Thomas J Parlette
“Seeds”
Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23
7/12/20
There was once a farmer sitting out on his porch near a remote stretch of dirt road. A stranger puller up to ask directions, and the farmer offered him a glass of lemonade.
The stranger asked, “So how’s your cotton coming along?”
And the farmer said, “Ain’t got any.”
“Did you plant any?”
“Nope – afraid of the boll weevils,”
“Well, how’s your corn?”
“Didn’t plant any – afraid there wouldn’t be any rain.”
“Well, how are your potatoes?”
“Ain’t got any – scared of the potato bugs.”
“Really, what did you plant?”
“Nothing – I just played it safe.”(1)
But really, how safe is it to not plant any seeds at all?
Jesus was a keen observer of the world around him. His observations resulted in many of the parables that he told. That is certainly true in today’s parable about seeds and soil. It’s a simple parable – but one the most important that Jesus tells. It appears in all three synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke – which suggests that it is something we should pay attention to.
A farmer went out to sow. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop – hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.
In Jesus day, sowing seeds was done by hand. You had your bag of seed, you pulled out a handful and you scattered along the ground. Imagine how inefficient this farmer must have been in his sowing. The seed was going everywhere. Jesus doesn’t talk about nice ordered rows, carefully labelled some he’d know what was growing. This farmer seems very slip-shod in his work. The biblical scholar Don Juel writes, “The farmer in our story is not overly cautious, he doesn’t play it safe. He throws seed everywhere, apparently confident that there will be a harvest in spite of the losses.”(2) He simply keeps sowing his seed, believing that growth will come. This leads us to believe that this parable isn’t really about the farmer and his methods, or about the seeds. It’s more about the soil in which the seeds land. And it’s about God, who brings forth the harvest.
It’s interesting that this is one of the very few parables that Jesus actually explains. Usually Jesus tells a story and then lets it hang there, open to interpretation. But not here. Jesus uses this parable to teach something important. Jesus describes four kinds of soil. And again, Jesus isn’t really interested in teaching us how to grow crops – he’s interested in describing four different kinds of people, and how they will receive the Gospel. When you read this same parable in the Gospel of Mark, Mark uses this story to frame the rest of his story. All the people Jesus encounters in the Gospel of Mark following this parable can be grouped into one of these four kinds of soil.
To start with, there is the unbeliever, the agnostic or even the atheist. “Listen then,” said Jesus, “to what the parable means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path.” The seed that falls on the path is like people who hear the Gospel, but they don’t understand it, or perhaps it’s more that they don’t accept it, they don’t take it to heart. They hear the Word, but they don’t make it their own.
I was reading recently about the so-called Psychic Services Industry. It’s a booming business these days. They are psychics everywhere, according to this report. Did you know that psychic readings and other similar services such as reading palms or tarot cards or tea leaves or whatever, is a 2 billion dollar industry in this country. According to Fortune magazine, many of the consumers of these services are atheists or agnostics, and many of them are top tier executives, particularly in the tech industry. Which proves the validity of the observation that when people quit believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing; instead they will believe in almost anything.(3)
Then Jesus moves to the second group – let’s call this the morning- glory group – the seed that falls on rocky ground. This refers to someone who hears the word, says Jesus, and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.
Rocky soil is not quite as treacherous for planting seeds as the hardened path. Plants might at least grow initially in rocky soil. But the prospects are dim, because the soil is so rocky that the seed doesn’t get the nutrition it needs. Without the proper nutrition nothing grows like it ought to grow.
Take for example, baseball coaches will talk about the “morning-glory” syndrome. Morning glories bloom in the morning, but then fade in the afternoon’s hot sun. So this morning glory nickname gets applied to young ball players who perform great in spring training and get off to a fast start in the beginning of the season, but by July, they start to struggle with the long, hot season, and they begin to wilt like a morning glory – and they end up back down in the minors to build up their endurance.(4)
Seed that falls on rocky soil is like that. It may take root at first, but because it doesn’t get the nutrition it needs, it eventually wilts and dies. The nickname morning glory could apply to those Christians who make an initial commitment to Jesus, but then things get tough, and they fall away. Whereas the barren path shows no faith at all, the rocky soil shows at less a bit of faith at the beginning.
And then there’s the third group, the distracted group. The third group, says Jesus, consists of the seed that falls among the thorns. They hear the word, but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, the distractions of life, choke the word, making it unfruitful. We talk a lot these days about distracted driving, but what about distracted living, where we focus on nearly everything except on how Jesus calls us to live?
During the Revolutionary War, General George Washington faced many challenges in leading the Continental army. One of his biggest challenges was maintaining troop strength. His biggest foe was distraction.
Most of Washington’s soldiers were farmers. So when the time came to plant and then harvest their crops, the army would dwindle as the soldiers would go home to take care of sowing their seeds in the spring. They would show again during the summer to join the fight, but then leave again for the harvest. It was a difficult way to conduct a war.(5) That is the seed that is sown where there are weeds and thorns- they become distractions.
Three groups – unbelievers, morning glories, and those who are distracted – Jesus knew that many of those who listened to his teachings would fall away or, at least, would give only minimal service to his kingdom. Remember the Pareto Principle? It says that in every group, 20% will do 80% of the work. That’s certainly true in the church.
Fortunately, there is one more group that Jesus describes. This is the seed that falls on good soil. Let’s call this soil the company of the committed. Jesus says the good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop yielding a hundred, or sixty or thirty times what was sown. Jesus is saying that when we do things in Jesus name, the things that Jesus tells us to do – our influence on our family, our community, even our world is greater that we can possibly see.
Take the experience of woman named Dale Bourke. She wrote a book called Second Calling in which she tells about a time she went to a publishing conference. A friend of hers named Bruce offered her a ride to the airport. As they were about to leave, the doorman from the hotel stopped them and said that the hotel’s bus had broken down. Would they mind taking another guest to the airport? They said sure, and the grateful fellow traveler hopped in the back seat.
Bruce asked the man what he did for a living, and the man said he worked at a Christian publishing house affiliated with Campus Crusade. Bruce immediately perked up when he heard this – “I have really fond memories of that group! When I was in college, I attended a weekend retreat one time sponsored by Campus Crusade and that’s when I became a Christian. It was in 1972 in New Hampshire.”
Bruce went on to explain that he had not only become a Christian that weekend, but a year later he explained his faith to his family and they became Christians as well. His sister would later become a Wycliffe missionary and translated Scripture for a group in Africa. His parents turned their publishing interest to Christian books and published some of the biggest Christian books of the next few decades. Bruce himself had become the owner of a major Christian publishing house as well, and brought many significant and best-selling books to the public. It was obvious that the impact of that retreat in New Hampshire had reverberated throughout the world.
Their passenger, the man who worked for the organization that had sponsored that retreat in 1972, sat strangely quiet throughout the story. Then he said quietly, “I led that retreat. It was my first time as a conference leader and I felt like a total failure. I had no idea what I was doing. Until this moment, I have always believed that conference was one of the biggest failures of my life.”
“By the time we reached the airport,” says Dale Bourke, “we all had tears in our eyes.”(6)
You never know what’s going to happen when you take a risk and plant a seed. Those of you have been on one of the mission trips to Bedecan know that these seed stories that Jesus tells are a favorite of mine. I have used them as our “send-off” devotional before almost every trip. I do that because every time we conduct a VBS, or help out at Channel One or volunteer at Friendship Place or simply have a conversation with a friend about why church and faith is important in our lives, we are flinging seeds out into the world. It may seem haphazard. It may slipshod. But remember – it is God who will give the growth. Not every seed will land in good soil. But some will. Some will. And God will take it from there.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Homileticsonline.com, retrieved June 30th, 2020
2. Ibid…
3. Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVI, No. 3, p10.
4. Ibid… p11.
5. Ibid… p11-12.
6. Ibid… p12.
