Sow with abandon

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 (CEB)

That day Jesus went out of the house and sat down beside the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he climbed into a boat and sat down. The whole crowd was standing on the shore.

He said many things to them in parables: “A farmer went out to scatter seed. As he was scattering seed, some fell on the path, and birds came and ate it. Other seed fell on rocky ground where the soil was shallow. They sprouted immediately because the soil wasn’t deep. But when the sun came up, it scorched the plants, and they dried up because they had no roots. Other seed fell among thorny plants. The thorny plants grew and choked them. Other seed fell on good soil and bore fruit, in one case a yield of one hundred to one, in another case a yield of sixty to one, and in another case a yield of thirty to one. Everyone who has ears should pay attention.”

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“Consider then the parable of the farmer. Whenever people hear the word about the kingdom and don’t understand it, the evil one comes and carries off what was planted in their hearts. This is the seed that was sown on the path. As for the seed that was spread on rocky ground, this refers to people who hear the word and immediately receive it joyfully. Because they have no roots, they last for only a little while. When they experience distress or abuse because of the word, they immediately fall away. As for the seed that was spread among thorny plants, this refers to those who hear the word, but the worries of this life and the false appeal of wealth choke the word, and it bears no fruit. As for what was planted on good soil, this refers to those who hear and understand, and bear fruit and produce—in one case a yield of one hundred to one, in another case a yield of sixty to one, and in another case a yield of thirty to one.”

We begin with a wonderful mental image – a crowd has turned out to Jesus, and it’s so large that Jesus has gotten into a boat and is preaching from the boat to the people on the shore. It sounds like something that someone like me would try to paint, and maybe I will someday.

And Jesus tells them a story. The Bible, depending on which translation you’re looking at, may begin this story with a reference to “a farmer” or “a sower.” But the great Bible commentator William Barclay claims that this is a mistranslation. He says the original Greek should have been translated into English as “THE sower,” or “THE farmer.” The reason it matters is that Barclay thinks that Jesus might have been gesturing towards an actual human being – someone spreading seed in a field nearby.

In that day and time, there were two ways of spreading seed. You could scatter it by hand, or you could put a bag of seed on a donkey’s back, poke a hole in the bag, and lead the donkey through the field. Neither way was completely foolproof; either way, the wind or the donkey’s movement might cause some of the seed to go where you didn’t want it to.

The parable itself is quite familiar, something we’ve all heard for years. Jesus talks about the seed landing in four locations.

Some of the seed falls on hard ground, the path running alongside the field. In those days, fields were long and narrow, and there were paths running between them and alongside them, and anyone traveling from one place to another was free to use those paths. The foot traffic on the paths packed that soil down hard. Any seed falling on the path had no chance to sink in or take root. It would lay there on top of the ground until the birds came and took it.

That hard path, as Jesus explains, represents those who reject the Gospel right away, out of hand. They either don’t understand it, or they don’t want to understand it, or they have some resentment or hidden hurt that gets in the way of believing in a benevolent, loving God. Whatever the reason, their stubbornness and resentment won’t let the seed take hold at all.

The parable tells us that birds come and carry the seed away from the hard ground. Metaphorically, that could mean that these people are pulled away to some other belief system – another religion, or atheism, or just an apathetic refusal to even think about the larger questions.

There’s no doubt that there are some people who stubbornly resist anything having to do with Christianity.

Then there is the seed that fell on rocky ground – which maybe should be translated as shallow ground. There are parts of Bedford County where the residents know exactly the kind of ground Jesus is talking about. There’s not much dirt before you get to rock. There’s just enough soil there that the plants can sprout, and seem to be doing OK, but they can’t put down root deeply enough to get nourishment for sustained growth.

The seed that falls on rocky ground represents people who don’t really have a deep commitment to the Christian faith. They may sprout up with a lot of activity, but when the going gets tough, this type of believer falls away. I think we’ve all known someone like this, who has the passion of the convert, but then six months or a couple of years later they’ve fallen completely away from the faith.

I think in some cases, what these people first fell in love with is not Christ but some human aspect of Christianity – a particular leader, or a close friend who is a Christian, or a particular community of faith where they felt comfortable. But Christians are humans, and humans are not perfect. If you place your trust in the pastor instead of in Jesus, the pastor is eventually going to let you down. If you place your trust in some author or artist instead of Jesus, that person is eventually going to let you down. If you place your trust in your small group, or your prayer partner, or your Sunday School teacher, you’re eventually going to be disappointed.

In 2023, I went to a bookstore in downtown Franklin to get a book signed by an author whose work I had really admired over the years. I got a selfie of the two of us and posted it to Facebook. Back in January of this year, the author I’d admired so much admitted to having had an eight-year extramarital affair, and he announced that he was retiring from his public ministry as a speaker and author.

There were a lot of different opinions expressed at the time by people who followed the story. The author seemed to be doing the right thing by stepping out of the spotlight, but how should we treat him? What about the people who were blessed by his books and magazine articles over the years? Should we stop reading his older books? Does his sin invalidate his body of work? I don’t think so, but I can also see how someone would read his work in a new light as a result of these unhappy revelations.

We must always remember that we follow Jesus, not John Wesley, or Francis Asbury, or Bishop Graves, or anyone else.

That’s not to say we can’t admire pastors or teachers or scholars or authors or musicians or anyone whose words and actions have bolstered our faith. There are Christian leaders whom I admire very much. But that’s not where I’ve placed my faith, and if someone in whom I have trusted turns out to have feet of clay, it’s a great disappointment, but it’s not the end of the story. People who put their trust in Christians instead of Christ are setting themselves up for disappointment, and that causes many of them to fall away from what they thought was their faith.

There are people who are caught up in some particular worship experience – maybe it’s a big megachurch with a dynamic preacher and a propulsive worship band. Maybe it’s a little country church where someone was raised and where everyone knows everyone else and is probably related to them in some way. Maybe it’s some parachurch ministry or missions program or retreat where someone has had a really powerful experience. I’ve had some of those types of experiences, and talked people’s ears off about them later.

There’s nothing wrong with finding the type of congregation and the type of worship that blesses you. But that shouldn’t be the basis for your faith. If all you’re looking for out of Christianity is the experience of worship, a warm and fuzzy feeling, that’s not a relationship with God. That’s shallow ground. That’s going to fade away over time.

Then, Jesus tells his listeners, there is seed that seems to sprout up originally, but thorns – weeds -- come up and gradually choke the plants away.

The message here is that in some cases, we start out in the faith, but other priorities gradually pull us away. Unlike our last example, this isn’t a case of a fanatic who burns out. This is something more gradual, more seductive, and frankly more common.

Our faith is not supposed to be just one aspect of our life; it’s supposed to be the thing that guides us, that shapes and informs everything else we do, from work to leisure to politics to family. Think of your faith as the operating system for a computer or a smartphone – it’s the master program that’s used to load and control and prioritize all of the other programs. All of those other programs are terrific; there would be no point in having a computer if you didn’t use it to do things. And a computer can be used for many wonderful things, from the serious to the silly. But the operating system – Windows, or MacOS, or Android, or iOS -- must be there or none of the other programs will work.

When our faith isn’t central to who we are – when our relationship to Jesus is assigned equal importance with work or soccer practice or the PTA – our faith isn’t really faith. It’s not really our operating system – it’s just another activity, another appointment on the calendar, just another icon on the home screen.

We’re in an age when both ends of the political spectrum claim to speak for Jesus – but whenever you hear anyone, on your side or the other side, do this, ask yourself – am I truly allowing my faith to drive my citizenship, or have I made up my mind about my politics and now I’m just trying to justify what I already believe by squeezing my faith into it?

Any faith that is not central to our life is not true faith, and it’s bound to lose out when it has to compete with the cares of the world.

Now, we come to the good news. Some of the seed falls on fertile ground. It grows, it thrives, and it produces a harvest, with each seed multiplied 30, 60 or even 100 times.

Our passage today comes from two different parts of the 18th chapter, and that has to do with two different angles from which, according to Barclay, this parable can be viewed.

Jesus, if you recall, had gotten into a boat and was preaching to a large crowd on the shore. The parable itself, as heard by the crowd, was a challenge to hear and be receptive to the word of God. The members of the crowd – at least those who were astute enough to figure out the parable’s meaning without assistance – would have seen themselves as the ground on which the seed was scattered. The members of the crowd were challenged to be fertile ground -- in other words, to be receptive to Jesus’ message.

Later in the chapter, as we pick the story back up, Jesus explains the parable of the sower to the disciples.

As Barclay points out, the disciples would see the parable of the sower from a different perspective than the crowd on the lakeshore had. They, having already heard and responded to Jesus’ message, would have seen themselves not as the fertile ground, but as the sowers. Jesus had already, back in the 10th chapter of Matthew, sent out the 12 disciples to preach. So the disciples already had cause to think of themselves, or imagine themselves, as sowers of the word. Jesus’ instructions back in chapter 10, when he sent out the Twelve, prepared them for two different possibilities – acceptance or rejection.

Here, too, Jesus is preparing the disciples by telling them that some will receive the word, and some will not – and the true story of whether that word is received may not be known for some time. Remember, three of the four groups mentioned in the parable sprouted, but only one of those four groups survived until the harvest.

It can be frustrating to sow the seeds of God’s word and not know how or whether those seeds will take root.

The great United Methodist pastor, author and educator Will Willimon describes this passage as a story of extravagance. We are to cast seeds wherever and whenever possible, knowing that some of them will never bear fruit. We are to give and share freely, without expecting anything in return. We are to testify and minister whenever the opportunity presents itself, knowing that some of our ministry may never produce lasting results – but perhaps some of it will, and those results will be spectacular. Willimon compares this to the parables about the one lost sheep or the one lost coin, where it’s clear that each individual has value, and the character in the parable is willing to put everything at risk in order to rescue that one lost sheep.

Jesus offered up his own life, knowing that not everyone would accept salvation. From a purely-utilitarian standpoint, that’s a waste – but God does not operate on a purely-utilitarian standpoint. God operates from a position of reckless love and generosity.

You know of my involvement over the years in the Mountain T.O.P. program, and there was a time when, at this point in the summer, I would be spending a week (or sometimes two separate weeks) in Mountain T.O.P.’s Adults In Ministry, or AIM, camps. They don’t do week-long AIM camps in the summer anymore, but I participated in a number of them over the years and I miss them this time of year.

At one of those week-long AIM camps, some of the volunteers would be working on home repair while others were working with youth from the mountains.

The home repair groups would, over the course of the week, see physical, tangible results from their efforts. On Monday, there was an old, leaky roof; by Friday, there was a new roof. On Monday, there was a rotten porch; by Friday, there was a solid new porch. We would see the photos of the new roof or the new porch as part of the camp slide show on Friday night.

Those of us working with the children or teenagers, however, might not see such tangible results. Oh, sure, we might have taught the kids a skill, or sent them home with some homemade craft items or a book of recipes, but we didn’t always know how or whether we’d affected their lives. We had to take our participation on faith and trust God to bless whatever seeds we were planting.

Too often, we as Christians are hesitant to cast our seed unless we know for a fact how it will be received. As with so many other aspects of modern life, we seek immediate gratification -- or maybe we’re just looking for an excuse not to share our faith.

Results are the object, of course. The seeds in the parable that were considered successful were the ones that grew plants large enough to provide a harvest. We have been put here to produce a harvest. But we don’t always get to see the full results of what we’ve sown. We may not know whether our seed has fallen on rocky ground or on deep, rich soil.

A modern farmer, with the challenges of the modern farm economy, doesn’t want to waste seed, and so a farmer must be sure only to cast that seed on fertile ground. But we have an unlimited supply of the word of God, and we don’t have the luxury of asking John Teague or his successor which ground is fertile and which is not. We are called, as Will Willimon says, to be extravagant in the way we share God’s love, God’s truth, and God’s message. [John Teague, a member of the church who was present for the message, is a retired long-time county extension agent.]

Since we don’t always know how that message will be received, we must spread the word as often and as well as we can, not only through our words but also through our examples, through the way we live our lives. God will bring in the harvest, and we may not know all the results during this earthly existence. But you can never go wrong throwing out seed.

Are you a good sower? Are you being generous with your love? God calls on each of us to grab that bag of seed and make another pass.