Knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God
has been granted to you;
but to the rest, they are made known through parables
so that they may look but not see, and hear but not understand.
Jesus presented the Kingdom of God in such a way that whether or not his message made sense was based, not on great cleverness of interpretation, but rather on the hearer's relationship with him. On the surface all of the parables tend to appear superficial or even superfluous. We might be tempted, by our initial understanding of them, to think that if that was all he was attempting to teach, well then, why not just state it directly? But the apparent simplicity of the parables belies their depth. They are in this sense similar to Jesus himself. His appearance as a simple man from Nazareth was not the whole story, which could only be had from revelation given by the Spirit.
The parable of the sower still has wisdom for us, even we who have heard it so many times through the years. Let's consider some of the threats the sown seeds face and consider how we might keep our own spiritual lives from being at risk.
the Devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts
When we pass over the parables or their explanations as things we have already heard we might miss their more shocking aspects. Jesus taught the devil was actively working to sabotage potential believers to prevent them from receiving the seed.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (see Ephesians 6:12).
Already at the beginning of the explanation of the parable we begin to get a sense of a bigger picture and greater stakes then we might previously have guessed. There is more to the picture than ourselves and our free agency to respond to the word. We do not enter into a neutral zone where we can afford not to be wary. We find ourselves in the midst of a battle. Those who, not realizing they are in a battle, stand tall above the trenches are not courageous, but foolish. Seed on the path is at risk, not merely because the growing environment is bad, but because the enemy is actively on the watch to claim such seed for himself.
And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path and was trampled,
and the birds of the sky ate it up.
The hardness of the path represents the hardness of hearts. But they are hard precisely because they have been trampled, and this often without blatant fault or culpability. The world has marched over this soil so often that it has become rock solid. It has beaten down these hearts so much that they are less and less able to open themselves upward in hope. This is the work of the enemy, sabotaging in advance the ability of individuals to respond to the word of God. It is all too easy for him to steal these seeds and prevent them from ever taking root.
How might our approach to the hardness of the path change if we realize that there is an active threat against seeds sown thereupon? We would be much more on guard against hardness and cynicism, more aware of when we see symptoms of such hardness. We would then be strategic when we see seeds sitting on the surface. We would be less likely to leave a single seed unsheltered. Without realizing this we might simply be content to wait, hoping that the passage of time would give the seed a chance to work its way down. Knowing the active opposite we face we would be more likely to active dig, to expend effort to shelter the seed deeply within our hearts and with those of others.
Those on rocky ground are the ones who, when they hear,
receive the word with joy, but they have no root;
they believe only for a time and fall away in time of temptation.
It is a cautionary tale that we can be at one moment joyful in receiving the word of God and yet later fall away. Our zeal at any moment is no guarantee of our predestination or election. Zacchaeus was said to have heard the invitation of Jesus and "received him joyfully" (see Luke 19:6). But a more convincing sign was how his life was changed. He immediately pulled up the roots in his previous life and began to put them down into the Kingdom
Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold (see Luke 19:8)
This does not mean that putting down roots is merely about external works, which on their are own are lifeless and inefficacious. But what it does mean is that the seed itself, when it is rooted in the living water of the Holy Spirit, will not just make a brief push above the surface of the soil. That is a temptation: to think that the flower, the beauty apparent to others, the joy of the moment, is the whole point. Rather, there must be more. There were be of necessity much happening beneath, the deepening of a spiritual life capable of bearing real fruit over the long term.
As for the seed that fell among thorns,
they are the ones who have heard, but as they go along,
they are choked by the anxieties and riches and pleasures of life,
and they fail to produce mature fruit.
The seed choked by the thorns was not entirely killed, not prevented from growing at all or stolen entirely. The problem was the lack of mature fruit. It was still somewhat alive but not fulfilling its purpose. While we may have something of the hard path and something of the lack of root within our own hearts to worry about it is this being choked by thorns that perhaps concern us most. Our spiritual lives might not be in immediate danger of destruction in a way that would be obvious and evident. But if we are not bearing fruit, mature fruit, there is a sense in which this amounts to a real and potentially equally significant problem. We have been given the Holy Spirit who is able to bear fruit in us. But if we give too much space to the anxieties of the world, to riches, or to pleasures of life as our ultimate concern, it is still possible to, having begun in the Spirit, nevertheless end in the flesh (see Galatians 3:3). Jesus did tell us, after all, that it was by their fruits that trees would be known (see Matthew 7:16). So if we are without mature fruit we will not be held inculpable, not when the power to bear the fruit is given us as a gift. We should not, therefore, judge our engagement with the world on the basis of whether it causes us to fall away entirely, but rather, the degree to which it is choking out our ability to bear fruit.
But as for the seed that fell on rich soil,
they are the ones who, when they have heard the word,
embrace it with a generous and good heart,
and bear fruit through perseverance.
Rather than hard hearts, we need ones which are generous. Rather than spiritual lives designed for a mere moment we need perseverance. There is an abundance of seed. The sower himself will help us to cultivate the seed no matter the initial conditions of the soil. Hard hearts can once more be made tender. Shallow roots can grow. We can find freedom from the suffocating pressures of life in this world. We are called to embrace the seed with good hearts, but we do so remembering that this heart is itself a gift from God.
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh (see Ezekiel 36:26).
The reason we are able to care so deeply for the seed is because we have some dim sense of what the plant will look in full bloom, some sense of the taste of the goodness of the fruit.
until the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ
that the blessed and only ruler
will make manifest at the proper time,
the King of kings and Lord of lords,
who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light,
and whom no human being has seen or can see.
To him be honor and eternal power. Amen.
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