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.
The parables are a specific instance of the word of God, meaning that different people will respond to them differently. Just as Jesus himself came to bring not peace but division so too did his parables produce different results in some than in others. The parable of the sower was thus a meta parable, describing how it, the other parables, and the rest of the teaching of Jesus could be received by his hearers. The thing that separated the good soil from the bad and defined it was thus also a description of those who would believe and be saved. They were the ones who, when they heard the word, that is, when they heard Jesus, they embraced it with a generous and good heart. That is they embraced Jesus himself, and the entire paradigm of discipleship that he taught.
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.
The seed that fell on the path was not embraced at all. The seed that fell on rocky ground was not embraced with perseverance. That which fell among the thorns was not embraced by a generous heart, but rather one compromised by anxieties and riches and pleasures of life. This was as opposed to the seed that fell on good soil. It described the disciples and those like them. They were the ones who stuck with him in his time of trial (see Luke 22:28), rather than crowds who merely regarded him as a spectacle worthy of passing interest. It was also different from the Pharisees, in whom his word found no place. Many of them didn't even take pause to consider the things he said might be true, but condemned him before really hearing him out. It was also opposed to those like Herod who were too consumed with wealth and pleasure to give the word the serious consideration it deserved. There was another group with fewer famous examples in the Gospels that was described by this parable. These were the ones who lacked perseverance. We can think of all of those who had been following Jesus until he told them they would need to eat his Flesh and drink his Blood in order to receive eternal life, and who, having heard it, stopped following him. In the book of Revelation the Church at Ephesus was praised for their endurance, and yet they were also warned: "you have lost the love you had at first" (see Revelation 2:4), as though they had stood firm but were now at risk of falling. Perseverance that is not undergirded by love is always going to be at risk of collapse, because the sheer force of will we use to maintain it will eventually not seem worth exerting. We will eventually wonder why we had been putting in so much effort in the first place and simply stop.
Are we destined to be one kind of soil or the other? Are our hearts already fixed as generous or selfish? Is it predetermined whether or not we will persevere, or is it rather something we can influence or decide? Experience seems to dictate that we have all of these soil conditions within our souls, and that sometimes one or the other seems to predominate. Yet it seems clear that if we lean into selfish hedonism we tend to become more and more selfish. If we lean into generosity, actively embrace the word, and commit to continuing through the long haul, we become increasingly able to do so. Yet what we can do in response is predicated on the basis of the abundant availability of the word. Wherever turn we find it there, ready for us to embrace or ignore. We can't create a response of love to Jesus in our hearts. But the fact of his sowing the word so extravagantly proves that he himself knows he can do so. The real risk is that we will choose any of the patterns of rejection rather than the one pattern of effective embrace. We know all too well that we can misuse such freedom as we have to do so. Let us instead be among those who welcome the word with all that we have and all that we are.
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