The Sower and the Soils

A handful of seed flies through the air. Some lands on the path. Some on rock. Some among thorns. And some falls into good, deep soil. Same seed. Same hand. Four very different endings.

It's a bright day on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and the crowd is so big that Jesus can't stay on the beach. So he steps into a boat, pushes out a little way from the shore, and sits down. The people fill the slope at the water's edge. The lake is calm, and his voice carries across it. And he begins to teach them in stories. Parables, the Gospel calls them. Ordinary pictures from ordinary life, with something hidden inside. “Listen,” he says. “A farmer went out to sow.”

Everyone on that hillside knows this scene. The farmer walks his field with a bag of seed at his side, scooping up handfuls and flinging them wide in great arcs. It isn't fussy work. Seed goes everywhere. Some of it lands on the hard path along the edge of the field, packed flat by feet and hooves. It just sits there on top. And the birds are watching. Down they swoop, and in a moment it's gone.

Some seed falls on rocky ground, where there's only a thin layer of soil. That seed is quick off the mark. Up it springs, green and hopeful, faster than anything else in the field. But it has nowhere to put down roots. When the summer sun climbs high, the young plants scorch and wither away. Other seed falls among thorns. It grows too, for a while. But the thorns grow faster and thicker, and they choke it until nothing is left.

And some seed falls on good ground. Deep, soft, rich soil. It roots. It grows. It ripens. And at harvest time the farmer can hardly believe his eyes. Some plants give thirty times what was sown. Some sixty. Some a hundred. Then Jesus stops, and looks out at the crowd. “Whoever has ears,” he says, “let them hear.”

Later, the disciples come to him with a question. “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” Jesus tells them that stories like these open up the secrets of God's kingdom to people who are ready to listen, while those who refuse to listen stay closed. Then he says, “Your eyes are blessed, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Many prophets longed to see what you see.” And he explains the farmer's story.

The seed is the message of God's kingdom. The path is someone who hears it but doesn't understand, and the evil one snatches it away, like birds taking seed. The rocky ground is someone who welcomes the word with joy, but has no root, so when trouble comes because of it, they soon fall away. The thorns are someone who hears, but the worries of life and the pull of money crowd the word out until it bears nothing. And the good soil? That's the person who hears the word, understands it, and bears fruit. Thirty. Sixty. A hundred times over.

Two details would have stood out to the first listeners. Scholars who study the land of Galilee explain that the rocky ground probably isn't a field full of pebbles. It's a thin skin of soil over solid rock, which looks fine on top, so the seed shoots up fast and dies just as fast. And then there's that harvest. In the book of Genesis, when Isaac reaps a hundred times what he sowed, it's told as a sign that God had blessed him. A hundredfold crop was something to talk about for years.

The Sower and the Soils. You'll find it in Matthew chapter 13, verses 1 to 23. The farmer didn't hold back his seed. He threw it everywhere, and wherever it found good ground, it grew beyond anything he could have hoped. The same message reaches all of us. So here's the question to carry with you. What kind of soil is your heart today, and what might be crowding out the good seed?