Parable of the Sower
Transcripts are AI-generated and may not be 100% accurate.
I want to say something really quick before we get into the, uh, content of this space in the worship program, Maggie Keller has given months upon months upon months to creating our websites, giving it the um, the facial uplift that it required, putting all the different things in place. It's not like a simple, let's try a new template type thing. It was a piece by piece construction. And so can we just pause real quick and just acknowledge that with a, a real hearty Minnesotan round of applause. We love you, Maggie. We appreciate you. Thank you so much. You have been bringing, uh, it's crazy. It was like, I don't know if it was immediately prior to Christmas or immediately in the aftermath. You're like, “Guys, website, can we go, can we go? Can we go?” And I'm like, I just want a nap right now. You've had no hiccups in your energy from ‘23 to ‘24 and that's amazing 'cause I definitely have.
I have felt like the gray skies of winter are starting to get to me a little bit. I think actually, you know what made me really mad, Becky? It was on January 1st at 12:04 in the am—that's an exaggeration. Maybe like 10:42 in the AM though of January 1st. I caught an email with the first line reading, Hey, can we circle back to that thing we talked about in December? Now that we're in the new year, I just don't have, I'm not ready to do that yet. I think all I wrote back in all caps was “stop living in the past.” Like let's participate in the present right now together. We can do this thing in a different way than we're doing it right now.
And so if you're with me, we're kind of all trying to recalibrate, get back in the swing of things, trying to remember what is our actual like functions of the jobs that we've been tasked with doing. Right? We're all on that same page. Correct. Okay. Close enough.
Before we get into the text, as many of you know, we have been going through the gospel of Mark. We'll continue to do so from front to back for the totality of 2024 until we get to the end, which hopefully will be before ‘25. I'm assuming it will, but we don't know for sure. And right now we're in chapter four right now. We are going to enter into this space. Uh, we're going to dive into the first parable, the first story that Jesus tells in the gospel of Mark.
But before we do that, one of the things we say every time you step into this space, we want to make sure you walk out with an awareness of this, that regardless of whether or not you hear anything that's helpful for your own particular story in this particular season, at least hear this: who you are is more important than what you do as you recalibrate your life and get back into the Monday through Friday swing of things and try to figure out what the normal looks like in 2024. Who you are is more important than what you do. Even if what you do gets more attention to who you are. It's essential for all of us that we look one another in the eyes and we remind each other that we are all carriers of the image of God. And so the moment we get caught up in performance and productivity, we lose sight of that immediately.
Now with that said, we're going to go to Mark 4. Um, it's been a minute since we were in Mark, so let me just try to kind of set the context from where we're at before we get to Jesus and his parable. 1-3 had a lot of different things. Jesus, we saw him in synagogues spreading a good word from the pulpit. We saw him on the streets healing people left and right, going town to town and fixing crooked legs, opening blind eyes, opening deaf ears. He's doing all these miraculous works again and again.
At the same time though, he's being met with resistance. The religious leaders of this time who had the hottest show in town, they made no new space for the new act that just came through. They kept saying no to Jesus out of their own conviction. After taking into consideration Jesus' own words that they heard from the pulpit at the synagogue and his own words that they heard him speak after he healed on the streets, this man surely has lost God. There's no way; this doesn't line up with the tradition. This doesn't line up with our religious understanding. The paradigm does not affirm that this is actually the ways of God. He has lost God.
At the same time too, as we said in Mark three weeks and weeks ago, Jesus' own family shows up with creased brows going. We might not go as far as to say that he lost God, but we do think he's lost his mind. Like this boy is different. He's not conforming to the patterns of our world. We're afraid he might even be deranged. We're not really sure on, should we intervene, do we take. It's a wellness check essentially in first century Palestine trying to say what is going on with our guy that we raised. And all of a sudden at the age of 30, he went wild into the woods, met up with his cousin here he’s on the streets saying all kinds of things that we had never heard him speak before.
So Jesus is fresh into his ministry and he's giving, going out there and he's drawing these massive crowds, tons of attention, tons of controversy, tons of, tons of excitement, but also tons of resistance. And so time and time again, we see Jesus going, “well if that's going to be the case, I'm going to need to go into the city, heal those legs, but then go back to the lake and catch my breath. I'm going to go in, I'm going to do what I do. I'm going to go after what I need to go after, but I also need to recharge my batteries. I also need to go like I'm going to, I actually might lose my mind unless I get away from the chaos of these crowds.”
He goes to this place that we now know as the cove of the sower where he intends to catch some R&R. But when he arrives, there is a crowd that is already waiting for him to speak, itching for a fresh new word that might come out of him next.
And so up until this point, and I do think it's worth saying that we won't say every time Jesus offers up a new parable in the gospel of Mark, up until this point when he is trying to bring people in on the good news of the kingdom of God, the good news of what it looks like for God's reign to take over our individual lives and our collective life together. He's used primarily like street theater. He's used sermons, teachings, lectures. He said, this is what it is, this is what it is.
But because of the series of events that preceded the scene before us tonight, he's caught a lot of resistance. And so this is like the new approach going, it's not better, it's not worse. I'm going to employ a new tactic so that the good news can still be captured by somebody at hand. It's a Trojan horse of sorts. If the ears at hand prior to this scene were not capable, that did not have the capacity to actually receive what he was saying prior to, let's go a different route: Let me tell y'all a story.
And so we get on the prowl of this boat that uh, our assumption is like, you know, the crowd is at hand. There's been people out there, I'm not doing it right now, but they've gone to the cove of the sower and they've shown how acoustically, if somebody were to actually go a little bit into the water and raise a voice, not even like extremely, but just a little bit above normal, you could be heard from a long ways away. The infrastructure of the land allowed that to happen.
So he goes into this boat while the crowd with the itching ears is sitting there watching him going like, “can you say something?” And he starts to talk. I'm assuming there's, you know, somebody else in the boat that's kind of anchoring him down. So he is not like, you know, “there once was a man, the sower,” that's just doing the circle like we all have done before. He's actually got somebody else kind of keeping him steady and still. And he looks out on this crowd and he offers up the very first parable, which is found in all three synoptic gospels.
Um, and I'm going to read it for you right now. Please have the appetite to hear a lot of scripture 'cause it's a little bit longer than we typically digest together. Reads like this, [Mark 4:1-20) this is the Message version:
Listen from the prow of the boat. What do you make of this? A farmer planted seed as he scattered the seeds, some of it fell on the road and birds ate it. Some fell in the gravel, it sprouted quickly, but didn't put down roots, so when the sun came up, it withered just as quickly. Some fell in the weeds as it came up, it was strangled among the weeds and nothing came of it. Some fell on good earth and came up with a flourish producing a harvest exceeding his wildest dreams. Are you listening to this? Are you really listening to this?
Now, Jesus, after that story was told, he goes off with his closest of kin and along with the twelve, they started to ask about the stories. And he said, you have been given insight into God's kingdom. You know how this whole thing is about to go down, but to those who can't see it yet everything comes in stories, creating readiness, nudging them towards a welcome awakening. These are people whose eyes are open but don't see a thing whose ears are open but don't understand a word, who avoid making an about face and getting forgiven.
He continued. You gotta see how this story works, right? All of my stories work this way. The farmer plants the word. Some people are like the seed that falls in the heart and soil of the road. No sooner do they hear the word that Satan snatches away what is implanted in them. And some are like the seed that lands in the gravel when they first catch the word, they respond with great enthusiasm. But there is such shallow soil of character that when the emotions wear off and some difficulty arrives, there's nothing to show for it. Deceit cast in the weeds represents the ones who hear the kingdom news, but are overwhelmed with the worries about all the things they have to do and all the things they want to get. The stress of life, the daily demands, the duties, everything that comes attached to that. It strangles what they had heard. And so nothing comes of the seed, but there is the seed that is planted in the good earth. There is the seed that is planted that represents those who hear the word of God, of love, of life, of liberation. They start to embrace it regardless of the cost that might come upon them. And they produce a harvest beyond their wildest dreams.
One of my biggest pet peeves, I think I had, um, I had this Dr., I’m going to butcher his name, so let's just go with Johnson, I can't remember his name. One of my seminary professors really drilled into us and he said like, he set us up, he's a trap. He goes, “what do you think this, this, uh, parable might mean?” different parable, but same kind of question. And I think a lot of people said, well, we think this is what it means. He said this, it means that context is this must mean that.
And he goes, you're wrong. Stop saying what it means. That's not how parables work. You can't extract one clear meaning. You might say it's this and you might say it's that. You may say it's about the soil. You may say it's about the seeds. You may say it's about the different kind of fields that each of our lives are. You might think it's just about the different kind of fields that live in each of our hearts. Is it any of those above the other ones? Maybe, maybe maybe. Not the point.
Parables in Jewish tradition were held up like allegories are held up. You hold 'em up like refracting diamonds, you hold 'em up to the light and you go, what is here that I should see that will speak into my life right now when I twist that diamond that rests in the palm of my hand, in the frame of a light behind it? What is the thing that catches me that I didn't catch before? The dangerous part of saying this is what this parable means on any particular parable is you close yourself off to what else that parable might mean.
The crowd at hand, the ones on the beach that weren't like aware of all that Jesus was saying from the boat. They didn't catch this inner insight on the follow-up conversations. They're, they're tasked with walking away with the cryptic story. What does any of this mean? Here's a diamond. How do you want to hold it? What do you see?
I will tell you that of all the biblical texts that I grew up with, this is one of the texts that left me shook the most often. Because I remember sitting on the left side of our congregation in our Baptist church growing up where our pastor on the pulpit said, well, there's just different kinds of folk out there. There's good, there's bad, there's problematic, there's pure, there's fertile grounds, there's rocky soil, there's concrete walkways, there are weeds. Different kind of folks.
Now, as a young boy, as I digested that story again and again with that interpretation, in my mind I thought, well, I've gotten in trouble most of my life. I mean, I, I've gotten in trouble most of my life. It was a running joke, like when people would come over to my parents' house, they would see me sitting up in my, my room next to the window just wondering what it would be like to be free out there. Like that was just a thing. And honestly, even when I got into high school and I, the trouble just escalated and it got more clear cut like maybe you, maybe you are a walkway. You know, like maybe this is what it is. And part of the problem too was like when I heard that story, it wasn't just that I'm, I'm hoping to be weeds, but I probably am walkway.
I was very aware that my older brother, Aaron, he's 39 years old, he has yet to commit a sin in totality of his life. He's definitely fertile, good soil. My other brother Jordan, he has definitely sinned. He's a hot mess of a man and yet the fruits continue to come forward. He has a lot of beautiful things happening for him. So I'm a little bit envious, which is why I'm going to disparage him right now.
My point being is this, I was left with two other options. Am I a weeds, weeds guy or am I walkway? But either way, the odds are kind of against you. There's only one really pure field here. And so I'm, I'm, I'm being facetious a little bit, but here's the sincerity. When I was growing up in high school, every time this text would come up, when I would hear about it, and even if it was offhand, I would remind myself, okay Matt, you have gotten in trouble for, for a lot of, uh, uh, drugs and drinking and stealing money and you've gotten in trouble a lot of different ways. You've been creative in all the different ways. At what point will you just turn around and go “walkway. Concrete.”
Jesus is saying in this place, like people like you, Matt, Even if he throws seeds your way, even if it does fall over your life like it has fallen over my life, please let go of the hope that it will ever break the hardened surface of you to get to something substantial. 'cause that's not in the cards.
For a long time. I honestly think even me getting into my undergrad with biblical and theological studies and me being pushed to seminary was partly to prove like it's not all bad here. There's gotta be some good if I'm, if I till the land enough, if I get rid of the birds that are taking up the seed, if I clear the weeds from the ground, if I do something on my own accord, there's gotta be a means I can correct 'em when wrong, I can be good still.
It all changed for me though, when I heard about the news at Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston 2015, when on June 17th, 12 individuals gathered in the basement of this church on a Wednesday night and they studied the Parable of the Sower. They read about the seeds that were falling on all kinds of soils. And in the midst of their study, a young white boy from who knows where, walks into this space with the bowl cut and they welcome him warmly, they see him. They don't say, we already started, too late. Come again tomorrow. We'll try them. Instead they grab an extra Bible—seeds. All these patches of fertile ground, these fertile soil, they turn into the sowers. Let me grab you a Bible—seeds. Let me print you off a study guide—seeds. Let me pull up that chair. Do you need a water? Do you want some of our crappy coffee?—seeds, seeds and seeds.
Now we know how it shook out that despite all the seeds that fell on the concrete act, that was Dylan Roof's moment in that space. They bounced off the hardened ground and ended up as bullets that took nine of the lives in the room. And yet in the aftermath, the ones who sowed those seeds on the walkway boy that walked in, they didn't cease from sowing again.
Two days later, later when Dylan Roof was standing before the judge and the judge read out the victim's names, one of the daughters of a mom who was killed in that space, uh, was invited to come and share anything. Judge said, if any of the families that that experienced this devastating loss, this tragic moment firsthand, if you have anything you want to say, floor is yours. We'll make space. I will listen to you. Everyone will listen to you. Dylan Roof will listen to you. And this girl who had no intention of speaking on that day, she steps up to the witness stand. She says this, Patty, can you put that quote up?
“I just want everybody to know, to you, [you being Dylan Roof] I forgive you. You took something very precious away from me. I will never talk to her again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you and have mercy on your soul. Imagine the weight of those words. If you're this, this woman, you hurt me. You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people, but God forgives you. And I'll forgive you.”
If you were a part of our community at that time. You remember we brought in Reverend DeWayne Davis and we started to talk about that, what that was actually all about. And I remember standing with Reverend Davis afterwards and he brought to mind that, you know, have you ever considered the fact that they were sitting in that basement reading the parable of the sower? Have you ever considered that woman on the stand in that space right there was doing what the sower once did.
Everything changed for me in that space. Everything changed for me in that moment. My whole understanding of God changed for me in that moment in a beautiful expanded kind of way. Because what I understood was for thousands of years, we have never not once called this the parable of the soil. We've never called it the parable of the seeds. It has always been about the parable of the sower, the one who is a terrible farmer, but an incredible father. The one who recklessly flings and broadcasts these seeds to and fro knowing that they might never actually break the hardened surface. But I will keep sending them out. I will keep putting 'em out there. I won't stop. I'll keep reaching my hand into my seed bag by my side because every life has value. Every life is worth being poured into. And so is yours. I promise you I'm starting to understand that mine is too.
The beautiful parable that Jesus unveils for us here is the same thing Jesus does when the prodigal son comes home and the dad doesn't welcome him with a stale bread, but a fattened calf. Dad doesn't slap his wrist, but puts a ring on his finger. It's the good shepherd that goes out when one sheep goes a-wandering. This is who God is. This is the heart of God that Jesus is putting on full display from the proud of a boat saying, if you want to know what the kingdom of God is like, you are loved, you are enough.
And regardless of your reaction, be it allergic response to good news, be it hardened cynicism, be it cold apathy, whatever it might be, as you start a new year and before you get caught up in any kind of, you know, ideations and these, the our wheels start spinning on like who we might be, new year, new me. Remember this. There is a sower constantly seeding you. There is a sower who is constantly and consistently finding you, worthy of being sewn into regardless of how you see yourself. I'm resting in that truth.
I want to close with this poem, um, that I caught this week that is so beautiful and it just talks about the, the, um, patient consistent and constant love of the good sower in our lives. It's from Sister Margaret Halaska. It's called the Covenant. And I would invite you if you want to just meditate in this moment, close your, your eyes, hold up your hands, do whichever you need to do, get in posture to actually hear this. So it's not just something we let the moment go by. I want you to hear these words:
God
knocks at my door
seeking a home for his son.
Rent is cheap, I say.
I don’t want to rent. I want to buy, says God.
I’m not sure I want to sell,
but you might come in and look around.
I think I will, says God.
I might let you have a room or two.
I like it, says God. I’ll take the two. You might decide to give me more some day.
I can wait, says God.
I’d like to give you more,
but it’s a bit difficult. I need some space for me.
I know, says God, but I’ll wait. I like what I see.
Hm, maybe I can let you have another room.
I really don’t need that much.
Thanks, says God, I’ll take it. I like what I see.
I’d like to give you the whole house
but I’m not sure …
Think on it, says God. I wouldn’t put you out.
Your house would be mine and my son would live in it.
You’d have more space than you’d ever had before.
I don’t understand at all.
I know, says God, but I can’t tell you about that.
You’ll have to discover it for yourself.
That can only happen if you let me have the whole house.
A bit risky, I say.
Yes, says God, but try me.
I’m not sure –
I’ll let you know.
I can wait, says God, [because regardless of the kind of soil you might see yourself as,] I like what I see.
Christ, you are the good sewer. We are a hot mess of different kinds of soil. Sometimes we're fertile, sometimes we're rocky, sometimes there are weeds. Sometimes the birds take us all out. But you are still good. You are constantly sowing. Your bag of seeds is endless. You are the prodigal God that loves us through it all. And if we could rest in that reality, all kinds of things open up. Jesus says, you're beyond your wildest dreams. I believe that to be true. If we get past all of our inner demons, our insecurities, our anxieties around whether or not we're enough, the good sower sows enough seeds to make it clear that we are, help us to embrace that truth so that new fruit can grow forward so that the harvest can be bountiful and we can enjoy what we have to eat. In Christ's name, all God's children, we say together. Amen.