This past Sunday’s gospel was Matthew’s version of the familiar Parable of the Sower. Unfortunately, most people (well, most preachers anyway) want this story to say more than it does. It actually has a simple message, yet profound in its own way. The parable is one of the few that appears in all three synoptic gospels. Here is Luke’s somewhat more concise version.

When a large crowd was gathering, as people were coming to [Jesus] from town after town, he said in a parable: “A sower went out to sow his seed, and as he sowed some fell on a path and was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on rock, and as it grew up it withered for lack of moisture. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. Some fell into good soil, and when it grew it produced a hundredfold.” As he said this, he called out, “If you have ears to hear, then hear!” (Luke 8)

Whether Jesus actually told this parable, we’ll never know, but it is plausible. The dramatic setting of a lakeshore crowd is probably Mark’s creation (who first told the story). The “explanation” of the parable which follows a few verses later most scholars agree was a later, early church creation. But the theme of that explanation is likely the parable’s purpose: to interpret the public reaction to Jesus’ ministry.

One of the problems with understanding this parable is the setting created for it in the gospels. A “large crowd” has gathered to hear Jesus, so large in Mark and Matthew that Jesus has to preach from a boat to avoid being pushed into the water. And indeed, throughout the gospels, Jesus apparently attracts a mass following.

Yet the parable seems to more likely explain the reverse situation: why so few people are responding to his message. Only John gives a hint of this when, at the end of chapter 6, Jesus’ teaching has alienated most of his followers, so that only “the twelve” remain with him. Another inconsistency is the Passion Story, when “crowds” hail his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday but then crowds shout for his death on Good Friday. Where did everybody go?

Whatever the historical reality, in this parable Jesus seems to understand that, regardless of how many hear him, few will respond positively to his message. Most just won’t get it. But for those few who do, the result will be abundance.

Because of Christianity’s moralizing tendency (which, again, is especially true of preachers), as soon as something is described as good or bad, it is piously assumed that we should strive to be one and not the other. The problem in doing that with this parable is that we are talking about dirt. Dirt is what it is. Now a farmer can make his dirt better in various ways but there is nothing about that in this story. Instead, there is a sower throwing his seed here, there, and everywhere, with predictable results. Some seeds sprout and grow; most don’t (which, of course, is entirely consistent with nature).

Who we meet in this parable is, I think, Jesus the realist, the pragmatist. He isn’t looking for or expecting a crowd. Mostly, his teaching and preaching fall on deaf ears. But a few do genuinely hear him and for them it is transformative. The gospels give a number of examples of this in what often are their most moving stories. The healing of the Gerasene demoniac is one instance but perhaps the most well-known is the story of Mary Magdalene. In that light, it may well be true that most of those still with Jesus at the end were women, who seem to have had more of an ear for what Jesus was saying.

The way it’s told in the gospels, however, I think we also encounter in this parable the romanticism and frustration of the early church. As it’s told decades after Jesus, we hear the echo of early church leaders: “Our message is so wonderful. Why aren’t they listening to us? Why aren’t they following us? They must be ‘bad dirt’.”

That frustration may have played a large part in the early Jesus movement becoming the religion known as Christianity. Jesus’ primary concern seemed to be to bring about a spiritual transformation in the people he encountered. But that’s a slow, one-to-one process without, as the parable implies, any certain outcome. Some people respond; most don’t.

After Jesus’ death, however, his followers shifted gears. Jesus the mystical prophet with a life-transforming message became the Jesus the Messiah who, by believing in him, would save people from their sins. The church that followed recruited people to believe in the idea of Jesus Christ rather than encounter Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the person, through the message he embodied.

And for reasons that are still debated, it worked, at least so far as growing this new religion into the global phenomenon it became. Today, however, as the dark side of Christianity’s story is acknowledged and with the church in freefall, it is easier to recognize that the church founded in his name is a far cry from anything Jesus ever intended.

So, to return to the parable, in my view, and contrary to most preachers, Jesus isn’t talking about farming, literally or metaphorically. The sower here is the anti-farmer, throwing his seed willy-nilly, with most of it going to waste. This is how Jesus viewed himself and, as we’ve dubbed it, his ministry. He was not “results oriented.” Yet he persisted in “throwing his seeds” in the faith that a little of what he said and did would find “good soil” and result in a transformed life.

Recently, I came across this quote by Alan Watts, the great 20^th century self-dubbed “spiritual entertainer.” It points to both what Jesus was about and what the spirit-filled life he was pointing to is about.

Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go.

Jesus was the epitome of such faith. And it was to a life of such faith that Jesus invited people. Yet, he did so knowing most would respond, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Taking “a plunge into the unknown” is not many people’s idea of a good time. We do cling to our beliefs. But occasionally something causes us to question those beliefs, and sometimes they even crash and burn. Then, paradoxically, we become “good soil” for a different message, to hear a new calling, to consider another way of living. Then, Jesus says, our lives may expand “a hundredfold” in the faith, hope and love of the Spirit, in a life of letting go.

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