One of the conventional lessons from this parable involves identifying what kind of people we are in response to the good news of the gospel. Are we the hard-packed path that ignores it, the stony soil with no depth to let it take root, the patch of thorny plants that never lets it fully grow or the good soil that receives and nurtures it?
Once we consider it a little more deeply, of course, we can realize that we match all those kinds of soil at different times in our lives. Even once a relationship with Jesus begins, we might still resist the full life-changing implications of the gospel in favor of familiar ways of seeing things and carrying on with our lives. And we realize that different areas of our lives might be different kinds of soil at the same time. Perhaps my heart has become fertile ground for the message of seeing everyone as a child of God, as my brother or sister. But I've yet to deepen it and clear it of hidden obstacles when it comes to how I view finances and money. I am not fully willing to trust my future to God and I insist on keeping the reins of this part of my life. In that area, any progress I make in following Jesus doesn't last long because am too ready to revert to old ways of doing and seeing things.
I don't know if you've thought of the parable in this way, but each of these kinds of soil can represent a stage of spiritual maturity or growth in our relationship with Jesus. The more we mature, the more the seed of the gospel can take root and grow in us. We exchange being the hard-packed path of ground shaped by the world's impact on us for the fertile soil that produces many times over. Our trust grows as our experience teaches us that following Jesus leads to the best life we can live in every area, and we are more and more open to receive the seed of the good news.
One of the reasons I think of the different soils as representing maturity is that each of them allows a greater growth of the seed once planted -- it gets closer to maturity. It doesn't even start to grow on the path and it doesn't do much beyond getting started in the stony soil. It does grow among the thorns, but it never produces fruit. Finally, the seed in the fertile soil completes its life cycle and brings forth grain. We sometimes overlook that part of that life cycle, since our goal for a plant is that it make grain or something else we can eat. We focus on the production, but the plant is actually designed for reproduction. The "yielding in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty." is the goal, but not, from the plant's point of view, so we can have more grain to make our bread. In fact, a farmer might sell the lower-yield grain or grind it for food but keep the high-yield to plant next year and increase his crop.
The goal of the good news is similar: to be reproduced in the lives of others when we share it with them as it was shared with us. We join the great Sower in his work. Not in the sense that we measure how many people come to Jesus because we share the gospel with them, counting a hundred, sixty or thirty or some other number. Rather, the flourishing and flowering of the good news in our hearts and lives can become the seed scattered to another, and we hope and pray that when it comes to them it meets the good fertile soil so it can take root and begin to transform them as well.
(We also might give some thought as to how the Holy Spirit might use us to till and soften the soil in the lives of those around us, but that's probably best left to another sermon).
Because our goal is maturing in the faith and allowing it to reproduce in and beyond our own lives, I personally think that the ground with the thorny plants presents the greatest problem for us. I noticed something the last time I read this passage. As Jesus explains what happens to the good news among the thorny plants he never says that the plants which grow up die. He just says they yield nothing. They never mature and complete their full cycle, but they aren't snatched away like the seed on the path and they don't wither like the seed in stony soil. They grow just enough to be there, and then they stop.
A similar circumstance in our faith is, I think, a recipe for a very hard life journey. We might say it's like facing in the right direction but never taking a step. Yes, we needed to turn from our previous path because it was leading us away from God and away from the lives to which God called us. Stopping was not enough -- we were headed the wrong way and facing the wrong way even though we stand still isn't going to get us on the right path.
But facing the right way and standing still is little better. The good news of the gospel never produces fruit in our lives. We say the words of Scripture but they are not planted in us. We bow our heads and close our eyes but we open neither our ears or our hearts. We praise and we give but we do not reach up to our Savior or down to those in need. We've let the gospel take root but we let the cares and concerns of the world have just as much of our soul's soil as they ever did and so that which grows up in us doesn't seem to matter to us any more than do they.
We may not be the thorny plants. But we look just like them, so who would ever notice?
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