Jesus told them a parable: Listen up, folks. A farmer went out to plant. This was many centuries ago, before modern machinery. He carried a large bag of seeds and threw them all around by hand. In those days, a farmer threw the seeds (or "sowed" them) before he plowed them under. He would come along later and turn ground over so that the seeds would be covered with soil and could grow. Therefore, he wasn't so worried where he sowed them at this point. But, of course, some of the seeds fell on the path and the birds gobbled them up right away. Other seeds fell on rocky ground which really didn't get plowed well enough for the seeds to take root. Still others fell in the thorns which continued to grow and choked off the growth of those seeds. Most of the seeds, though, fell on good ground and grew into grain and there was a great harvest. Then Jesus ends very abruptly: "Let anyone with ears listen!"

Most of us have heard this story before and we know that the seed is the Christian message, the word of God, the gospel. And we know that the seed, the word, gets a different reception from different people: it just bounces off some; it just goes in one ear and out the other with others but doesn't take root; and with still others the word gets choked by all the other things in life in which they are caught up. Yet for some -- indeed, for many -- the word is joyfully received, takes root and bears fruit. The parable is about God sowing the word in Jesus' own ministry. But the early church, especially when it left its familiar Old Testament context as the mission went beyond converts from Judaism to the Gentile world, didn't really know what to do with parables. Instead of seeing them as a vivid story with a clear main point, they tended to treat them instead as allegories, which were stories that supposedly contained hidden meanings behind each little detail. (Some Christians today still treat the Bible that way when they claim to find the explanation to current events in the book of Revelation, for example.) Most scholars think this shift to allegorical interpretation had already happened for this parable by the time Matthew's gospel was written down, perhaps a half-century after Jesus' death but certainly after the time that Christianity had become largely a movement beyond Judaism.

So the interpretation attributed to Jesus in verses 18-23 focuses on each little detail not of the seed but of the soil! And you've heard sermons like that, haven't you? What kind of soil should you be? Not hard soil, like the path, where the word doesn't sink in. Not rocky ground, which welcomes the word but doesn't allow it to take root. Not someone so absorbed in the cares of the world that the word gets choked. Don't be like that, these sermons continue; be good soil! Be people who believe the word, who study it, who take it seriously, and live it.

Now, you ask, what's wrong with that? What's wrong is that this is not what Jesus' original parable was about. The focus is no longer on the sower and the seed, on God and the word, but on ourselves. What kind of person am I? Am I the right kind; do I make the right response? Am I sincere; are my motives correct? And a secondary focus is on other people: look at them -- rocky, thorny, hard -- I'm glad I'm not like them.

In the original parable the focus is on the sower who spreads the seeds around with such liberality that no ground is missed. So what if a small amount of seed is wasted? The point is to cover the ground. Even today, with our more sophisticated planting machinery, we must waste a little at the ends and the corners of fields and overlap a little to make sure all the ground is covered. The picture that Jesus paints is of the sower's liberality, his generosity. The seed is going all over the place; the word is for everyone. "Let anyone with ears [that's everyone, presumably] listen." The focus is on the generosity of the one who gives the word of the kingdom to all people. The focus is on God, who sent Jesus Christ, who is God's word. You've got ears: listen to him. And the promise is that this word will bring forth a huge harvest.2

There is a great old hymn that appears in numerous hymnals, in a variety of translations and with different numbers of verses. It is usually known by its first words, "Spread, O Spread, Thou Mighty Word" (original German texts by Jonathan Friedrich Bahnmaier, 1774-1841). It is almost automatic, I think, that when we hear those first words, especially in more recent translations that avoid "Thou," and render it "Spread, Oh, Spread, Almighty Word,"3 that we hear these words as a command to us to spread God's word. But the hymn itself portrays the word as spreading of its own power. The subject of the hymn (the actor!) is the Lord of the harvest, whose word conveys the whole trinitarian activity of the God of the Bible.

In many ways this hymn offers a more accurate interpretation of the parable of the sower than does the so-called interpretation in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew (vv. 18-23). Many other Christian hymns about God's word capture this same point: that the living, active word of God itself is the focus of the Christian gospel. This is what needs to be emphasized rather than the particulars of our human response. Hymns such as "Thy Word, O Lord, Like Gentle Dews" (Carl Bernhard Garve, 1763-1841), "Almighty God, Thy Word Is Cast" (John Cawood, 1775-1852) and "Thy Strong Word" (Martin Franzmann, 1907-1976) convey the same insight.

The initiative is with God. Sin is being turned in on ourselves; what is needed is for God to come and turn us out again and that happens as the word of Christ comes to us. Then we not only see God but we see God's world and our fellow creatures. If we focus first on our response, on what kind of soil we are, we remain turned in on ourselves. Then we domesticate Jesus, we "miniaturize" him (as someone has said), to make his word fit into our ways instead of using our ears to hear him and be pulled outside of our preoccupation with ourselves. There is a helpful clue in our gospel reading itself, which we have skipped over until now. It starts out (13:1), "That same day" Jesus went down by the sea and told this parable. What same day? The day that had just been described in the twelfth chapter of Matthew. And what a day it was! It began by having Jesus' disciples pick grain on the sabbath, breaking this most sacred religious law about resting on the sabbath. Jesus got into a big argument about this with his critics and ended by declaring himself to be the Lord of the sabbath. Then he seemed to flaunt his position by arguing with the leaders of the synagogue and making them so mad they conspired to destroy him. Next, he himself did some work on that sabbath, healing all sorts of people, including one possessed of a demon. For this, his enemies denounced him as an agent of the devil. To which Jesus replied that because they don't recognize the Holy Spirit's work in his works that they are guilty of the unforgivable sin.

Then, to make things worse, Jesus promised they will be condemned -- and remember, he was denouncing the "good" people of his day: the Rotarians, the Jaycees, the League of Women Voters, whom he calls "an evil and adulterous generation." Finally, to top it all off, chapter 12 ends just prior to the parable of the sower with Jesus' mother Mary and his brothers coming to see him and he dismissed them: "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? ... Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."

Good grief! This guy is God's word? Does God's word create this sort of confusion and hatred and bitterness? "Let anyone with ears listen!" No wonder many did not respond. We shouldn't be surprised. Just a few chapters earlier Jesus had said, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" (10:34). And we know that the early church referred to the word as being sharper than any two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12). God's word in Jesus not only cuts us free from sin but also pierces us, judges us, and lays us bare. Because we are caught in sin God's word stands in opposition to us in some important ways.

The image of the word as a seed already hints at this. The seed must be buried and die before it can bear fruit. (Compare John 12:23-26 as well as Matthew 10:37-39 and 16:24-26.) This figure describes both Christ as God's word and the resulting life of the believer. The death of the old, sinful self is part of the great harvest; only the seed that dies bears fruit. Those who want to hang on to their lives lose them but those who lose them for Christ's sake find true life (Matthew 16:25).

When we listen to Jesus our lives get rearranged. And that's good. That's what we need, whether we know it or not. The word of God will do to us what God needs done. It will build us up and encourage us; or, if we are arrogant, it will humble us. It can cut away our chains and bad habits or it can cut us down to size. The Sower sows the word through the reading of scripture and the witness of Christians, through hymns and creeds, through sermons and sacraments (visible words!), through symbol and picture. It comes to us from outside ourselves, as a gift. God gave us all ears and graciously made it so we can't close them so that we can be saved by his word. As you hear it, know that God has come to you. Amen.