I Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Hope for the Harvest
James Sledge July 10, 2011
“A sower went out to sow.” He scattered seed all about, rather indiscriminately. It went everywhere, onto the pathway, into the brambles and weeds, onto rocky ground where nothing ever seems to grow. When I put down some grass seed in my yard, sometimes a little bit gets on the sidewalk. Some seed gets in the flower beds and other places it doesn’t belong. But by and large, most of it stays in the yard where it does belong. I’m not going to waste good seed. But the sower in Jesus’ parable seems unconcerned with such waste.
As parables go, this one is fairly well known. It’s one of the few that shows up in all four gospels, and to my ear, it’s not all that hard to understand. I’m not sure we really need the explanation that goes with it. This parable is true to life. The message of Jesus is out there, but it doesn’t take hold everywhere. And even when it does, sometimes it doesn’t last.
We’ve seen it many times. We all know people who grew up in the Church but want nothing to do with it as adults. We’ve seen people join the Church and get involved for a while, but then gradually withdraw and finally disappear altogether. We’ve seen other priorities take precedence, from work to hobbies to youth soccer.
Even though most of us know next to nothing about First Century, Middle Eastern agricultural practices, we can nod our heads in agreement with what Jesus says. “Yes, yes, that is certainly true.” But once we’re done nodding, what more is there to say? Does this parable have anything to teach us?
The first hearers of this parable had a very different background from many of us, but I’m not talking about their familiarity with farming. I’m talking about their experience of the Jesus movement as a small, marginalized affair.
The very early Church was an all Jewish operation that never managed to attract more than a small minority of fellow Jews. And by the time that Matthew writes his gospel, while Gentiles were beginning to be welcomed into the Church, Jewish Christians were having to make a very difficult choice. They were being forced out of many synagogues. They still considered themselves Jewish and wanted to continue going to the synagogue and being a part of their own worshipping tradition, but the synagogue leaders insisted that to do so they would to have to stop saying, “Jesus is Lord.”
This parable is first heard by people who wonder why things are going as they are. Why haven’t more people joined them? And what is going to happen if more and more believers decide to deny Jesus so they will be welcome at the synagogue?”
By contrast, we American Christians have long been a huge majority. But the decline faced by many churches in 21st Century America has begun to give us a small taste of what Matthew’s congregation must have experienced. And as we move deeper into what some have called a post-Christian world, we may do well to listen to Jesus’ parable with ears more like those who first heard it.
One thing the parable does not tell us is why the gospel bears fruit in some and not others. The parable does not explain the mystery of why some soil is good and some is not. But the parable does paint picture of faithful discipleship. When we compare what happens in the different types of soil, an image of discipleship emerges marked by understanding, perseverance, and a single-minded focus on the work of the Kingdom. This is not an “I’m a Christian because my parents were” sort of faith, but a faith that knows and understands the message of the faith. It is a discipleship that perseveres and stays focused and committed in the face of both persecution and temptation.
Now persecution is not something American Christians know much about. But the temptations that draw us away from following Jesus are everywhere, and they most surely have grown more plentiful over the last 50 years or so.
I once read the book Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, both then professors at Duke Divinity School. In the first chapter they write of this new world of increased temptations where Church now lives, saying half-jokingly that this world began one Sunday evening in 1963. On that day, one of the authors was among seven members of the Methodist Youth Fellowship at Buncombe Street Church in Greenville, SC, who agreed to go in the front door of the church but then slip out the back to go see John Wayne at the Fox Theater. “On that night,” they write, “Greenville, South Carolina –the last pocket of resistance to secularity in the Western world – served notice that it would no longer be a prop for the church. There would be no more free passes for the church, no more free rides. The Fox Theater went head to head with the church over who would provide the world view for the young. That night in 1963, the Fox Theater won the opening skirmish.”[1]
Whatever the exact date, our culture has decided that it will no longer till, weed, and water for the church. No longer will the culture funnel people our way so that we need only to open our doors on Sunday to fill the pews. And when the culture decided it would no longer prop us up, discipleship stopped being the easy thing we had tried to make it, and it began to be what Jesus understood it to be, something requiring deep understanding, and real perseverance and commitment in the face of all sorts of temptations and inducements to live and act some other way.
Jesus understands discipleship as living and working for peace in a world that prefers violence and war. Discipleship is seeing the face of Jesus in the poor, the vulnerable, and the oppressed in a world that says, “Look out for number one.” It is seeking the good of others in a world that worries about my rights and preserving advantages for my group. It is a willingness to sacrifice my good for the good of the other in a world where millionaires want and get tax breaks. It is hungering and thirsting for righteousness, for things to be as God would have them in a world that simply accepts business as usual.
It is easy to look around at this world and despair for both the Church and the world. Who will want to follow Jesus in a culture that assaults us non-stop with the message that what we really need is to be beautiful, rich, young, powerful, independent, tanned, cool, secure, with instant access to endless diversions and entertainment? And how will we ever deal with the world’s problems when neither politicians nor voters can look beyond their short-term, selfish interests to do what is best for everyone?
It indeed is easy for those who hear Jesus’ call to despair and think it not worth all the effort. Reasons for despair were even greater in the days of Matthew’s gospel, when both the religious establishment and the might of imperial Rome envisioned a very different world than the one Jesus called his followers to build.
But Jesus speaks his parable of the sower directly to these difficulties that threaten to draw his followers into despair. This parable is, above all else, a parable of hope. It describes a foolishly extravagant sower, who goes about in a world filled with rocky soil, hardened paths and hearts, choking weeds and thorns, and scatters seed everywhere. This extravagant sower is not at all deterred by the knowledge that so little seed will make it to maturity, because the seed that does find good soil produces thirty, sixty, a hundredfold.
Jesus tells the crowds, and tells us, that we should not be surprised that many choose not to follow him. There is much in the world that draws people away from the commitment, single-mindedness, and perseverance that Jesus asks. But from those who do steadfastly follow, the results are spectacular, thirty, sixty, a hundredfold.
From those few who work tirelessly for the Kingdom, the promise of justice and peace, dignity and hope for the poor and oppressed, the triumph of love over hate, and a world where all have enough, can begin to be seen. And if such a promise seems foolish in the face of how things are and the way the world works, remember; the world, the way things are, and the powers that be were all absolutely certain that Jesus was dead and gone on Good Friday, and that he would never trouble them again.
[1] Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, Resident Aliens (Nashville: Abindgon Press, 1989) pp. 15-16.
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