Sowing the seed

Address given at Templederry on Saturday 15 July 2023 & St Mary's Nenagh on Sunday 16 July 2023, the 6th after Trinity

Today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel (13:1-9, 18-23) is commonly called the Parable of the Sower.

But what is a parable? A parable is a story describing a scene from everyday life, which conveys a deeper meaning. I think Jesus taught so often in parables because they conjure up memorable images, which lead those who hear them to reflect on their meanings, and to discover the truth in them for themselves. However in this case, Jesus chooses to explain it to his disciples, when they ask him why he speaks in parables. No lesson is better learned than one you tease out for yourself! Parables are a bit like slow-release fertilizer, gradually yielding up their truth to people who ponder them.

The parable of the sower comes in Mark’s and Luke’s Gospels as well as Matthew’s, and in startlingly similar words. Scholars believe the vivid image was remembered and recorded, and an edited version was used by the Gospel writers when they composed their texts years later. All three Gospels also contain the same authoritative explanation by Jesus of what the story means.

So let us in our imaginations picture the scene, let us reflect on the parable’s meaning, and let us tease out its relevance for us now, 2000 years later.

Let us enter into the parable in our mind’s eye.

So many people wanted to listen to Jesus that he used a boat to address the crowd on the beach. The beach was on a lake, the Sea of Galilee. I’ve never been there, but I see it as rather like Lough Derg. It’s about 40% larger in area, and wider but not so long. Imagine the people crowded on the beach at Dromineer, and Jesus in a lake boat talking to them.

Did Jesus see a man sowing in a nearby field? Perhaps this prompted the parable, and everyone could literally see what he was talking about.

The sower isn’t using a seed-drill; he is broadcasting the seed by hand, just as our ancestors would have done only 150 years or so ago. The seed is in a bag or a basket, and he walks steadily up and down the field, taking a handful of seed and throwing it out as evenly as he can. Even at a distance it is quite clear to everyone what he is doing: they have seen it hundreds of times before, and many have done it themselves.

Imagine a big field divided like allotments into strips belonging to one family, with paths between them, tramped down hard by the passage of many feet. The crowd can see the birds following the sower swooping down to gobble up the seed that inevitably falls on the path, for all the sower’s skill.

Everyone would understand that different parts of the field are of different quality.

# Some parts are stony: don’t imagine small pebbles, imagine great sheets of rock just under the surface, with just a few inches of soil on top, like parts of the Burren, for instance. The soil above the rock warms early, and the seeds germinate quickly, but without a depth of soil the young seedlings will soon run out of nutrients and water and shrivel up in the sun.

# Some parts of the field are infested with perennial weeds: imagine scutch grass and creeping thistle, which will quickly outgrow the delicate crop, choking it.

# But other parts of the field are good land, with a deep, clean soil. Here the crop will have nutrients and water enough. It will flourish and produce a harvest of thirty, or sixty, or a hundred times the grain sown on it.

Jesus said many other things to the crowd that day in parables, we’re told. We don’t know what they were, but I think we can take it that Jesus was ‘proclaiming the good news of the kingdom’ as Matthew tells us elsewhere (Mat 9:35).

‘Let anyone with ears listen!’ Jesus finishes.

Jesus himself explains the parable in terms of ‘the word of the kingdom … sown in the heart’.

When his disciples ask him why he teaches in parables, Jesus interprets the parable for them, no doubt to reassure them that they do indeed understand what he is getting at: 

# The seed sown on the path is the word heard, but not understood, which the evil one snatches away, before it ever has the chance to sprout.

# The seed sown on rocky ground is the word received with joy, but by a person without roots, without character, whose initial enthusiasm cannot withstand trouble or persecution.

#The seed sown among thorns is the word heard by those who are so trapped by worldly cares and the lure of wealth that they cannot act upon it.

# And the seed sown on good soil is the word heard by those who understand it, and act upon it. Only such people will yield a harvest of good.

Like those who crowded to the lakeshore 2000 years ago, we are the soil in which Jesus sows the seed.

On a personal level, the message of his parable remains what it was then: we need to cultivate our characters so that as good soil we yield a rich harvest. Each one of us must strive to develop the character traits of attention, persistence, and detachment. Attention, so that we do not miss God’s call when it comes. Persistence, so that we can withstand trouble or persecution when we answer God’s call. And detachment, so that we are not distracted from acting on God’s call by the cares of the world and the pursuit of wealth.

For Jesus, the sower is one who proclaims ‘the word of the kingdom’.

That is himself of course. But it is also his closest disciples, the twelve apostles, whom he sent out saying ‘Proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near”’ (Mat 10:5-7). No doubt the twelve took comfort from the parable that even when their teaching seemed to show poor results, enough people would accept it to make it all worthwhile.

Before his ascension Jesus commissioned the apostles to go out and make disciples of all nations. Their commission was handed on to others in the developing Church, which in all its varied denomination still proclaims Jesus’s good news of the kingdom today. In Paul’s memorable words Christians are all part of Christ’s body the Church. Today the Church is the sower. Is there then a message for the Church in this parable? I believe there is.

The Church’s sowing of the seed may not seem to be producing a good harvest these days. The fact is that here in Ireland and in Europe generally, taking a broad view across all denominations, more and more people are losing contact with Christ’s Church. We see falling Church attendance, fewer baptisms, and insufficient ordinations to maintain the stock of full time clergy. We need to understand why and do something about it, and for that we need the Holy Spirit to guide us.

But we should not despair. Jesus himself was completely realistic about the prospects for his teaching, and so should we be as the Church. As Jesus realised, no matter how good a job we do as sowers, the sad fact is that many people will not become his disciples, and will not be led to the kingdom of heaven by his or the Church’s teaching. Yet those who do, make up for those that don’t by the rich harvest of good seed they yield – as Jesus put it, 30, 60 or 100 fold.

So to sum up, we can learn these things today from the parable of the sower:

As Christians we need to cultivate the soil of our own characters, to develop the Christian virtues of attention, persistence, and detachment from the world, so that we may yield a plentiful harvest of good grain.

And we should not despair at the state of Christ’s Church today. Rather we should rejoice in the rich harvest of Christian souls the Lord already has. And we must pray for the Holy Spirit of God to guide his Church, and each one of us, to be better sowers of the word in future, so that the Lord’s harvest may be even greater.