This parable is sometimes called the parable of the
sower, but more often it is called the parable of the soils, because it speaks
of four different types of “soil”: hard, shallow, weed-filled and good……and you
have no doubt heard more sermons than you care to remember about the four
different soils and, depending on the preacher, you will have been made to feel
varying degrees of guilt about your hard soil hard heartedness, or your shallow
soil fickleness, or your weedy soil sinfulness and then,....... dangled at the end,..... the
promise of, or the challenge to…….be perfect……to be good soil, with no hardness in
you, no shallowness, no weedy sin, just good, perfect soil bring forth an abundance of fruit to the Glory of God.
And when read or preached this way, the feeling we are left with (if you are
anything like me) is that I’m not good, perfect soil, so I’m not bearing the full crop
that God wants me to, and perhaps I never will, ....and it's this attitude or even
belief that then leads to complacency……and when we become complacent, we no longer find ourselves sickened to
the core by our hardness of heart, the shallowness of our faith and the
sinfulness in us and around us.
Complacency! O
Lord……have mercy.
But I don’t think this parable is primarily about
soil. You may have noticed as we read
through it that the most commonly recurring word in the parable and in Jesus’
explanation is “seed.”
The word repeated most after seed is “understand.”
Only then follows “soil.”
But the major recurring idea in both the parable and
Jesus’ explanation is the idea of seeing..... but not seeing, hearing....... but not
hearing and therefore never really understanding the Good News
And the sin confronted in this parable is the
failure to understand, the refusal to understand, the hard heartedness that
doesn’t even try to hear and see and understand. What is it that we are meant to understand,
to see and to hear?
Listen to Jesus:
“When
anyone hears the message about the Kingdom and does not understand it, the evil
one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. That is the seed sown along the path.”
Notice that this is the only seed mentioned that
actually reaches and gets into the heart and from the heart it is plucked away
by the evil one……why……because there is a failure to see……and hear……and
understand the message of the Kingdom, that God’s Kingdom is near, that God’s Kingdom is at hand, that God’s Kingdom is at work, in our
midst, here and now.
The greatest sin of the people of Jesus’ day was that
God, Yahweh, the Lord was in their midst but they refused to see Him, even as
they saw Him, they refused to hear Him even as they heard Him, and they therefore failed to understand the good news, the seed,
which is the Gospel.
Can you imagine having God in our midst, at work, but
refusing to see Him and hear Him and therefore never understanding. If you and I have been or are tempted to say things like: God's work is not happening here...or....God has left this place.....or.....I don't find or hear God there....then we are as blind and deaf and hard-hearted as the people we love to hate in the gospel stories.
And these can be the most surprising people……Yes, it
was the Scribes, Pharisees, Teachers of the Law, and all the religious hypocrites of the day……but listen to this story
from the end of Luke’s gospel. It’s known as the Road to Emmaus, in Luke 24:13-35 and it shows us, frighteningly I
think, how it is possible, even as a lover of Christ, to be the person described in the hard soil, who refuses to see Him at
work, hear Him at work, in our very midst.
They had seen Him at work, they had heard His
teaching, especially that He would come back from the dead, they had heard the
women say “He is alive” ……but well, that’s the women you know, and the one
shouting the loudest about Him being alive used to be a prostitute you know.....that's rock hard heart in disciples who love Jesus.
The former prostitute was good soil, the two
disciples who loved Jesus, perhaps even with all their heart……were hard
soil. Love for Jesus doesn’t make you
good soil. Church history (eg: Crusades)
is full of people who loved the Lord and did the most atrocious things in his
Name, because they did not understand.
Seeing, but actually blind, hearing, but actually
deaf, therefore never understanding……understanding what……the Good News that
Jesus is in your midst, working as hard as He ever has.
This is Good News.
God is at work in your midst, in your family, in your
workplace, in your school, in your marriage, in your nation, very especially He is present in your church which of course is actually His church, not yours or mine……if you are not
seeing Him or hearing Him it is NOT because He is not there……Pray for eyes that
see and ears that hear……only you can do that because the desire has to be on your part……and then
comes the understanding, and it is the understanding that provides good soil
for the seed.
Pray for understanding regarding how God is actually
at work in your midst, in your suffering, in your fears, in your mourning, in
every aspect of your life……and He will give it as long as you do not refuse to
believe that He is mightily at work in your midst.
And be warned, and I seldom, unlike the prophets and
Jesus himself who often closed with warnings, I seldom do, but hear this:
Don’t
mock God......for God will not be mocked.
Do not say, “God is not working in our midst.”
We generally say this when God is not behaving as we think He should, or when God is not behaving as He
“used to.” That was the problem with the
people who loved God in Jesus’ day……yes they loved Him, but they didn't see Him
or hear Him in their midst because He was NOT doing and saying what they wanted Him to do and say....He wasn't doing things the way He had done them in the past....He wasn't behaving as God ought to behave, so in their minds and according to their understanding, God was quite obviously NOT in their midst.
Don’t mock God……He is as busy as He has ever
been……even right here in our midst……if you refuse to see that or demand to be
shown it before you believe it……repent, for the Kingdom of God is near.
