Truth VIII

Don: Today we will examine more closely the central part of the Parable of the Sower. It begins, you recall, with Jesus addressing “the multitude,” a crowd that had assembled on the beach hoping to hear him preach. He told them the parable, and then the scripture recounts a very important transition as Jesus, leaving the multitude to mull over the parable to themselves, addresses only his disciples, as follows (Matthew 11-17):

…“To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says,

‘You will keep on hearing, but will not understand;
You will keep on seeing, but will not perceive;
For the heart of this people has become dull,
With their ears they scarcely hear,
And they have closed their eyes,
Otherwise they would see with their eyes,
Hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart and return,
And I would heal them.’

But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

So Jesus knew that the multitude would not—could not—truly have understood the parable in particular and the truth of god in general. That was not an indictment; it was a matter of fact. Especially startling was Jesus’ statement that those who do not understand include even some “prophets and righteous men.”

In the parable, the different types of soil with their differing abilities to absorb and nurture the sown seed represent people and their varying levels of ability to absorb—to understand—and hold on to enough truth to bear fruit. Jesus explains that the “hard soil” people do not even get a chance to understand the truth—it is snatched from them by “evil ones.” The person represented by rocky soil is happy to receive the truth but if times get hard or if the person is persecuted for holding on to the truth, then they will quickly relinquish it. Yet Jesus also said in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:10) that the kingdom of heaven belongs to them. The “thorny soil” people also begin with the truth but are led astray by the illusory need for material things to protect them from a harsh world. And finally the “good” soil person, who understands and holds on to the truth, is going to be fruitful, though to different degrees—some more, some less.

It is clear from this parable that knowledge of the mysteries of heaven—of the truth about god—has nothing to do with salvation or judgment, as some might assume. Jesus does not condemn the soils that do not fare well with the truth. He simply describes them matter-of-factly. And nowhere does the parable suggest that the soil has (a person has) a responsibility to till itself so as to be more receptive to the seed (to cultivate himself so as to be more receptive to the word of god); yet many hold that we have that responsibility.

It is interesting too that although Jesus says the disciples were capable of receiving the truth, they still needed to have it explained to them.

In the economy of agriculture, all the different types of soil have a role to play. A farm needs a road so that seed and harvest can be transported in and out, and a road needs a surface of hard, packed soil. Rocks are needed for walls between farms and fields. Thorn hedges help prevent animals from reaching and eating the crops. And of course good soil is needed for a good crop. So all types of soil have a role to play.

It seems to me inconceivable that god would hold people responsible for things they do not understand. Psalm 87:6 says: “The Lord will count when He registers the peoples, This one was born there.” It means that the circumstances of your birth matter in some way, yet I cannot believe that god meant to condemn people for not understanding his word.

The soil is passive, in the parable as in life. It is transformed by seeds, by life. In Isaiah 55:10-13, this transformational aspect of seed is specifically mentioned:

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
And do not return there without watering the earth
And making it bear and sprout,
And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth;
It will not return to Me empty,
Without accomplishing what I desire,
And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.
“For you will go out with joy
And be led forth with peace;
The mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you,
And all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
“Instead of the thorn bush the cypress will come up,
And instead of the nettle the myrtle will come up,
And it will be a memorial to the Lord,
For an everlasting sign which will not be cut off.”

The sower, on the other hand, is indiscriminate in sowing the transformational element of the seed, distributing it everywhere. The seed is the Word as we understand it from John 1:1-5:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

In Mark 4:26-9, Jesus again talks about the mystery of seed:

…“The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows—how, he himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

The seed, the Word, has life. It has DNA, it gives life to whatever it comes into contact with. The seed is the active element; the soil is passive. We may at various times be different types of soil or indeed be a mixture of soil types, but we have no control over the process; we are passive in the face of the active processes of the seed.

Harry: God’s ways are not our ways, and our inability to understand his Word even though we may seek to understand it is immaterial. There are differences in the parable as it is recorded in three of the synoptic gospels. Mark probably shows it in the greatest light in that the way he pens it shows how hard it was to write down.

Charles: One of the interesting things about scripture is its multi-layered and multi-dimensional quality. Beyond the similes of the sower, seed and soil in this passage as it relates to God’s word, there is another theme that recurs through the gospels and indeed all of scripture, and that is the revelation of God through nature. I would add to the notions of eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear the notions of bodies that do not feel and minds that do not think. I believe that these faculties were given to the human form to help us understand the truth about God through nature. We experience nature and seek to understand it through our faculties.

As with our spiritual journey (our seeking to understand the truth about God) there is no end to our seeking the truth about nature and no final, complete, understanding of that truth… only more seeking. The more we seek and the more we think we understand about nature (or God), the more questions that are revealed, the more we are led to the realization of what we do not and cannot fully comprehend, and the more humbled and awestruck we become.

This truth of our relative human “impotence” before God is constantly revealed to us through nature. Perhaps the point is not to fully understand it, but to accept it, to embrace it and ultimately to surrender to Nature as the ultimate representation of God’s Omnipotence. Everything around us, everything we experience—the cycles of birth and death, the cycles of endless change, the leaf falling from the tree, the shoot emerging from the soil, the sunrise, the earthquake, the supernova—involves processes we neither fully understand nor ultimately control but which, by their very presence, reveal the truth about God… the ultimate supremacy of God’s will.

The truth about God as revealed through nature is right before our eyes and ears and bodies and intellect, all the time and everywhere, to anyone who has eyes to see, ears to hear, a body to feel and a mind to think.

Kiran: A human farmer has only so much seed. He would not waste it through indiscriminate sowing. But the farmer in this parable does it differently. His sowing of the seed everywhere—to the bad soils as well as the good—is the measure of his grace.

I have found it hard to accept this message because it has always seemed to me that there is no free lunch, that everything has a price, that you have to work for it. Yet here is the greatest thing in the universe offered on an all-u-can eat, 24/7/365 basis—for free! If an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is not true; or so we are led by human nature to believe. But god’s ways are not our ways.

If the job of the seed is to germinate and change the soil around it, it succeeds. In thorny soil, the roots put out by enough seed sown often enough will eventually take nutrients away the thorn and will eventually pierce the rock and break it down to become good soil. So god’s seed is productive wherever it is sown. It is salvational, in that sense—it saves everybody. We humans expect everybody to measure up to one standard: From kindergarten through the PhD, everyone must pass the same tests. We make no allowance for variable backgrounds and abilities, but god does. This is radical, liberating, wonderful, and beautiful.

David: I agree that it is beautiful. I am reminded of our discussions about why we tend to complain about the evil in the world more than we express wonder at the much greater presence of good in it. I recall my childhood days romping through English summer woods of sturdy oaks and bluebells and daffodils. There were no nettles in the woods. They were confined to the edge of a path running along the banks of a polluted beck near my home.

English woods, the Amazon rainforest, the jungles of Borneo… By and large, these vast areas of the world support more human life than they destroy. They are full of beautiful flowers and edible fruits and plants and animals. Why were they not suffocated early in life by the presence of “evil” weeds? As Chuck said so eloquently, god is there, all round us, if only we open our eyes.

I am curious, though, with respect to the parable, about where we—our group, sitting around this table in actual or virtual reality—stand with respect to understanding it? Jesus made no bones that the masses would not understand his message, but the disciples would. Are we disciples?

Robin: It depends on what you want. If you are stony ground, you are not going to understand.

David: Jesus seemed to presume that the masses are infertile soil.

Robin: Surely we all are, at some points in our lives. The question is whether we are willing to stand out, apart from, from the multitude and admit that we cannot see or hear or understand the truth. Is this where faith comes into the picture?

Don: What really struck me for the very first time on a recent re-reading of this parable (which I must have read hundreds of times) was the statement that even some prophets and righteous men don’t get it. It’s not just the crowd that doesn’t get it. The disciples would not have got it either, if Jesus had not explained it to them.

David: Taking the notions of faith and the absence of free lunch: Is there really no free lunch? There are stories of people putting their faith in god to provide them with a free lunch and getting it. Is it possible that there might in fact be more free lunches to be had in the world if there is (as I believe) more good in the world than we generally acknowledge?

Don: The parable talks about people who are distracted from the truth by taking on “the worries of the world” and becoming “deceived by riches.” Is this a sort of operationalizing of the no-free-lunch proposition?… Of the belief that one gets what one deserves, reaps what one sows?

Charles: Scripture has multiple layers of meaning, but perhaps sometimes the meaning, though profound, is yet simple and on the surface. Jesus’ remark to the disciples that they, unlike prophets and righteous people before them, had eyes to see and ears to hear meant simply that he stood before them so they (the disciples) could see and hear him—the Word of god incarnate—whereas the prophets simply, as a matter of fact, could not. Perhaps he was just telling them to wake up! To open their eyes to the Word as it stood right in front of them and spoke directly to them!

Don: Indeed. He is making the point that he is the Word and they are in the presence of it.

Michael: I find that if I give “free lunches” to others, it becomes easier for me to accept “free lunches” from others. I don’t mean it’s a question of tit for tat. It’s more an embrace of humility.

Chris: We seem always to gravitate back to wondering who and what we are. In the present case, we wonder: Am I the soil? The sower? Who am I? Where do I fit in?

I seems to me that i can be any of these things at different times in my life. I might sometimes be the road, with truth raining down but Satan snatching it all away before I can get it. I might be feeling a bit rocky, a bit grumpy, and shove the truth aside. I might be feeling good and want to share my bounty. It’s important to know not so much where one is at than that one can be in any of these “soil conditions” at any time, because that lets one take active steps towards becoming receptive soil. Or perhaps it prepares me to accept god’s grace.

Joyce: The farmer sows the seed. The seed has no say in where it is thrown. We have no say in our parentage and other key factors that shape our lives. Who can judge, who has not walked in one’s shoes? The farmer, god, throws people here and there, and he knows what situation he is putting each of them in.

Harry: It seems to me the parable is fundamentally about Jesus himself. He was proclaiming that he is the Word incarnate, and pointing out to the disciples that they had the unique opportunity to see and hear the Word in person.

Don: If one were to keep sowing seed onto the side of the road, where the birds pick it up before the soil can even think about absorbing it, would some of it eventually stick and begin to transform the soil into more fertile soil?

Kiran: I suppose there could be limits to how much seed the birds can eat, in which case some seed might start to germinate.

Chuck: In the course of eternity god does indeed transform rock into fertile soil. He keeps throwing seed; he always has and always will. We cannot do this—we don’t have the time. The parable confirms that god’s ways are not our ways.

David: Enough seed thrown on the road and not picked up by the birds will still end up as dead, unfruitful seed. But the parable is really about a single seed infinitely cloned: The Word. Each clone has the complete DNA of the Word within it. So it does not matter that there is a lot of dead seed.

Chuck: Assuming the sower is god, why would he sow seed on ground that cannot support the seed?

David: Could it be because the sower and his seed are by divine nature ubiquitous, everywhere?

Chuck: Perhaps; or maybe the sower knows that there is a way for the seed to germinate in the hardest soil.

Don: Even if the birds eat the seed, some of it passes through the bird intact, watered, and fertilized.

Robin: Remember that Jesus was spreading his Word in the form of this parable in thorny soil: The thorn was Judas, who was still a disciple at this point and was with the disciples when god explained the parable to them.

Michael: If I lived in a land where all the soil was perfect, I think I would kill myself.

Don: More next week.

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