On that day, Jesus went out of the house and sat down by the sea. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd stood along the shore. And he spoke to them at length in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep, and when the sun rose it was scorched, and it withered for lack of roots. Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it. But some seed fell on rich soil and produced fruit, a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold. Whoever has ears ought to hear.” (Matthew 13.1-9)
We find ourselves at the start of Chapter 13 of Matthew’s gospel on this Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. The entirety of this chapter will be spent in parables that Jesus addresses to his listeners. There are seven parables laid out in sequence, maybe eight, depending on how we choose to understand a parable. The first of these parables is the story of the sower and the seeds, now considered one of the most well-known of Jesus’ parables and found in all three synoptic gospels, proof of its importance from the start.
As to why there are so many parables, Matthew offers this explanation when he states about midway through that “Jesus spoke to them only in parables to fulfill what had been said through the prophet: ‘I will open my mouth in parables, I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world.’” Actually, the quote comes from Psalm 78, but Matthew, for his part, often wants to see any and all texts from the Hebrew scriptures as prophetic, Jesus fulfilling a long-awaited promise and shining a light on truths not seen clearly before his arrival on the scene.
A more practical and obvious reason for Jesus’ use of parables was the fact that everybody likes a story–then as now. A narrative grabs a listener’s attention almost unlike any other method. We hear the words “once upon a time” and we lean forward, already invested in the emerging story, eager to see where the storyline takes us. Jesus, astute and able to communicate important truths in clear and concise ways, was quick to use stories to bring home his point and to make sure his message had legs, a story having an innate ability to stay around for a long time.
So, as we might expect, the parable of the sower and the seed is a simple story that surely resonated with the Galilean crowds who lived in the midst of an agrarian culture, as did many cultures of the times where the next meal depended on people growing food for the table, not on going to the grocery store. The experience that Jesus presented in the story simply reflected the everyday experience of his listeners, each of whom understood the commonsensible importance of seed falling on good soil.
As we see in the start of the story that Jesus tells, the seed does anything but fall on decent ground that could sustain growth. Instead, seeds fall on hardened pathways, on rocky ground, and among thorns, each of these places not capable of providing suitable soil for the sprouting and continued sustenance of the seed. Only after telling of these inhospitable and hostile places where the seeds fell and withered away does Jesus state that “some seed fell on rich soil and produced fruit.”
A straightforward reading of the story provides us with the core message that Jesus intended, challenging people to allow the seed of God’s word to sink deep roots into their hearts. However, we do well also to take notice of the circumstances that surrounded Jesus’ telling of the story of the sower and the seed, our awareness of these details fleshing out in a particular way the content of the story.
The plain truth was that the story sprung from the lived reality of Jesus, his experience of finding rejection at every turn in the road. We saw last week how the religious leaders confronted Jesus about his lack of faithfulness to the Law of Moses, casting aspersions upon his character for associating with tax-collectors and sinners, calling into question his loyalty to the law because he dared to heal a sick man on the sabbath and also did not reprimand his disciples for plucking heads of wheat from their stalks as they walked through a field on a sabbath.
These parables are a response to that situation that Jesus had found as he made his way around Galilee, regularly coming face to face with opposition from the Jewish leadership who were openly hostile to him and to his message. They simply could not see beyond their narrow world-view, wearing blinders that prevented the possibility of life being lived in a different way than the one they dictated.
This story of the sower and the seed was a pointed response to the ongoing hostilities that Jesus had experienced, putting before his listeners in story form the very situation that he saw on an every day basis where the response to his words too often was outright rejection, or, if not, then a slow and steady death by a thousand cuts. He used the images of hardened pathways, rocky ground, and thick thorn bushes to describe the various ways the Jewish listeners reacted to his message about the ways and wants of God.
As we see in the story, most of the reactions were negative, ranging from hard-heartedness to weak spirits to entanglement with the ways of the world, each response choking the life from the delicate seed, erasing any chance it had of springing forth from the ground and sprouting new and vital plant growth.
Only a few, it seemed, welcomed the words of Jesus, allowing them to take root in their hearts, these few souls usually found among the impoverished, the unpolished, and the outcasts from polite company. It was the physically and spiritually sick who were open to hearing what Jesus had to say, finding in his words soothing waters for their parched spirits.
Of course, that fact brought only more infamy and disdain his way, his association with low-lifes and cast-offs making him guilty by association, the religious leaders willing to paint with broad strokes, unwilling to see a drop of holiness in anything unholy. Furthermore, they feared any uprising from the poor and the deprived, whose numbers always exceeded those who were powerful and prestigious.
Matthew, writing at least a half-century after Jesus’ time, saw very much the same situation playing out in front of his own eyes, the handful of people who were open to the teachings of Jesus being persecuted and paraded before prosecutors for the same reasons that Jesus had been put on a hit list. There was no widespread acceptance of Jesus’ message as the first century neared its end and those who continued his mission and preached his message found themselves facing rejection and ridicule. So, the parable of the sower and the seed was as apropos for Matthew’s day as it was for Jesus’ time, little difference in response detected across the decades.
The fact of the matter was that the parable put before Matthew’s community the selfsame reality that Jesus had seen a half-century earlier, with more people rejecting the ways of Jesus than accepting the ways of Jesus. The story was the same, seeds still falling on unresponsive and inhospitable soil, the ways of God unable to penetrate the hardened hearts and the rock-solid ways of the wicked.
In truth, it is a timeless story and that may explain its appeal across the centuries. Whatever the age, the situation remains the same. The contest between accepting or rejecting the ways of Jesus continues to the present age, with more people choosing to turn a blind eye to his message while only a handful give it a fighting chance to make its way into this world.
All of which puts the parable before us today, asking us to search our souls to see if we have allowed the ways of Jesus to grow within our hearts or if we have suffocated any chance of his life taking root in our daily lives. The parable makes clear that the seeds are good. The problem is with the soil, meaning the problem is within our hearts, not in the message.
The seed of God’s word is strong and it is life-giving, but it requires soil in which to grow and to thrive. Without good soil, it cannot produce a harvest of a hundred or sixty or thirty-fold. Instead, it languishes, incapable of growing and of thriving, surviving for a short while before being suffocated by the ways of the world that choke off any life that remains in it. It withers away under the scorching heat of wickedness.
As with all the parables that Jesus offered to the crowds, this one about the sower and the seed puts the ball squarely in our court, forcing us to ask ourselves if we have allowed the seed of God’s way to enter into our hearts and to direct our days. Do we have the open hearts and the open minds that are necessary for the seed to germinate and to grow, or does the seed find itself unable to sink roots into our minds and hearts because they are impenetrable, closed to the possibility of a different and a better way to navigate through life?
It is not all that difficult to find the answers to the questions. The way in which we live in the world gives an answer every single day. Either our lives bear fruit or don’t, bring life or don’t, burn brightly or don’t. In the end, our basket of fruit is full or it is empty. If it is full, then it is because we have allowed God’s ways to become our ways and his love for all others to become our love for all others.
If it is empty, then it is because we have closed off ourselves from his life-giving word, content to stay sterile with our closed minds and with our hardened hearts. We choose to become entangled in the ways of the world, oblivious to the fact that the ways of the wicked do not give life, but only destroy life. Ours and others, leaving ourselves empty and leaving others wounded by our neglect.
By its very nature, the parable provokes in much the same way that the life of Jesus pierces through the armor of our denial and our excuse-making. Of course, we can choose to sit calmly and listen to the parable without really hearing it because to truly hear it would require us to examine our own lives, not superficially but specifically with an eye to our failure to meet the challenge. Jesus understood as much, hence ending the parable with the phrase “whoever has ears to hear,” knowing far too many people have deaf ears when it comes to heeding the call to change their hearts and minds.
As the empire of Rome was rising in the second century B.C.E., the city of Carthage stood in its way, presenting a formidable rival. Then in the year 146 B.C.E., Roman soldiers moved through the city block by block, street by street, burning to the ground every bit of the civilization that had stood strong for centuries. The smoke was so dense that it could be seen for miles and the smell of devastation and decay filled the air.
But that was not enough for the hard-hearted Romans who were intoxicated with the want for more power. The story, passed down through the ages, chilling the spine of everyone who heard it, claimed that the soldiers then salted the ground of the fallen city, in this way destroying the soil and ensuring that nothing could ever be grown upon the ground again. It was the final death knell of the city.
The parable that Jesus tells us reminds us that the same can happen to our souls, perhaps not as decisively as had occurred in Carthage, but with the same devastation. We can allow the ways of the world to salt the soil of our souls until they snuff out the life-giving seed that God has planted within us, a seed that–if it had been allowed to grow–would see a much better and greener world in which to live.
The story of the sower and the seed is a cautionary tale the same as the story of Rome’s destruction of Carthage. If we want a different outcome for ourselves and for the world in which we live, then the answer is simple. We resist the salting of our soil by the wicked ways of the world and instead we choose to make sure that the soil of our souls remains fertile and fecund so that our lives bear fruit that yields a hundred or sixty or thirty-fold.
–Jeremy Myers
