Sowing Seeds 

I love it when Jesus gets out of the house or the village and tries to escape the crowds. He sits beside the sea, or climbs into a rocking boat, or just attempts to get some distance from people, and opinions, and preaching, and teaching, and saving lives. He is, in spite of His being the Son of God, a human for a while. He needs a break. He needs some distance. Although I don’t think Jesus was hampered by Stress, our favorite word.

To me, there is nothing more peaceful and refreshing than sitting in the sand or on a cliff by the sea - or the river - or a lake. Now if it was you or me, we could do it in solitude, alone, no one clambering for our time, our touch, our prayer, our word. There is nothing I rather do than walk along the long hard sand beaches below the Rambla in Montevideo, or barefoot along the tiny short beach at the foot of tall pines and eucalyptus trees in Banario Zagazazu where I live most of the time with my husband and dogs. In Memphis, the equivalent would be fast walking across the foot River Crossing Bridge from Memphis edge to the border of Arkansas across the wide Mississippi River. It’s about two miles round trip and is quite popular even at 7 a.m. in the morning.

Jesus on this day was working the parables. I guess people were used to parables. Maybe it’s skirting reality a bit by giving a simile or metaphor or something that the uneducated might better understand what is being taught. He picked out something that was normal in most of the listeners’ lives in order to teach a point He was trying to explain to those in the group. Sowing was surely a common activity of daily life of his crowd. I’m sure most of the common people had gardens or fields for growing produce for their own. So, Jesus anticipates that they would know what or who a sower was. And that the art of sowing was really something not too accurate.

He pointed out there are winners and losers. Nothing is perfect. A sower sort of scatters seeds with their hands and at random. No fancy, accurate machines as today.  So obviously in the tossing of the seeds as one walked through the rows of fields, not everything hit the right spot. Some seeds fell in the path but the birds were on it in a split second.  Some seeds fell on rocky areas where there was not much soil from which it could stir up something positive, or at least not deep rich soil so the seeds produced rapidly but with no strength or depth of soil. And then they die quickly. Since areas rocky and shallow, with not much soil, offers nothing for the roots to grab on to, the seeds popped up quickly but with the hot sun, died before they were the healthy plant they were aimed to be. Some seeds fell on thorns - I guess there wasn’t much rich soil in these gardens - and that was a dud. Nothing could survive that. At the end of this list, at last some of the seeds fell on good soil - I don’t know if this was all in the same plot of land, or maybe different farms across many fields. But they did their thing and grew beautifully and provided good results for the sower, at last.

We’ve heard this story so often. It’s a metaphor of those who hear the word and how they use it, abuse it, lose it, or prosper with it. Jesus is definitely going to explain what He just said.

There were winners and losers in this. First the risk.

If one hears the word of God but they don’t get it, they seem to listen to any version, any explanation, or any invention by those who turn the words into something evil, incorrect, to fit their own powers. In the path, there is nothing to hold on to when this happens.

The second type, who hears the word and jumps with joy and adjusts everything in his or her life to the words they heard, but, in a week or so when some other proselytizer or evil passes through and gives another version, they toss out what they had heard and don’t believe any more the truth they heard. They are just not strong about anything. Here today, gone tomorrow sort of thing. Today acupuncture or astrology, tomorrow Buddhism or Hinduism, or some modern mysterious way of connecting with the universe.  More exciting and easier than what they had heard from Jesus’ words.

The rocky path causes stumbling and insecurity and wipes out all trust. when things get tough, the tough get going. And they resort to the other ways they had counted on before they knew Jesus.

Those seeds sown among thorns - one hears the word, sounds good, thinks he or she has found a savior,  but he or she is so weighed down by stress, disappointment, pain, and is more interested in earning money of wealth proportions no matter how they acquire it so they can have the things they need to be happy and impress- like billion dollar houses and Olympic size swimming pools, and a stable or million dollar race horses, or ships. Forget sacrifice and loving the unlovable. These don’t survive.

Now we hear about the seeds sown on the good soil. Here, finally, is hope. These hear the word and know right away it is what they believe in, love, and want to do, tough or not. They can see beyond the soil from which they were fertilized. And immediately those seeds, on growing, blossom into beautiful flowers, and fine fruit and come up with enormous yields of produce and profit for their Lord, our God. These get the point, feel the love, and no matter what situation they might be in, toss all that away to be able to follow the Word of God.

These seeds have the gear of faith and trust and love, and dress every day with hope that they can share what they have learned and feel from Jesus, with those in desperate and sad and lonely situations, to bring joy into the lives of those suffering and desperate, be it prisoner,  victim of poverty or out of control illness, be he or she a looser or a winner, a victim of tragedy or a victor, but loving each one whomever they are in whatever phase of growth and life. This is the real proof of a healthy seed. This is the disciple or apostle Jesus was trying to create.

 ~ Rev
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