Sowing seeds

One of the things I love about Jesus’ parables is how much there is to take from them. They’re not like Aesop’s fables or Just-So Stories – there’s no clear single meaning or point he’s trying to make. Jesus tells the story, people hear it and wonder at it, and he walks away. Sometimes that’s how I think God communicates with us – that’s how I experience God communicating in my life, at least. The communication is clear, and yet not logical-rational clear. The point is there, but it can sometimes lie beyond our ability to articulate it in words. So I distrust anyone who tries to boil God and God’s message down to sound bytes. I think the truth is always greater than our ability to explain it.

And yet this parable we heard today is followed by just that: an explanation. A private explanation, directly from Jesus to the disciples. Like he turns to them and whispers, ‘What that beautiful story I just shared with the masses really means is this…’ It’s one of the rare moments when he does this, and the explanation, of course, shapes how we hear the story. So we hear: this parable is about how people receive God’s word. We’re supposed to think about what kind of soil we are. Are we good fertile soil, bearing fruit? Or are we hard and rocky or thorny or shallow? The moral of the story: Let’s all be working harder to make our soil better at receiving and living out God’s truth.

But the problem is that the explanation doesn’t entirely capture the whole story. The story begins with the sower sowing seed. It doesn’t just focus on the soil, but on the sowing and the seeds. Whatever Matthew’s intentions in including the soil explanation from Jesus, it feels a bit reductionist. Remember, these stories of Jesus were oral tradition, things Jesus said that got repeated and passed along until someone decided to write them down – and along the way, decided what order to write them down in, what explanations to add in, and other pieces of context that shape the way we understand them. It can be hard to get back to what Jesus said, pure of everything else that got added to it along the way. We believe that the Holy Spirit had a hand in all the human muddling that produced scripture, so the result is still something we call inspired. But when there’s such a clear disjunction in the text, it’s worth stopping to wonder why.

So what if we back up before the explanation and focus our attention on the sower in this story, rather than the soil – the sower who goes out to sow. It’s an image that is easy to understand. We don’t even have to be gardeners to get this one. Maybe because of this very parable, the metaphor of planting seeds makes intuitive sense. Seeds take time to sprout and grow – not everything we do bears fruit right away. We know that in our lives, just like we know that in our gardens. Parenting, growing a business, developing a relationship, all take time. Immediate success is unlikely with things that really matter.

So too with being followers of Jesus. If we understand the seed to be the good news of the kingdom, the word, the message of God’s love and saving grace, then we’re supposed to be spreading it just as a sower does – as well as receiving it as the soil. We’re not the seed; we’re not the creators of the seed; but we, like the disciples who were listening to Jesus, are the ones meant to get the seed out there. And from this story at least, it seems we’re supposed to be spreading it pretty freely, letting the soil receive it as it will. We may or may not succeed. But whether it succeeds or not isn’t our doing.

Of course, there are all sorts of seeds we might sow. We might sow love, forgiveness, compassion for someone having a bad day. We might sow seeds of change, introducing a different idea, a new interpretation or way of seeing things. We can also sow seeds of anger, contempt, and indifference. Some of those seeds we might be very careful and intentional about sowing, and others we might just be spilling without quite meaning to. But chances are, we’re sowing some kind of seeds wherever we go. Paying attention to our interactions with other people, the way we talk and the tone we use, the assumptions we make about others, all of that can help make sure that the seeds we sow are good ones, life-giving ones of God’s love.

But again, even with the good seeds we want to sow – sharing the good news about Jesus, loving someone who needs love, changing something for the better – the hard part about sowing seeds is you really can’t control what happens next. Birds might come and eat them; a drought might come and no water will feed the sprouts; the soil might be the wrong kind for the plants to grow. So when we get to spreading good seed, loving with God’s abundant love, it might not always go that well. People might not want to listen to what we say. People might be distracted by other things. Or people may just out-and-out react with hostility to us and everything we’re about. Love doesn’t guarantee that everyone will love you in return.

But the sower in the parable doesn’t worry about the outcome. Scattering here and there no matter what the soil, the sower continues on their way. We sow in hope, not because of an assurance of success. Hope is risky. Sowing seeds is risky. Whether they turn into something fruitful, well, we can’t control that. We might lavish time and attention on a relationship or work project and have it go nowhere; we might also assume someone or something isn’t worth our time and then be proved wrong. Better, I think the parable is saying, to just spread God’s love and not be choosy about where – after all, God is the one who brings the growth.

When our kids were younger, one of the graces we sang before meals was ‘Johnny Appleseed.’ You might know it: O, the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and the apple seed, the Lord is good to me.’ Then at a Family Camp we were part of I learned that there’s another verse, one I didn’t know, ‘For every seed I sow, an apple tree will grow, and there will be apples there for everyone in the world to share, the Lord is good to me.’ I loved that: the seeds and the apples aren’t just gifts for us to have and be grateful for – they’re meant to be sown, grown, given away so everyone can have them.

So go sow some seeds this week. Tell someone what you experienced in prayer this morning – which means you’d better say your prayers so you can talk about them. Tell people how God is acting in your life and how you see God in theirs. Give someone extra grace and compassion even if they’re being grumpy with you. Invite them to join you in doing something that sows seeds of love in this world – maybe here at church, maybe somewhere else. And don’t worry over what response you’ll get. Maybe they’ll listen, maybe not; or maybe it will just plant a seed that will show up much later in their lives. Either way, we sow something of all we have been given. And we let God’s Holy Spirit do the rest. Amen.