Parable of the Soils

Mark 4:1-20

1 Again he began to teach beside the sea. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the sea and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. 2 He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: 3 "Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. 6 And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. 8 Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold." 9 And he said, "Let anyone with ears to hear listen!" 10 When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. 11 And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; 12 in order that ‘they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.'" 13 And he said to them, "Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? 14 The sower sows the word. 15 These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. 16 And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. 17 But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. 18 And others are those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, 19 but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing. 20 And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold."

            Perhaps this is a bit of a confession (though one I am sure many of you can join me in confessing), but sometimes I have a great tendency to hear without listening. That is to say sound waves strike my eardrum, vibrate all those tiny bones in my inner ear, get interpreted by my brain into bits of neurological information, that I then understand as sounds, but I don’t always pay attention to those sounds or allow them to actually register as something important in my mind. I hear, but I don’t always listen. To perhaps put it another way, hearing is a passive act, while listening is active.

Many (if not all) of you can relate in one way or another I’m sure. I mean, have you ever gotten a phone call from someone, and after about the first sixty seconds you enter into this patterned response of “Yeah…mmhmm…I know…that’s right…”? Or what about those of you who can recall your days in high school or college, those days when you would sit at the back of the room while your teacher droned on and on about the actions of chromosomes during cellular mitosis or how the Prussian Empire dominated Eastern Europe? Surely you can remember hearing something like that at one time or another, but did you really listen?

            Now, I don’t mean to make too much of the difference between hearing and listening, but I think the passage we’ve heard here today from Mark is filled with words from Jesus that certainly call us to listen (To be fair, the difference between “hear” and “listen” is not necessarily there in the Koine Greek of Mark). This is, however, in a very real way, a parable about listening, so it’s no surprise to me that Jesus begins this parable in verse three with the imperative “Listen!” and ends it in verse nine  with the declaration “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!" This isn’t just a nice story Jesus tells to pass the time on the long, hot roads of ancient Judea. No, this is a story that requires our listening. It is a story about how we listen.

            Now, in verse three Jesus begins telling this story by saying, “A sower went out to sow.” Often we’ve heard this parable referred to as “the parable of the sower,” but to be fair, Jesus doesn’t actually give the sower top billing; the sower is mentioned only as a necessary element in this story, as the one who sows the seed. Then we are told about the seed in verses three through eight. The sower sows this seed (think of someone simply taking handfuls of seeds and tossing them about as she or he walks around the field), and some of it falls on the well-worn path, some on the rock-rutted dirt, some in the briar patch, and some on the good soil. In all of that sowing the seed remains the same. Jesus tells us in verse 14 that the seed is “the word.” Now, please don’t misunderstand that phrase, “the word” to mean the whole of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments (especially the Authorized, 1611 KJV). No, when Jesus says that the seed is “the word” he uses the word logos which perhaps more directly means “message.” Therefore, the seed the sower sows in the parable is the message from God, the Good News, the Gospel, and while the word—this seed—is of great importance, it isn’t the primary focus of Jesus’ story. It’s the soils.  Jesus wants his listeners to focus their attention on the soils and how they received the seed. Thus, it is better to call this “the parable of the soils.” So let’s listen to what Jesus has to say about each of these soils.

            In verse four, he says “as [the sower] sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up.” Then Jesus explains in verse fifteen: “These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them.” It’s important to pause here and understand that throughout all of the gospels that contain his parables (that is Matthew, Mark, and Luke) Jesus doesn’t really take the time to explain them. This parable is an exception. Now, notice what Jesus says about those who are like the path: “when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them.” In other words, those who hear the message and quickly dismiss it, cast it aside, or ignore it altogether, are like the path where the seed was sown—such seed doesn’t even have a chance to begin to grow.

            I want to make a brief observation here if I may: a path is not worn smooth simply by the passage of time or the existence of the ground—it must be worn down and packed smooth by the actions of those whose feet tread upon it. So, before we are ready to cast judgment and perhaps withhold the word from those who are quick to dismiss it, perhaps we ought to take into account that those who quickly dismiss the Good News—those who are like the path where the seed is sown—are those who have been trampled upon and walked all over by the rest of the world, and there’s an awful good chance they have been worn smooth by the treading feet of those who claim to sow the seed. Yes, the seed, the word, doesn’t have a chance to take root and flourish, but maybe it’s because the path has been packed down by the feet of bad experiences and hypocrisy.

            Now, in verses five and six, Jesus continues to tell the story: “Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away.” He goes on to explain this part of the story in verses sixteen and seventeen: “And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away.” Any one of us who has ever gone on a short-term mission trip, chaperoned a youth camp, or sat in the sweltering summer heat beneath a revival tent know the truth of this soil all too well. There are those who go away for a while, take an intentional time away from the cares of the world in order to focus on things spiritual, and upon their return, they seek to set the world on fire with the Good News of the gospel. Yet, when the “new” wears off and suddenly their renewed devotion to God interferes with their comfort they soon return to the way things were—the way things had always been.

            Sometimes we call these people who revert back to their old, comfortable ways “backsliders,” or we cast our judgment on those who seem to let go of their faith as quickly as they received it, those who reject the call of discipleship before the baptismal waters have dried from their skin. However, I can’t help but notice how quickly those of us who call ourselves the Church do the same thing. We reject the difficult decisions of ministry in order to stay in a place of comfort and familiarity. I can’t help but notice how quickly believers in this country seek to justify their comfort and complacency with societal norms in baptized language. Perhaps our own soil is a bit rockier than we’d care to confess.

            But then there are, after all, the thorns, the briar patch. I have to tell you, I hate thorns and briars. I spent a measurable amount of time as a kid picking sand briars out of my socks and shoes, and I ruined numerous t-shirts snagging them on thorn vines and bushes. Jesus speaks about thorns in this parable in verses seven then in verses eighteen and nineteen: “Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain…And others are those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing.”

            Of all the soils in this parable, I think the thorny soil may be the most tragic (if soil can be tragic). It’s so like the good soil: thorns have already taken root in it and seem to have flourished, yet this thorny soil is so overrun with thorns that they choke out the seed—the seed the sower would have no doubt wished to grow instead of the thorns. Is it no different with us? We may make time on a Sunday morning to hear the word, yet when the time for this small compartment of our lives has expired we turn our attention to other things; we have “bigger fish to fry” we tell ourselves. The cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things crowd our schedules, crowd our thoughts, crowd our spirits, and while we may still have a stalk of faith shooting up from the thorns and briars of our lives, there is no fruit. We make time to hear the word, but we just can’t listen over all the racket of our own busyness and our own desires. It’s here where I think we need to listen to the rest of Jesus’ story as he tells about the good soil.

            In verse eight Jesus wraps up his parable: “Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold." The wonderful thing about this soil is that there really isn’t anything wonderful about it at all. In fact, it just does exactly what it is supposed to do; the thorn-free, rock-less, un-trodden soil receives the seed and produces a good to great crop (thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold would have been considered good to great for a crop of grain, not miraculous). With that in mind, listen again to Jesus’ explanation of this soil in verse twenty: “And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold."

            There is nothing particularly special about this “good soil” in the parable. There’s no added fertilizer, no Miracle-Gro, no special chemistry; it’s simply free from those things that prevented the seed—the word—from producing in the other soils. And I believe that’s one of the lessons we ought to take away from this parable. Those who hear the word and accept it are not created special or different from those who do not. Those who hear the Good News and accept it are not any different in what they are than those who dismiss the word, those who recant under the slightest of discomfort, or those who allow the distractions of the world to choke it out. No, what is different is that the good soil is free of those things that prevent the word from taking root, growing, and (most of all) bearing fruit. So may we be mindful when we seek to share the message of God’s kingdom with others; may we be mindful that there are those who have been trampled over by so many things (even those who claim to share the gospel); may we be mindful that there are those who are not ready to take up their cross; may we be mindful that there are those who are too caught up in the distractions of the world and their own desires; and most of all, may we be mindful that we are no different.

            Let us work to be the good soil. Let us bring forth the fruit of God’s kingdom. Let us work to tread lightly upon the soil, ridding it of rocks and thorns, so that we may look forward to that day when the Good News will not only be heard by all, but all will listen and bear fruit for the kingdom. May we be people who listen and bear fruit, even now.

Let us pray…