It's a great parable, a classic even, and one that gets better the more you think about it.
For in this parable, you will find the best explanation for why the word of God, even when preached in its fullness, doesn't always find a good harbor, and a healthy space for growth. For us in the church, it seems so obvious, that the word of God is lively, active, it is what divides bones from marrow, it is sharper than any two-edged sword, it's the bees' knees, all that. But hang on, you say. If the word of God is so great, then why isn't everyone a Christian? If it's so obvious that it's the way, the truth and the life, then why is there any opposition at all? Should not the entire world be faithful, loving, bible-believing Christians?
Well, certain things that are obvious to you may be complete mysteries to others. One man's junk is another man's treasure, one man's completely obvious is another man's obscure, that kind of thing. And ultimately, common sense is relatively uncommon. So things that should be clear end up being kind of not. And God's word, and the application thereof, is just one of those things. If you're in the church, then it seems obvious to you that this is all good stuff, that we are sinners, that Jesus forgives those sins and grants life everlasting, that kind of thing. But if you're not in the church, then these things will seem laughable, or foreign, or silly, or perhaps you're one of those people who will say 'I wish I could believe, but I just can't.'
If you're in the church, if you're a baptized, redeemed child of God, then you're fertile soil for that word of God to grow. If you're in the church, you're fertile soil, and a place where the word of God can, will and does grow. But if you're not, then something is keeping you from being there. What will those things be? Jesus helpfully explains. Perhaps you're a path, where the ground has been compacted down. You're a path where the birds can swoop down and pluck the seed up before they've had a chance to take root. Perhaps you're rocky ground, where the seed falls on the ground, and you're overjoyed, but you do too much too fast, you try to flower when you should be laying down roots, and all of a sudden, the lack of roots scorches you out, and your faith withers away. Or perhaps you are amongst thorns and thistles, weeds who take all your sunlight and water from you. Sure, you want to grow, you may be keen to do so, but the weeds crowd you out, the cares of this world, the pursuit of wealth, all sorts of things get in the way, and you don't quite get around to it. Your enthusiasm all gets misdirected, all goes in the wrong place, all gets sucked up by everything else, all those other cares, and leaves your faith choked out.
There's a good chance that if you're reading this, and you don't have faith in Christ, that you fall into one of those categories, which is both possible, as well as likely. And for you, that's some bad news. But if you're a Christian person, if you have faith in Christ, saving faith, if you believe in Jesus as your savior, the one who came to take away the sin of the world, then you don't have those problems. You just have a completely different set of problems. That is, you have to go out and sow the seed in these conditions. You have to go, sow the seed, spread the word of God on what would appear to be non-fertile soil.
That's less of a thrill for the individual Christian. Because, of course, what we want to do is to simply scatter the seed where we know it is going to work. We are less farmers in this capacity, and more gardeners. That is, we want to plant where the harvest will grow up with almost perfect certainty. We want to plant a garden in fertile soil, and if you're a hobby gardener, you're not going to waste a whole lot of time forcing the ground around you into working for you. You're going to do what we all do, which is to have a raised bed, or a garden in the back or front of your house, and garden in that. There may be rocks, there may be thistles, there may be all kinds of things on the rest of your property, but as long as your garden is fine, then the soil can be clay, or mud or sand or pea gravel, and it won't matter, because you can grow what you want to grow. But the sower went out to sow seeds, and in doing so, scattered them both where they were likely to grow and where they were not. Because the sower knows something that you and I seem to have forgotten, which is that the job of the sower is not to plant things where we assume things will grow, but rather to turn the soil where the seed is scattered into fertile soil.
Think of the command that Adam and Eve were given in the holy scriptures by God, that they should be fruitful and multiply, to have dominion over the earth and subdue it. We have been tasked with something special, something that we tend to forget, which is to subdue the earth, to work on the soil that is out there by preparing it for the seed. We tend not to, though. We tend to plant only where we think things are certain to grow. We tend to not bother planting among thorns, we tend to assume that birds will always plague the path, and we tend to think that the rocky soil will always be shallow and no good for planting.
In other words, we tend to think of a resistance to God's word, a turning one's back on God's word, as the last stop on the railroad. But it isn't.
Your job is to scatter the seed, to sow it, and to also prepare the soil to receive it ,as you would with any other field. Think of the situation that you may find in any field across this great nation of ours. What would have happened to us if the people who were setting up farms would have looked at the fields, and would have said 'oh. It looks like birds have taken away the seeds I tried to plant. Ah well, guess we're heading back to the Netherlands then.' Not likely. You know what happened, and why the pioneers were such a big deal. They were a big deal because they took the land that was at their feet, and wrestled it into shape, into doing what they wanted it to do. They took the land, and pushed and pulled it, grappled with it, sweat and bled into it, until it produced what they wanted it to produce. When encountering rocks, they didn't just plow around them, they picked the rocks out so the soil could be fertile. When they found that the birds were there to swoop down and steal the seeds, they had to chase them away. When there were thorns and briers, they had to uproot them, and make the soil clear to plant seeds that might grow to fullness. They took the soil and made it do what they wanted it to do.
This is our task, too. This is our task, to make the soil out there into something that might produce the harvest that we've been sent out to plant. It's no good for you as a Christian to shrug your shoulders and assume that just because ground is rocky, or has birds in the air, or is thorny that it cannot bear fruit. We assume that as soon as something stands in our way, that it cannot go back, and it can never go back. We assume that any incursion by thorns into our flower patch is a forever problem that will never go back to being fruitful. But you know what? We're wrong. And we've been wrong for a long time. And it's time to shake off that paralysis, to stop being quite so moribund, and to face the fact that the seed that we are planting is powerful and effective, that it causes springs to appear in the desert, causes the desert to bloom, it can make fertile ground, and to make it produce abundantly. This is good news, but this means that we are going into the world with something that can produce, something that can make a difference in the lives of people, and seed, being what it is, if planted and growing, makes more seeds. Scatter it on the path, all it needs is a crack. Scatter it among the rocks? Pick the rocks, and move them aside. Scatter it among the thorns, uproot the thorns, and have people see that the word that you are bringing them is something that they may be interested in following up on. What would people do if they saw birds eating the seed that they'd scattered? Do you think they'd just give up, stop planting? Or do you think they'd go through the effort of chasing those birds away? What would you do?
Scatter the word. Spread the seed. And don't do the thing that you might think you should do, which is to only scatter the seed where you think it would take root. Don't only approach people to be Sunday School teachers who have already done it. Don't only share the word with people who already know it and live it. Don't find elders or pastors out of those who have already been down that road, or who are guarantees. Spread the word, the seed, plant it and water it, let God provide the increase as he does. For he is the one with the powerful and effective word, the seed which can and will and does reclaim the path, breaks the concrete from underneath. The weeds can only choke out the weak plants, but if the plants are healthy, vigorous, growing well, then they can crowd out the weeds, that's the point. For evangelism isn't the end goal here, salvation is. Salvation of God's people, for people to realize that the word of God is powerful and effective, that it is there that forgiveness of sins is to be found, and righteousness is to be given. And that is wonderful, good news, life changing news, news of eternal consequence, and it carries something else with it as well.
For it carries with it something equally incredible. For there's a way plants work that we sort of forget, too. A way plants work that has made them incredibly important for us as humans who seek to use them for our benefit. That is, unlike almost everything else, they're self-replicating. Each plant carries with it the seed for many many other plants. They replicate like crazy, and if you want proof of that, then go outside in cotton fluff season, or hang out in the autumn under your crabapple tree. Take a few moments to walk past your raspberry patch, where you only planted one plant, but now you have a million. The ability of plants to bring forth more seeds cannot nor should not be understated. For the issue here, is that when salvation is proclaimed ,when the seed has been sown and the plant begins to grow, it bears seed on its own. This is part of the struggle, and part of the glory. That we see in the field the ability of the grain to bring forth more plants, it produces grain which is both seed and food.
Maybe, just maybe, Jesus knew exactly what he was talking about, and still knows what he's doing. Bear this responsibility carefully, and realize that the word that you are called to spread, called to share, called to distribute, is powerful, saving, effective and life-changing, that it can shatter through the limitations we place on it, all the more so if we do the work of prepping the soil first. We plant, we water, and God provides the increase.
