Parable of the Sower
A sermon on Matthew 13:1-13, 18-23
The indiscriminate sower.
I once asked a farmer in Iowa to show me around and explain how his operation worked. In the barn was a variety of John Deere green equipment and tractors. I went to one machine and asked him to tell me how this planter works. He said, “Dave, that’s a manure spreader. The planter is over there.”
The planter was high-tech. It drills each seed into the soil at the exact depth it needs and it’s guided by GPS. Precision is name of the game in modern farming. But imprecision was the name of the game in the farming Jesus talked about.
When Jesus taught about how the kin-dom of God breaks into the world to make it a better place, he began with a story. “A sower went out to sow.” It’s what they do. Sowers sow. Imagine the sower with a pouch cinched around his waist trudging through the field, slinging seed by hand. Seeds find their way to the fertile soil, the hard walking paths, the thorns, and the rocks. It was an imprecise method compared to farm equipment today, which drills each seed into the soil at optimal depth. But the sower’s imprecision is the point.
If God is the sower, it affirms that God speaks the word of grace and forgiveness into our lives, even if we have hard hearts. God sows it anyway. You don’t have to have your act together for God’s grace and love to come to you. God knows who you are and what you are, faults and all, and casts the seed upon you anyway. The character and nature of God is to be relentless in casting goodness and mercy. Sowers sow.
The seed’s potential.
All seeds have the potential to produce abundantly. But some seeds do not flourish because they wind up in the wrong environment—they wind up getting eaten by birds, or land on rocky soil, or get choked out by the weeds. That is, sometimes we don’t live up to our potential because we find ourselves in the wrong environment.
- Maybe you’re surrounded by bitter, critical, and negative people who don’t believe in you, dragging your spirit down to their level.
- Maybe you spend a disproportionate amount of time feeding your spirit on all the negative news, doom scrolling, souring your outlook on everything.
- Maybe you spend too much nurturing negative thinking.
The parable invites us to wake up and realize what kind of soil we are in. But you can change your soil, you can change the environment, your mental state, your spiritual condition, and realize your potential. God’s intention for you is flourishing, not withering!
The soil of Bay Shore Church
Maybe God led you to church to find some good soil!
- To focus on a positive message of forgiveness, grace, and love.
- To believe that God is still at work making this world better.
- To be surrounded by others trying to become better people and support each other on the journey.
It’s the rich soil that helps you grow and flourish.
The seed that flourishes
I like to think that some of the seeds God has sown in us are like those of the great lodgepole pine tree. Their seeds can lie dormant for decades and need the heat of a forest fire to crack open. Sometimes the seeds, the lessons God has provided, don’t mean that much until we get caught in one of life’s firestorms.
- “Love everybody” sounds cliché until someone mistreats someone you love.
- Forgive those who have hurt you is a dormant seed until the weight of carrying around unforgiveness drags you down.
- We hear faith gets us through, but that doesn’t mean so much until there is a tragedy, we lose someone, we lose a job, a dream. When that crisis comes, that seed breaks open, and we find what we need to get through.
They say never let a tragedy go to waste. That is, whatever life throws at you, whatever fires rage against you, learn from it, grow from it, become stronger because of it, and let it make you more empathetic toward others going through the same thing. Let it grow into a towering lodgepole pine.
We are sowers, too!
I think Jesus was calling us to be sowers, too—plant seeds of hope, kindness, and justice.
Because not every seed we sow will land on fertile soil, it’s important not to get hung up on “why bother,” thinking. Why waste kindness on someone who doesn’t appreciate it? Why waste time on someone who doesn’t want to be well? Why bother to try to lift those who will only fall again?
Why bother? Because you never know what might grow and produce beyond our wildest dreams. This is the mystery of how God works, and this is how God’s kingdom comes about. You never know when that kindness, that word of grace, that example of generosity is going to ignite the growth in someone else.
You aren’t responsible for the success of what you plant. The seed’s growth is not up to you and your time. You are only responsible for planting it. I want to encourage you today to keep sowing goodness and grace in all the ways you can, however you can, and whenever you can. Sling that seed willy nilly, because you never know.
Sow Anyway
In a take-off from a famous poem called Anyway, here is the takeaway for the day.
Some of the seeds we sow will yield only temporary results.
Sow anyway.
Some of the seeds won’t take root at all.
Sow anyway.
Some of the seeds we sow will lie dormant for years and years.
Sow anyway.
Some of the seeds we sow will seem like a complete waste.
Sow anyway.
Because we never know when a seed might find a fertile place to flourish.
We just don’t know…
Sow anyway.
In the end, the goodness that is spread overwhelms
We sow anyway because Jesus promises that this planting is what makes the world better. He describes it like mustard plants that grow and overwhelm everything else. It replaces:
- hate with love,
- cruelty with compassion,
- division with collaboration.
It’s something that happens over time with faithful sowing and makes us and the world better. It’s inevitable.
- ICE can’t detain it,
- tyrants can’t restrain it,
- billionaire schemes can’t contain it,
- shallow soil people can’t constrain it.
Such is the kingdom of God. Keep being sowers of God’s dream because that’s what sowers do.
There’s enough manure spreaders out there. Be a sower.
Keep: praying, worshiping, giving, serving, volunteering, nurturing, mentoring, and helping. It’s our best and only hope to improve ourselves and our world.