How's Your Hearing?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s start by reviewing where we are in Matthew’s account of the story of Jesus. Like the other gospel writers, Matthew gives us a picture of the life and ministry of Jesus in the region around Galilee.  And what do we learn?  I think four things are noteworthy. [Bonnie Thurston, Preaching Mark, pp. 44-5].

 

First, the crowds, and particularly the poor and the needy, have been enthusiastic in their response to Jesus because of the miracles and healings he’d performed.  And they were amazed at his teaching too, particularly his Sermon on the Mount where he spoke about the kingdom of God -- the new order of things -- the good news that God, here and now, was establishing his rule among men and women. And Jesus’ miracles demonstrated the inauguration of this royal rule that neither illness, demons nor death itself could successfully oppose.

 

Second, there are those whom Jesus had called and chosen to follow him called the disciples.  Theses disciples spent time with Jesus and “follow” him, although truth be told, they’re still largely clueless about who Jesus really is and the nature of the mission upon which they’re embarking.  They needed the experience of Christ’s death and resurrection, to really understand Jesus’ true identity.

 

Third, Matthew describes an increasing pattern of hostility and antagonism between Jesus and many of the religious leaders. They were threatened by his interpretations of the Jewish law, his openness to Gentiles, and his claim to have a unique relationship with God. He claimed for himself such messianic titles as the Son of Man, God’s chosen Servant (Isaiah 42.1; Mt. 12.18), and the Lord of the Sabbath; and as the one with power to forgive sins (Mt. 9.2), and calm the seas (Mt. 8.22-27) and raise the dead (Mt. 9.23) – powers reserved for God alone.  Indeed, after a series of conflicts recounted in the chapter just before this one, the religious leaders were already plotting “how they might kill Jesus” (Mt. 12.14).

 

And fourth, there seems to be little comprehension of who Jesus is and what he’s trying to do by his own family members.  Whether out of good motives or misunderstanding, his family want to stop Jesus’ ministry in its tracks. The gospel writer Mark tells us (Mark 3.21) they wanted to “take charge of [Jesus]” and bring him home by force, because he was “out of his mind.”

 

The crowds… the disciples… the religious leaders… and Jesus’ own family.  Each of these groups around Jesus are suggestive to us.  

 

The crowd represents human life in all its neediness, and as our Lord ministers to them, they respond in kind, with joy and awe and wonder, with repentance and wholehearted trust in Jesus, exemplifying a depth of faith that is unexpected and admirable.  The disciples of Jesus, even at this early stage, are a premonition of the kind of new family God is calling into being, with Jews and Gentiles, men and women, common fishermen, tax collectors and even political revolutionaries all being drawn towards this man from Galilee in obedience to his call.  They certainly aren’t ‘religious’ types you’d expect to be following a typical rabbi of the day.  The religious officials, who should’ve been the first in line to affirm Jesus’ message and support his work, are the ones most deeply opposing Jesus, and are worried enough to join forces to put a stop to his plans.  And finally there’s Jesus’ own biological family, who misunderstand him at this point in the story, thinking that he’s crazy.

 

 

That’s the larger context in which we find ourselves as we come today to our passage, the so-called ‘parable of the sower.’ It’s the first of seven parables Jesus tells one after another in the 13th chapter of Matthew’s gospel.  At the outset, it looks like a story that doesn’t focus on ‘the sower’ at all. The emphasis doesn’t appear to be on the farmer who scatters the seed, but on four different kinds of soil that receive the seed, showing us four different responses to the message Jesus brings from the people around him.

 

I say it appears like that, because I think there’s a surprise here that we may be missing. But more about that in a moment.

 

Jesus went out to the Sea of Galilee, the large lake around which much of his ministry centred. But along came the crowds again, relentless in their desire to get close to Jesus and learn from him. So Jesus climbs into a boat and goes out a short distance from the shoreline to address the assembled throng, because that way he could more easily be seen and heard by the multitude of men and women who’ve come to hear him.  And it says in verse 3 that “he told them many things in parables…”  

 

Now before we move on, just what’s a parable?  A parable is a form of teaching. Parables are stories that draw upon something that’s known in order to explain or make clear what’s unknown.  Like Aesop’s fables, Jesus’ parables are vivid and striking and memorable and sometimes humorous, but they always have a point to make, a piercing message for the hearer to ponder. For Jesus, it’s a way of drawing a comparison between some everyday, ordinary thing that everyone experiences, and linking it, by way of analogy or metaphor, to the reality of what it means to live life in the kingdom of God.  On one level the parables are curious and intriguing stories, but on another level, they are windows of enlightenment, giving us a glimpse behind the curtain of this world into the unseen but most real world of God and God’s ways – the world that God is bringing to birth through Jesus his Son.

 

And what’s the first word Jesus begins with as he addresses the crowds? It’s “Listen!”  “Pay attention!”  “Wake up and smell the coffee!”  “There’s more to this little story than what you first might think.”  “Think about this, ponder its message…”

 

“A sower went out to sow his seed….” In our world of oversized Loblaws superstores and mechanized agribusiness, we’re a long way from the fragile agricultural economy of first-century Palestine.  I’m sure people in Kenya or Thailand or Mexico trying to eke out a living on subsistence farms would hear this parable with a lot more insight than those of us in superabundant, urbanized Toronto.

 

Back then in Palestine, a peasant sowing his seeds on a plot of ground was a familiar site, and everyone hearing Jesus, like our modern-day brothers and sisters in Kenya and Thailand and Mexico would have been conscious of the importance of this work.  Indeed, most people’s very lives depended on the fruitful results of the farmer’s sowing; it was only very rich people who could remain unaffected by a poor harvest.

 

So a farmer is out sowing his seed.  And as the farmer was slinging the seed, back and forth, it falls in four different places.  Some fell on the path.  The soil of the pathways was so packed down by the constant trodding of human feet and animals, that seeds couldn’t penetrate the hard ground – they couldn’t even germinate.  Life couldn’t begin.  And being visible and above ground, the seeds were easy pickings for the birds that came along and ate them up from on top of the ground.  

 

Other seeds fell on rocky ground.  Much of the land in Palestine is a very thin soil with a limestone base just a few inches beneath the surface.  Seed that fell here would germinate but it wouldn’t last, since a proper root system couldn’t develop.

 

In other places, where the seeds were sown, there was already some competition -- thorns and weeds already staking out a claim on the soil.  And when the farmer’s seeds grew up, well, so did the weeds around them, which invariably siphoned off most of the water and nutrients the plants needed, stunting their growth.  Although these plants may have survived, the fruit they bore was negligible at best.

 

However, some of the seed fell on good soil, where it was intended.  And there, with just the right conditions, there was a bumper harvest – “a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times.”  The normal yield for a Palestinian field was, by some accounts, seven and a half times what was sown; one seed producing seven more.  A ratio of one to ten was an especially good harvest.  But thirty, sixty, a hundred times?  That’s a banner year!  And that’s where the emphasis of this parable lies – not merely with the unproductive soils, but with the miracle crop generated by the productive soil. 

 

Jesus finishes his story in verse 9 with the admonition: “Let anyone with ears, listen.”  Again he urges his hearers to ponder his parable.  But the question is: what is Jesus trying to teach us?

 

 

Now before I go on to his interpretation of the parable, let’s go back to that farmer for a moment. Clearly the farmer is meant to be an image of God, or of Jesus himself, spreading the word, the seed of the gospel, the good news of his coming kingdom. But something seems wrong with this picture! This farmer seems overly extravagant, indeed overtly wasteful with his precious seeds.

 

Imagine a farmer out in Waterloo County here in Ontario who attaches his planting machine to the back of his John Deere tractor. And from the moment he pulls out of his barn, he turns on the planting machine, and corn seeds start flying out. He’s got seeds shooting out in all directions, even while he’s moving out of the barn and down the road towards his field, with seeds going this way and that way, willy-nilly, onto the paths, into the ditches, into the weeds, putt-putting down the country road with corn seed scattering everywhere as he goes. Don’t you believe his neighbours would think he was being wasteful and careless with his precious cargo?

 

As Scott Hoezee from Calvin Seminary has put it, Jesus identified four types of soil but only one had a shot at yielding anything resembling a good crop. The rest was just a waste of good seed. And I imagine most farmers who were listening to Jesus already knew that. Maybe the farmers in the crowd that day on the Sea of Galilee rolled their eyes and chuckled to themselves when Jesus said this, thinking that Jesus didn’t have a clue about what farming was all about. No farmer would be so careless, so prodigal, in scattering their valuable seeds like that. It would be a waste of good seed that no economically-minded farmer would tolerate indiscriminately scattering seeds not just on the fields but also on the pathways and in the rocky places and among the weeds too.

 

But Jesus says that God is just such a foolish farmer.  He’s got (apparently) more than enough seed to go around and so throws it anywhere and everywhere, the odds of success notwithstanding.  Maybe if the whole world were as God intended, maybe the seeds would find a higher success rate—maybe they’d even sprout 100% of the time as every heart would be fertile ground for the loving words of the Creator. 

 

 

So now, with that perspective of our gracious, prodigal God, let’s look back at our parable again. As Jesus puts it, “Listen, then, to what the parable of the sower means” (v.18, NIV). Again he tells us to listen. The exhortation to “listen” and to “hear” are used seven times in this short parable. So Wake Up!  Smell the Coffee!  Because this parable helps us understand four typical ways people respond to Jesus, and it holds up a mirror to our own lives.  

 

 

Do you know people like that?  And more to the point, are there times in your own life when you’ve become hardened and impervious to Jesus’ word to you?  Are there circumstances or habits or situations that have become an obstacle in your life that hinders you from truly receiving the seed of the good news Jesus is trying to share with you?

 

 

Do you know people like that?  And more to the point, are there times in your own life when you’ve become easily distracted from Jesus’ word to you?  What troubles or opposition have become an obstacle that hinders you from truly hearing what Jesus is trying to say to you?

 

 

Do you know people like that?  Have you become like that, where anxieties and worries have overwhelmed you, where your focus on money or busyness or the accumulation of more things has crowded out the single most important reality in your life, which is your relationship with Christ?

 

 

Do you know people like that?  People whose lives are a joyful evidence of God working deep inside them, who quietly, abundantly manifest the the fruit of God’s Spirit, showing love and joy and peace and patience and kindness to those they encounter.  Somebody has said that a Christian’s job is to make it a little easier for the people around them to believe in God.  And people like the ones Jesus talks about here are those who hear that word and embrace it and bear much fruit.

 

 

In this parable then, there are really just two kinds of soil – those that are bear fruit, and those that don’t. Jesus and his message inescapably divides people into two worlds: those who receive God’s word and allow it bear fruit; and those who do not. What about you and me?  A few minutes ago I said that this parable helps us understand the four typical ways people responded to Jesus.  But it also functions like a mirror being held up to our own faces.  Where are you and I in this story? 

 

What soil would best describe the way you’re responding to Jesus right now?  And what kind of crop have you been producing lately?  

 

Dear friends, there is no substitute, no plan “B”, no other means to grow as a Christian and live a fruitful, abundant life apart from spending time with Jesus, listening to him.  But as we submit to his leadership and allow his life-giving words to soak their way deep inside of us, his wisdom and truthfulness, his judgment and grace, his saving forgiveness and divine empowerment will begin to germinate deep inside us-- hidden from sight, like a seed sown into the ground.  And suddenly, surprisingly, like the rhubarb and peas and zucchinis that are ripening in our gardens at home, so his fruit will begin to burst forth from inside us and be seen by the people around us – in what we say, in what we do, in the way we live our lives.

 

The good news in this parable is that the sowing of the seed and its success—when that happens—is all grace.  Maybe that’s why God the Divine Farmer keeps lobbing seeds at even the unlikeliest of targets - like you and me.  It’s not that the farmer doesn’t understand how hard it is to find the good soil.  It’s just that when you’re talking about salvation by grace, it’s not finally about the odds but about the persistence of the Living God, the God who won’t stop sowing seeds. Ever.

 

But we have a responsiblity to listen. Indeed, that’s how the parable closes. “Let the person who has ears to hear – listen!” (13.9). This sentence isn’t just a rhetorical flourish to finish the story. Rather, it’s the code to understand the heart of this parable. Listening to Jesus’ words is the key to life; our ears are the soil of our lives. Ears that are attentively devoted to the Word of Jesus are good soil; ears that are distracted or inattentive or casual or double-minded are the unfruitful soils. The key attitude in life – now and into eternity – is the attitude of active listening. (Dale Bruner, Christbook, 4). 

 

So my brothers and sisters, how’s your hearing?  May the Lord help us to listen!

 

 

Let’s Pray…  

Open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus.

To reach out and touch him, and say that we love him.

Open our ears, Lord, and help us to listen.

Open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus. Amen.