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Parables, Seeds and Soil

Texts: Isaiah 55:10-13, Matthew 13:1-9

Just a few moments ago, we listened to Jeanne read Jesus’ parable of “The Sower and the Seed” from Matthew 13:1-9. It’s a story familiar to most church people, one we probably heard and had explained to us when we were kids in Sunday School.

Many years ago, back in my childhood and youth, whenever this story popped up as part of the Church School curriculum it was usually interpreted as something of a huge success story, or more accurately, a story moving from absolute failure to unimaginable success.

My Sunday School classmates and I were told that the parable of

“The Sower and the Seed” is a metaphor – that it was a story about the kingdom of God coming at the end of time in all its wonder and glory and splendour. We were also told that in spite of every obstacle, in spite of any and all resistance to the gospel message, in spite of failure after failure - in spite of everything real or imagined – in the last days, at the end of time when the Risen and Living Jesus returns from heaven above to earth below

- the harvest of souls saved for Christ will be so plentiful - that the number will be beyond estimating - beyond human capacity to count. But that’s not all we were taught! 2

Our Sunday School teachers and youth leaders went out of their way to make it clear to us kids and teens that God already had set this salvation process in motion and nothing – absolutey nothing! – could ever stand in is way or set it aside. And my guess is that a good number of people gathered for worship this morning more or less were taught the same or a similar explanation of Matthew 13:1-9.

What’s interesting, I think, is that is basically the way the author of

Matthews’ gospel interprets this parable of Jesus in Matthew 13:18-23. And that understanding has more or less evolved to become the orthodox - or traditionalist Christian – interpretation of Jesus’ story of “The Sower and the

Seed”.

However, this morning in the rest of my remarks, I’m going to suggest another and hopefully more meaningful explanation of Jesus’ story of “The

Sower and the Seed”. I offer this different interpretation of Matthew 13:1-9 because this is no ordinary, everyday, garden variety story. It’s a parable, and a parable is a story with a barb - or a story with a twist in its tail; and the purpose of a parable isn’t to teach us something – or to explain something – or to clarify something - or meant to have a sudden “aha” punch line 3

Instead, a parable is a story that signals something – or hints at something - or indicates something – or intimates something. Equally important, a parable does best when it turns our taken-for-granted view of the world upside down and inside out – in other words, when it turns our expectations, our assumptions and our conclusions upside down and inside out. And, I submit to you, that was the intention of Jesus’ when he told the parable of “The Seed and the Sower”.

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This becomes apparent if we begin our analysis of Matthew 13:1-9 by asking “Who was in Jesus’ audience back in the 1st century?” Or to ask this question another way, “Who would have been listening when Jesus first told the parable of “The Sower and the Seed”?

For a few moments, let’s travel in time to “back then” - to 1st century

Galilee – and discover who would most likely be listening to Jesus tell this parable.

It’s probable that the vast majority of Galileans in Jesus audience would have been landless, peasant farmers and their families. You see, we can say with certainty that around the time of Jesus’ public ministry,

Galilee’s rural areas – especially those in the lake area with their abundant 4 fresh water supplies – produced rich crops of vegetables, wheat, barley, olives and grapes. But the Galileans who once owned and sustained their families by farming small plots of these bountiful lands were receiving no benefits whatsoever from this new agricultural abundance. Instead, they were suffering. Why?

Because their farms were being taken over by rich gentlemen farmers from the big city who, in pursuit of personal wealth, comfort and power considered those Galilean farmers to be expendable. And because of their taking small plots of land at the expense of their current owners in order to create huge agricultural estates the Galilean social, political, economic and religious situation was explosive.

Let me briefly clarify: for those peasant Galilean farmers mounting debt, payable to the Roman occupiers of Galilee and the priestly aristocracy of Jerusalem, meant that the crisis of debt and land dispossession was growing deeper and deeper. In addition, these Galilean land owners were losing their small family farms at an alarming rate, and at the same time farm labourers were being forced onto the unemployment line. On top of that, Galilean farmland was being eaten up by the development of big cities, and a new Roman tax system was taking the last penny out of peasant farmer’s pocket. 5

These were the people, these landless peasant farmers along with their families, most likely to have been in Jesus’ audience when he told his parables – in other words, Galilean peasant farmers who were on the verge of losing their family farms or had already lost their small plots and were now tenant farmers, along with unemployed farm labourers were most likely in Jesus’ audience when he told his parable of “The Sower and the

Seed”.

They would have identified with the sower in Jesus’ parable because they would have known exactly what Jesus was talking about. They would have known because for many who were listening to Jesus tell his story – probably the majority – the only way for most of them to sow their seeds in an effort to produce a tiny crop to keep their families alive was to cast their seeds in the worst of places – on well worn pathways - among the rocks, the thorns and the weeds – and maybe, if they were really lucky, on a bit of productive or semi-productive soil.

They would have known too that a measurement of 400 was the measurement of an incredible harvest – the measurement of a bumper crop - so Jesus’ ascending scale of agricultural production in his parable at

30, 60 and 100 certainly didn’t indicate superabundance. At best, the 6 harvest mentioned in this story is only average to good - nothing to write home about (so to speak).

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So, how would those landless peasant farmers have heard Jesus’ parable of “The Sower and the Seed”? What’s the barb or the twist in the tail of this story? How would this parable have turned the volatile worldview of those tenant farmers and unemployed farm labourers upside down and inside out? And today, how does it turn our worldview – our expectations, our assumptions and our conclusions upside down and inside out?

First, the parable of “The Sower and the Seed” acknowledges that in the kingdom or commonwealth of God ordinariness and everydayness, failure and miracle, are at the heart of God’s activity in this world. Or to come at this from a slightly different angle, this parable recognizes the sacred and holy – i.e. it recognizes that God’s creative presence can be, indeed is, experienced in unfamiliar guises – like an average harvest, or (in our own time) in the character and activities of a public servant or in those of a stay-at-home working mom or dad, or in a supermarket cashier, or in a behind-the-counter sales assistant or in the distant voice on your smart phone. 7

In short, God is present and is experienced not only in the spectacular and miraculous but also in the ordinary, the everyday and the normal.

And the presence of God is experienced not only in the so-called end times but in all time.

Second, in telling this parable Jesus is telling his listeners that in

God’s kingdom or commonwealth, God does not require moral or ethical perfection from anybody. Nor does God expect us to go about doing things only in effective and efficient ways. In other words, this parable of Jesus recognizes that those generally considered sinners and losers and outsiders are already in the commonwealth of God.

Third, and perhaps most important of all, the parable of “The Sower and the Seed” was not and is NOT an invitation to those 1st century landless peasant Galilean farmers – nor is it an invitation to you and me today - to have faith IN Jesus but to have faith WITH Jesus. In other words, those landless peasant farmers and unemployed farm labourers as well as everyone gathered here this morning are invited to have the same faith and trust shown by Jesus during his life, his public ministry, and even untimely his death. 8

Yes, indeed! If we take this parable seriously we must recognize that in God’s kingdom or commonwealth we’re called NOT to have faith IN

Jesus but to have faith WITH Jesus.

May it be so. Amen.

Some Resources Sources Used for This Message

Hearon, Holly:”Commentary on Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23”, Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/ Hunt, Rex A.E.: “Faith With Jesus, Rather Than Faith In Jesus”, Pentecost 4A.2011, https://www.rexaehuntprogressive.com/ Lewis, Karoline, “Commentary on Isaiah 55:10-13 by Samuel Giere:, Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/ Scott, Brandon: Hear Then the Parable, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1989 Scott, Brandon: Re-imagine the World, Polebridge Press, Santa Rosa, 2001

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