On one of my recent walks I went past a house that was obviously abandoned. Apart from the letter box overflowing with junk and personal mail the overgrown grass was a dead giveaway. But what surprised me was when I looked at the roof of the house it had grass growing in the gutter. I thought to myself – how on earth did it get there? We have trouble growing grass on our nature strip at home even with sowing grass seed and watering it. And it reminded me of today’s parable – the parable of the sower.
The seed is so abundant that the sower doesn’t care where it goes. What that sower trusts is that God will provide the response in the hearts of the people where the Word is being sowed – even if it’s thrown into the gutter. God’s generous abundance keeps overflowing in us so that we are invited to share it with others.
And what about those others? Jesus further elaborates on his own parable by describing each of the different soils where the seeds land. We probably all know people that we could categorise into each of these soil.
But let’s begin by looking at our own faith journey? Perhaps you shift between one soil and another from one day to the next. We’d like to believe that we are the good soil, but if we are honest, we probably aren’t – at least not all the time. Imaging how Paul must have felt at times – the good I want to do I do not do – the evil I do not want to do I keep on doing. What sort of soil is that to sow seed in? Even the disciples at the Ascension we are told some doubted. Thomas doubted. Peter denied knowing Jesus. Judas betrayed Jesus. All the disciples fled when Jesus was arrested. What sort of soil is that to sow seed in?
We too, at times, can vary in the type of soil that the Gospel finds. As human beings, we are complex creations of thoughts, feelings, and the tendency to act on them impulsively. When we experience discomfort, we want it to go away and may act impulsively in order to find comfort or release from pain and anxiety rather than rely on our faith. In the news and on social media, we are seeing so much to challenge our faith, deaths from violence, relationship struggles, job loss, bankruptcies, interest rate rises, cost of living. We can become like the seed thrown on the soil who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing..
This was Esau’s problem today from which he lost his rights of the first born. He comes in from the field, starving because he had been working hard. Jacob knows this and takes advantage of it. He knows that all that Esau can think about is food – his stomach – his physical pleasure. So, Jacob tells him that he can have food if he gives him his birthright. Our natural human impulses can lead us into distraction – choked with the thorns of the world and we yield nothing. And sadly these distractions can focus us away from our mission of spreading the seed elsewhere as, like Esau, we only have concerns for our own physical wellbeing.
Churches can easily fall into that thinking as we begin to focus on our own survival rather than mission to others – we call that maintenance ministry. It still intrigues me, how did that grass grow in the gutters. Who put lawn seed in the gutter to have grass grow there? I guess there are many possibilities. The wind could have blown grass seeds from the ground into the gutter. Birds could have picked up the grass seed and dropped it into the gutter. Birds could have picked up the grass seed while building their nests and rain washed the seed out of the bird’s nest and into the gutter. What this tells me is that the sower didn’t worry about where the seed went because there was a possibility that it would be blown away to places he couldn’t get to.
So as Christians we are also sowers because wherever we go we take with us a seed of God that can be placed wherever we are even if we don’t intend it. No one intended to place a grass seed in the gutter but it still got there.
But it shows the essential need for us to keep sowing even when our own faith comes under attack and causes distraction. God sends us out as sowers as Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians: I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labour. For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building. We are both the sowers and the soil. When seeds fall in our soil we produce more fruit and seed to scatter. The seeds that have been sown in us continue to produce fruit and further seeds.
So when we go out today and tomorrow, we are called to sow abundantly, frivolously, wastefully. There are many ways we can spread God’s seed; By loving one another as Jesus loves us – and by this everyone will know that you’re my disciples. By loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us and then being prepared to give the reason for the hope that we have. Like the parable of the sower we don’t need to care if the seed goes to places where WE think it might not grow. God is the one who makes it grow.
