Pat and I took a group of senior high students on a summer mission trip to Haiti. We worked at the St. Croix hospital in Leoganne, about an hour's ride from Port-a-Prince. We worked hard, cleaning up the hospital grounds, painting walls inside and out; organizing the so-called central supply rooms, going into the hinterland and providing elementary medical assistance. But we got to know the people and the delightful simplicity of their life style. We would go into their villages with their grass huts or some even wooden. We would relish the bright white teeth smiling through their dark skins; enjoy seeing the children playing in the village earthen square; dance with them in the evenings. They lived and played virtually outside their little huts. We had a Haitian friend stay with us in our home in Orlando, who made the observation, "why do all you Americans hide out in your walled off houses?"
When we were about to leave Haiti, with our teenagers looking forward to get back to their Mustangs and whatever electronic connectional conveniences exited back then, Pat and I wondered if we had been on a mission trip to the folks in Haiti, or were they, in the sheer simplicity and uncomplicatedness of life, and the delight in just being with each other in the village square, on a mission to us.
There is a motto you all know, but which I find to be increasingly true. "The second best is the worst enemy of the best." It is possible to be so busy to forget the necessity of quietness and prayer and devotion and study. Life should not be so full of "stuff," that the "stuff" chokes out the good seed.
Lastly there is the good ground. The good attitude. The good heart. Receptive enough to take in truth. Its hallmark is not, "I know it all," but the quiet prayer, "Lord, let me be open enough to give your truth rootage in my life." It has depth enough to allow the truth to develop the roots it needs to be nourished and grow. It is clean enough to give the seed, the truth, an unhindered chance to flourish.
What I hear Jesus saying is that he is looking for fruit, for produce, for results, for harvest. But conditions and situations have to be right in our lives to even give the seed a chance to grow.
I'm asking you this morning, how's the ground of your life? Your attitude, your heart, your mind, the conditions for receptivity. Do whatever you need to do, so the seed may produce a rich harvest, that the seed may produce, some thirty fold, some sixty, and some an hundred. And may at the end of it all you hear those wonderful words, "Well done, good and faithful servant."