The sower went out to sow . . .
Obviously today’s parable about a farmer sowing seed is about more than a farmer sowing seed. It’s about you yourself taking root and growing up! Note, too (in harmony with our culture’s fascination with the number 3 which we touched upon on Trinity Sunday) how the parable begins by showing the three ways whereby the Word of God fails to take root in us.
The parable says of the sown seed:
(1) some falls on the roadside outside the cultivated field and is consumed by birds;
(2) some falls upon the rocky margin of the fertile field and, having no chance to acquire depth, dries up;
(3) some falls among thistles and weeds, bordering the plowed field, and gets choked.
A contrasting trio in the story has to do with the seed that falls on fertile ground, inside the cultivated field:
(1) some yields a thirtyfold benefit;
(2) some a sixtyfold benefit;
(3) some a hundredfold pay off – one hundred times the amount of seed sown.
But wait! Here comes another trio that explains the thirty, sixty, and one hundredfold impact of the sowing of God’s Word, God’s seed.
(1) some people hear and understand what the Word of God means;
(2) some people are even converted by what they now understand;
(3) some finally experience God as pure grace and forgiveness – and breathe easier than they ever have or could – no matter what the stress.
The seed, the Word of God, has been sown upon your mind, your soul for how long now? How have you received that seed? As upon
(1) a beaten path,
(2) a hardened heart,
(3) a thistle patch – a revengeful burst . . . a . . . fistful of splintered weapons, *
none of which can accommodate the depth dimensions of God’s Word, the Gospel?
Or are your mind and heart fertile to what you hear? Have you cultivated your soil (your soul) sufficiently to take it all in – deeply, not just audibly in the brief time that it is read from the lectern but by way of study, contemplation, giving it time? Every time you hear the Word of God proclaimed do you:
(1) understand it and not only understand it but
(2) buy into it, and finally,
(3) experience it, experience God as so intimately true to you, so unburdening that you find yourself free to be the grace of God to others; so that faith, hope and love become your imperishable lifestyle, your new identity, characteristic of the thou you have always, if unconsciously, wanted to be?
* From the Ted Hughes poem The Thistles