Paths, Rocks, Thorns and Topsoil

                                           Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23

 

 

In Matthew 13, Jesus tells the crowd a parable. It is called the Parable of the Sower, though it might be more accurate to call it the Parable of the Seeds, for the parable tells a story about seeds and how they fare in the climates in which they find themselves.

Big farms today do little by hand. There are machines to turn the soil, to sow, to weed, to harvest. It wasn’t long ago that such was not the case. Even now, small farms still exist. Even today, on those farms, mules do the work of tractors and tractors do the work of combines. Especially in this community, we are not that far removed from the farm and from that special connection to the soil and weather and climate that brings us the fruit of the ground.

Jesus wasn’t a farmer, but he understood the ways of agriculture. He often drew on that knowledge to both explain what he wanted to say and to withhold knowledge from those who were not meant or were not ready to understand. Parables were used both to reveal and to hold back knowledge. If you wanted to understand Jesus, you had to be ready for his message. The same reasoning applies today.

The Gospel of Matthew is generally thought to contain five separate discourses of Jesus, beginning with the Sermon on the Mount as his call to righteousness and ending with his prophesies concerning judgment. Today’s passage is the beginning of the Messiah’s 3^rd Discourse, concerning his teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven. When we read this parable, it will help to realize that Jesus is using a number of parables, this one included, to talk about the kingdom of God. It is the only discourse in Matthew that is addressed to the crowds in general.

Jesus went out of the house where he was staying. He went down to the sea. It didn’t take long for crowds to form. They followed him everywhere. Some believed, but many didn’t. They followed him for many reasons, not the least of which was that he had healed people. He had done miracles. He had fed multitudes with nothing. People wanted to be there when he did something again.

So Jesus decided to teach. His ministry was all about teaching. He was often called “Teacher.” Jesus had largely been going from synagogue to synagogue. Now we find him at the shore. His synagogue ministry had fallen on deaf ears and was shutting him out. So he went another way.  But the crowd was too big and people kept closing in on him and trying to touch him. So he got into a boat. He sat down in the boat just offshore and out of the reach of the multitude and he talked to the people.  He talked to them in parables. Everything Jesus told the people was in parables. Matthew’s gospel records five different parables told that day.

A farmer sows his seed, probably by hand, although he might have put a sack on a mule and torn a hole in the corner of the sack and led the mule up and down the rows until the seed bag was empty. The seed falls in the furrows meant for it. This is good soil. But the seed also falls on the path made by the farmer or his mule. The path is not only a walkway for the farmer but also a right of way for passersby. It is as hard as asphalt. On the day he sows, there is a breeze. The farmer is happy for this little relief from the heat, but the breeze carries some of the seeds into other places where the ground has not been prepared for cultivation. Birds also carry the seeds to other places. So the seeds end up in thorns and thistles and on shallow ground covering the many limestone beds of the area. The seeds have taken up residence in different environments, and those environments will impact the lives of those seeds.

Later, Jesus explains the parable. The path represents barren ground. The seeds never have a chance. The surface is too hard for them to take root and the birds and insects will feast on the exposed seeds. Rocky soil is that which appears okay, but actually is shallow and only a thin covering for the limestone rock inches below. The seeds falling here will put down shallow roots, and the summer sun will bake them dry as the limestone reflects the sun’s heat back into the plant. Thorns are perhaps the worst enemy of all, as the seeds will germinate, even put down roots, only to be choked by the thorns and thistles among them.

There is, of course, the good soil, the soil which was prepared by the farmer. It has been turned over, sifted, prepared for the task ahead. It will receive the seeds and provide them a good and rich and healthy environment for them to grow. They are safe in this soil. They can put down roots and get ready for real growth. They are still subject to weather, to wind and hail and heat. But they also can prepare for the rain that will surely come. There will be a harvest. For some it will be a hundredfold, for some, sixty, for some, thirty. But the harvest will come and it will be good.

If Jesus is speaking of the kingdom of God, and if there is a lesson to learn from the fate of these seeds, then what does Jesus teach us? Even his explanation needs some explaining, but that is sometimes the nature of learning about our place in the kingdom. What would Jesus and Matthew have us see about the kingdom of heaven?

 Some people are hard and unreachable, just like the path that the farmer trods. I don’t know why. God made all of us for his kingdom, but all of us are not destined to reach it. The lesson for me is to try very hard not to drop my seeds on any barren paths. I want them to have a chance to grow.

Some people are like rocky soil. They hear, they want, they sort of see the light, but when the going gets tough, they just fall away. I think of them as needing a break. Maybe, just maybe, someone will come along and transplant them or water them. Their chances are poor, but at least they are not closed down to the possibilities. If only they could get some legs, some roots, on their faith!

I know all about thorns. I’ve been laboring most of my adult life in the thorns of business and ambition and chasing financial security, paying lip service to Christianity. It’s so hard not to let your faith become another item on your “to do” list. Go to work. Pick up the children. Get to PTA or the ball game or to practice or to that meeting. Oh yes, and say a prayer.  Check it off your list and go to tomorrow. Thorns. They will choke out your heart and leave you with only the details of religion instead of faith itself. If you never let God’s message control your actions, you cannot mature and you cannot hope to bear God’s fruit.

There is a lesson here too for the seeds planted in the good soil. They produce at different levels. Why will some produce a hundredfold while others only thirty? We can perhaps draw some understanding from the farmer. He does all he can. The seeds are in good soil. But what about the rain? Will there be enough? Too much? Too soon? Too late? Are the seeds deep enough but not too deep? What about wind? A late freeze? All these things are out of the farmer’s control. But they are not out of God’s control.

My wife has two plants in pots in front of the carport twenty feet apart. The pots are the same. The soil is the same. She waters them the same, sprays them the same. They get the same sunlight. One of them is healthy and beautiful. The other is eaten up with insects. One seed has flourished. The other has fallen on hard times. Why are the results so different in the same environment? Perhaps the answer is that are not at all in the same environment. Perhaps they only appear to be. 

In our parable today, we have looked at different kinds of environments for seeds…and for people. Some of us are blooming while many of us struggle to hear God and to understand his will for us. The kingdom of God is for those who come to him making all the room he requires. We do not have to come at all, but if we do, we must come believing that he is in charge, that we must turn everything over to him in order to hear him. He will make us bear his fruit, but only if we have turned the garden over to him. We need not be concerned about the variation of the yield or the abundance of a good harvest. If some yield more than others, it is to God’s glory.

The Parable of the Sower was a story told to a crowd at the seashore. But there is a story within the story for those of us who have heard the word of God and understand, for those of us who are already his disciples. We are like the farmer in the parable, the sower. We sow. We do our best to plow the ground, to prepare the soil, to make it a rich and healthy environment for growth. We broadcast the seed with care to reach the place where we intend it. We plant our seeds in bedtime stories and church choirs and ballgames. Whatever happens after that is up to God. We don’t need to worry about the result. He is the rain for which we wait, the reaper for whom we long. It is our job to sow. We may not even live to see the harvest, but harvest there will be.

And Jesus said: “He who has ears, let him hear.”