Sowing Seeds and Digging up Rocks

Reading: Luke 8:4-15


We are beginning to see results in our garden at the Ryden house. I say “our garden” but my only real participation will be consuming the vegetables that come out of it. This is largely Brittany’s passion project and I just get to reap the benefits. But I will help out occasionally, and so it is nice to see that there are plants coming up. We have arranged our garden, which is a single raised bed, according to a pretty meticulous method called “the square foot garden” which is from a book by Mel Bartholomew. As the name suggests, this method involves literally splitting your garden into a grid and evenly spacing plants within that grid. It is very planned out and is a good way, in our experience, to make efficient use of the limited space we have. 

You will notice that the sower in the parable in Luke 8 has a slightly different take on sowing seed. Much less concerned about space, the sower spreads the seed everywhere: the road, on rocky ground, among thorns. The growth of a good crop, in the parable at least, is not due to the careful placing of the seed, but its spread far and wide. 

What can this parable teach us about the Kingdom of God? We do well to listen to Jesus’ own explanation, which he gives to the disciples after they don’t get it the first time. “The seed is the word of God.” He says. Like that seed, God’s word is spread far and wide, yielding some surprising results. 

I think this should encourage us to be more bold in sharing our faith with others. There may be situations where we see a tread upon path or rocky ground, but God sees good soil. We should not limit the spread of the word of God because we fancy ourselves to be soil experts. If the sower sees fit to throw seed on all kinds of ground, we would do well to follow suit. 

Tom Wright encourages us to see what characters we have already encountered in Luke’s gospel correspond to which types of soil in this parable (Wright, 94). He mentions the people at the Nazareth synagogue in Luke 4 as an example of the soil on the path, for they reject what Jesus is saying and seek to throw him out of the town, even off of a cliff! He compares the rocky ground to the action of one of the Pharisees who scoff at the company Jesus keeps and the things that he says. But there are also many examples of good soil in Luke’s gospel, and the examples we’ve seen are ones that undermine the expectations a first century Jewish person might have about who can rightly receive God’s word. They are surprising to say the least: Mary, a woman not directly connected to the worship of the temple, rightly receives the news that she is going to have a son, news that Zechariah, the one positioned to receive the news, fails to receive, though he comes around in the end. In Luke chapter 7, a centurion, a Gentile, and one who is a figurehead of the Roman occupation, is the one who is ready to receive Jesus’ healing for his servant. These examples show the wisdom of sowing the Gospel far and wide, because we do not know where God has cultivated good soil.

This passage also draws our minds to our own readiness to receive the word of God. Getting back to the meticulousness of the square foot garden, we must be active cultivators of the soil that is our own selves, continually making ourselves ready to listen to God. Are we praying for protection from the forces that would take God’s word away from us before it takes root? Are there things in our lives that prevent God’s word from forming deep roots within us? What comforts and pleasures of this life threaten to choke out the word that we have received? I think we make a mistake when we think about others and ourselves, in the language of this parable, as only containing one type of soil. Just as there can be good soil where we don’t expect it, there are parts of our lives where we need to dig up some rocks, parts where we need to do some weeding. As a good gardener will tell you, keeping soil good takes work. God is the one who causes us to grow into the likeness of his Son through the power of the Holy Spirit. Our job is to be full of good soil when the seed falls. 



References

Wright, T. (2004). Luke for Everyone. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Mighty Hath Fallen

Reading: Luke 1:57-80 Luke’s gospel is often represented in the iconography of the Church by a bull or an ox. One of the reasons for this is that Luke begins in a sacrificial setting, in the Temple, where bulls would be sacrificed. We hear in Luke 1 the story of Zechariah, the priest who was appointed to go into the Holy of Holies and offer sacrifices for the people. Zechariah gets an unsuspected message in the midst of his service. He and his wife Elizabeth are going to have a baby! But like Abraham before him, Zechariah doubts that can happen at his age and he asks, “How shall I know this?” His question, his demand for proof, is answered with him not being able to speak until the baby is born. And so the gospel begins with the pattern we will see repeated throughout it: the insiders, the powerful, the ones who “get it,” demonstrate their unreadiness to receive the Kingdom of God, while the lowly, the outsiders, the ones assumed to not have it together, are invited in. Mary has j...
Read more

Death's Defeat

Image
  Readings: Hosea 9-10; John 11:54-12:19 There are times where the Old Testament speaks to our need for the Gospel. Usually for me, this is highlighted when we see a particularly violent passage in the Old Testament or one that draws particular attention to the brokenness of the world. Today’s readings from the Daily Office are an example of this. There is a lot of darkness in the words of Hosea.   You may know the story of Hosea and how the prophet’s life is analogous to the unfaithfulness of God’s people: Hosea’s wife is unfaithful to him, just as the people of Israel have been unfaithful to God through their idolatry and reliance on foreign powers for their safety. Hosea prophesies to the northern kingdom of Israel, the 10 tribes that split from the original 12 after the death of Solomon, and his message is that destruction will come. And indeed, he is the last prophet to prophesy in the north before the conquest of Israel by the Assyrian Empire in 722 BC. In Hosea 10, the ...
Read more

Giving Caesar God's Due

Image
  Scriptures:  Matthew 22:15-22 ;  Malachi 3:6-10 Have you ever received something that you didn’t deserve? Some of the most beautiful gifts in life are the ones we do not deserve. A stranger paying for our lunch in the drive-through. An unexpected grace offered to us from a friend when we are not acting with grace. Our very salvation is offered as something we do not deserve from our Creator, the offering of his own Son on our behalf. The very nature of a gift implies that it is somehow not deserved. That’s what makes it a gift! It is also a wonderful thing to give something when it is not deserved. We can be the one who offers grace when it is not merited; we can be the one to surprise someone else with kindness. This can bring even more joy! As nearly everyone can tell you, it is truly more blessed to give than to receive. But there can be a dark side to giving when it is not deserved. Giving something to an unworthy recipient can be an act of grace, but it can also be...
Read more