If you ask ten different people on the street what Christianity is all about, you will likely get ten different answers. Is it to love one another? Political partisanship? Serving the poor? Being nice? Preaching the gospel? To be fair, Christians themselves aren’t exactly sure how to answer the question either.
The parable of the sower sheds some light on the matter. It is one of the few times we are given the Cliff Notes to a parable. For once, Jesus shows his cards (at least to his inner circle). Think of it as the disciples’ very first seminary class. But there’s a catch: his explanation does not make this parable easier to understand. He might put the puzzle pieces together, but the image of the puzzle itself is like one of those magic eye pictures which, to this day, I have never been given eyes to see.
Even today, despite having had two thousand years to ruminate on Jesus’ commentary, we misinterpret this parable. It’s often assumed that Jesus himself is the sower, sprinkling something called “the word of God” in various places of the world. It’s then implied that we, as the church (as Jesus’ body), are responsible for spreading the word where it hasn’t been shared yet. But that’s not how Jesus explains it. If we understand the word of God here in the same way that it’s used in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, the word is the same word who was in the beginning with God; who, in fact, is God. As the word made flesh, Jesus is the seed sown which then suggests that God the Father is the sower.
How does the sower go about the planting process? There’s no land preparation. There’s no irrigation. The sower simply scatters the seeds willy-nilly, quite recklessly (or generously, depending on how you look at it). Rather than painstakingly planting each seed, most of the seeds seem to be spilling out of the sower’s bag. The word is shared freely, to all and to everywhere.
There’s hostility to the word, of course. There are other forces at work against the sower. Birds snatch the seeds away. Competing thorns attempt to choke the sprouting seedlings. And yet, the sower does not seem deterred. The birds may come to eat them, but even animals ingesting and digesting a seed is a cleverly effective way for it to successfully germinate. The resistance is part of the process. The sower is is unbothered by apparent failures.
Christians often say that we are the sower, those sent out into the world building the kingdom (whatever that means). But our role isn’t to carefully protect our beautiful raised beds. Christians might preach the gospel, but here the emphasis is on receiving the gospel. To allow it to enter the darker corners of your life so that it may take root. It is receiving the gospel that is the most necessary thing in being able to pass it on. Experience the grace of God firsthand, and telling the world about it comes quite easily.
The parable is a reminder to let the word do its work. We need not worry about tilling the soil or watering it or making sure it gets sun. An infinite number of houseplants are killed everyday by over care. Instead, we are the soil that receives it, trusts it, and sees it grow.
God’s word, you see, has a life of its own. It is, as the book of Hebrews says, “Living and active.” Like a seed, it seems so small and insignificant. It even disappears for a while. It works in the dark, beneath the ground, in secret. All the while, it is at work through the Spirit. Jesus’ parable of the sower echoes the words of Isaiah which proclaims “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there, but water the earth, making bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose.” In other words, Jesus is not speaking hyperbolically here.
After all, this parable is told to us by none other than the word himself to whom the world responded with hostility. Thorns encircled his head as he died on a cross. Like a seed, he was buried in the earth. But “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” You see God is at work even when it looks like the total opposite. The world is full of thorns and birds, and a hot-as-hell sun. But the sower keeps sowing and the word keeps growing all the same.
