Nancy McCann Hostetter
Chicago Community Mennonite Church                                            Isa. 55:10-13
July 20, 2008                                                                            Matt. 13:1-9, 18-23     
         I'm going to call this, not the Parable of the Sower, but the parable of the Seed and the Soil. Novelist Ron Hansen has this to say about Jesus' use of parables:
         Evangelization for Jesus . . . generally [took place] by means of parables, [stories] that were often so bewilderingly allusive that his disciples would ask for further explanations of his meaning. Mark has it that ``he did not speak to [the crowds] without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything'' (Mk. 4:33-34). Christ's parables are metaphors that do not contract into simple denotation but broaden continually to take on fresh nuances and connotations. Parables invite the hearer's interest with familiar settings and situations but finally veer off into the unfamiliar, shattering their homey realism and insisting on further reflection and inquiry. We have the uneasy feeling that we are being interpreted even as we interpret them. Early, pre-Gospel versions seem to have resembled Zen koans in which hearers are left hanging until they find illumination through profound meditation. A kind of koan occurs in the Gospel of Luke when Jesus compares the kingdom of God to ``leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened'' (Lk. 13:21).
         We are challenged, in Jesus' parables, to figure out how we are like wheat sown in a field, or lost sheep, or mustard seed, or the evil tenants of a householder's vineyard, and in the hard exercise of interpretation we imitate and make present again the graced interaction between the human and the divine. (Hansen 11-12)
                  Without trying to over-interpret the Parable of the Seed and the Soil, and risk killing its mysterious, breathing symbols, we can ask, Where does the good seed come from? The Isaiah passage says that God gives us good, nourishing gifts. The seed is real. God enters into our lives and gives us things. He expects us to produce in responsewhatever that means.
         The Matthew passageone of Jesus' quizzical parablessays that whether the gift ``takes'' or notwhether it ``bears fruit'' or notdepends on the recipient. I used to hear this parable as a judgmental categorization of people into worthy and unworthy, good soil and bad soil, wheat and weeds, acceptable and unacceptable. It seemed rather pat and moralistic.
         On that topic, let me introduce a digression: Bob and I have friends, a couple whose wedding program cover pictured a field of waving grain. The caption underneath the drawing quoted a verse from Matthew 13:24, ``Let both grow together until the harvest.'' We decided not to ask the bride and groom which one of them was the good wheat and which one was the weed being spared until Judgment Day.
         Why is the story called the Parable of the Sower? Why isn't it called ``The Adventures of the Seed''? From the seed's point of view, the glamour of the story lies in the plot: Who will produce? Who will wither? Do I have what it takes? But the point of sowing the grain, from the sower's point of view, is to produce food to feed people. You want something to show for your work: not just pretty plants, but food, grain. From the sower's point of view, the story lies in character: which seed will take and which seed will fail, which will produce a hundredfold, and which merely thirtyfold. The story is more character-driven than it is plot-driven.
         In verses 18 to 23, Jesus decodes the parable, at the disciples' request. The good gifts are given, but whether they ``take'' or not depends on the recipient's receptivity, or his or her native equipment. For doesn't God give the soil as well as the seed? ``God gives us our temperaments,'' Dorothy Day said. And yet, some human effort is required, some recognition of and cooperation with God's purposes in giving the gift.
         Verse 19 says, ``When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in his heart; this is what was sown along the path.'' It is mysterious, how we are at some times prepared to recognize truth, and not at others. The person who didn't understand the ``word of the kingdom'' had no memory of it afterward; Satanor the birdssnatched away what had been sown in his heart. It seems unfair that this person wouldn't get a second chance. But maybe Jesus is just stating a psychological truth: that you can't remember what you don't find meaningful in the first place.
         Verses 20 and 21 speak of rocky soil, without much for a plant to take root in. This is the enthusiast who easily receives the word of the kingdom, immediately, with joy, and produces a proper little plant. Butagain mysteriously``she who has no root in herself'' endures for awhile, but when scorching adversity beats on her plant, she withers away, and loses the spiritual being she possessed. Elsewhere in Scripture, in Psalm 1, the psalmist says, ``Blessed is the one who delights in and meditates on the law of the Lord. She is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that she does, she prospers.'' This is being rooted, having access to deep inner resourcesstreams of water that enable one to respond in season, to produce fruit.
         In Jeremiah 17, the prophet says, similarly,
The editor's note in the Oxford Annotated RSV is that these verses in Jeremiah 17 are the probable source of Psalm 1. The godless person who trusts only in humanity is a stubby desert shrub. The godly one has the deep roots of a tree planted by a river, constantly fed by water.
         These are ancient biblical tropes that Jesus' hearers would get at once: the shrub in the desert versus the tree by the river. Are you deeply rooted?, the parable asks. Can you produce? Are you fertile ground for the word of the kingdom, and thus for the work of the kingdom?
         Matthew 13:22 says, ``As for what was sown among thorns, this is he who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the delight in riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.'' All gardeners know about the irksome necessity of weeding. I feel a particular dislike for weeds that mimic the plants I'm cultivating; I tear them out with a special viciousness. Imposter weeds choking out the beans! Violets masquerading as strawberries! But it takes special spiritual skill and insight to recognize the imposters in our lives that look like good fruit and smell like good fruit, but are not the real work of the kingdom.
         Jesus ends the explanation of the parable on an up notea smart rhetorical choice, to leave a sweet taste in the minds of his hearers. ``As for what was sown on good soil, this is she who hears the word and understands it; she indeed bears fruit, and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty times the original, and in another thirty.'' How mysterious! What accounts for these differences? In any case, these people who understand the word produce many fruits from the seed sown in their fertile, prepared soil.
         Back to the mystery of God's giving us our temperaments. God gives the soil as well as the seed. But we prepare the soil by delighting in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. We each have an individual nature that we deepen or frustrate with our experiences. We say that something is ``in our nature'' or ``not in our nature.'' And as we cooperate with and nourish that nature, we give God something to work with. We enrich the good soil.
         In a recent issue of The New Yorker, the novelist Haruki Murakami writes about writing and running, and how he transformed his life by learning to cooperate with his own nature (Murakami 72-77). He learned how to produce a different kind of soil, and thus more plentiful fruit. For years he ran a nightclub, then a jazz café-bar in Tokyo. It was quite successful, but Murakami exhausted himself with the hours it required. Out of the blue, it occurred to him to write a novel. ``Something flew down from the sky at that instant, and, whatever it was, I accepted it,'' he says. For three years, he ran his jazz club, closing up in the wee hours of the morning, and then going home to write at the kitchen table. He wrote two novels this way. Then he decided to close the club and focus solely on writing. His friends argued with him. ''But,'' Murakami says, ``I couldn't follow their advice. I'm the kind of person who has to commit totally to whatever I do. If, having committed, I failed, I could accept that. But I knew that if I did things halfheartedly and they didn't work out, I'd always have regrets.''
         He found that without the hard physical labor of running the club, he put on weight. Furthermore, he was smoking 60 cigarettes a day. If he wanted to live a long life as a novelist, he thought, he would have to find a way to stay in shape. So he started running. That led him to quit smoking, as he couldn't really do both. He found that long-distance running suited his personality better than sprinting. And he discovered after finishing school that if he could study something at his own pace, because it interested him, then he could enjoy studying.
         Murakami altered his hours, getting up early and going to bed early. This suited his natural rhythms better, as he was a morning person who did his best work then. He and his wife decided to throw off social obligations, seeing only people they wanted to see. He decided that his most important relationship was with his readers, and that he should adopt whatever way of life facilitated his doing his best work. He knew he couldn't please everybody, and that he must cultivate repeat customers as readers: those few who cared for the kind of novel he most wanted to write.
         In the same way, he gradually became a runner, working up to running for longer and longer distances. He says, ``When I look at photographs of me that were taken back in the mid-eighties, it's obvious that I didn't yet have a runner's physique. I hadn't run enough, hadn't built up the requisite muscles; my arms were too thin, my legs too skinny. I'm impressed that I could run a marathon at all with a body like that. (Now, after years of running, my musculature has changed completely.) But even then I could feel physical changes happening every day, which made me really happy. I felt that, even though I was past thirty, I and my body still had some possibilities left. The more I ran, the more my potential was revealed.'' He transformed his diet to become a more efficient runner, cutting out sweets and meat, eating mostly fruit and vegetables. He kept running because it suited him.
         Murakami says, ``Marathon running is not a sport for everyone, just as being a novelist isn't a job for everyone. Nobody ever recommended or even suggested that I be a novelistin fact, some tried to stop me. I simply had the idea to be one, and that's what I did. People become runners because they're meant to.''
         I repeat this story because I am so impressed with Murakami's discernment of his gifts, and of the requirements of his gifts if they were to flourish. He transformed all his habits at age 33, in order better to cooperate with his own nature.
         Here's the part where I should turn to application.
         Can you recognize any part of yourself in the story of The Seed and the Soil? Are you willing to transform your life in order to cooperate with the nature God gave you? Are you willing to stretch yourself heroically? Marukami says, ``The more I ran, the more my potential was revealed.'' You can fill in a different verb for yourself: The more I cooked, the more my potential was revealed. The more I wrote, the more my potential was revealed. Only in the exercise of your gifts will their full possibilities become apparent.
         Your nature is the soil into which God's seedGod's good giftsfall. Are you frustrating yourself with an inappropriate job or inappropriate goals? By living up to others' goals for you? How well do you understand what you are meant to do? When you understand your nature and set your life up to cooperate with it, you become fruitful soil into which God's good ideas fall. I'll repeat that. When you understand your nature and set up your life to cooperate with it, you become fruitful soil into which God's good ideas fall. May you produce a hundredfold.


Hansen, Ron. A Stay against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction. New York: HarperCollins,     2001. 11-12.
Murakami, Haruki. ``The Running Novelist.'' The New Yorker. June 9 & 16, 2008. 72-77.