Matthew 13:9, 18-23   

Jesus left the house and went down to the seaside and sat. There were so many people who followed him that he got into a boat and sat there [instead].  The crowd remained [expectantly] on the beach. So he told them a number of things in parables beginning with: "Listen to me: the sower went out to sow, and whilst he was sowing some of the seed fell along the way and birds came and ate it. Other of the seeds fell on rocky ground where there was little soil, and the seed sprouted right away because what little soil there was did not go deep enough, thus when the sun came up, what had sprung up wilted in the heat and, since it had no root, it withered away. Yet other seeds fell among thorns and had the life choked out of them. But some of the seed fell on good soil, and produced a good crop: the first with a yield of a hundred, the next a yield of sixty and the third of thirty . . . You didn't get it did you? So give heed to this interpretation of the parable about the sower: When somebody hears the message of heaven's rule and does not understand it, the evil one comes and grabs it: that is the seed dropped on the way. The seed sown on rocky ground: these are those so eager for anything that they seize it immediately, but they don't have enough depth, and so they soon drop out. What's more, when things get tough because of the things that need to be said, they fall away altogether. The seed sown among the thorns: these are they who actually hear but cannot heed the things that need to be said and let the anxieties and material aspirations of the time eclipse those things, and the seed bears nothing. The seed sown on good soil: these are they who are hospitable to the things that need to be said; they understand them and act upon them and so yield the desire result in different but adequate measures."

(Translated, condensed and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook.)

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Listen to me are the first words after Matthew's scene-setting. Hearing is an important business. Or should we say "perceiving" is that business, since those with ears are wont to block out the sound of reality; since those with sight will quickly turn a blind eye to what they must see to get the fuller picture; since those with the powers of reason too frequently abandon them to focus on the shiny thing that just passed by. The speaker or the writer has only so much control over the message. In practice, those on the receiving end control it all the more. One can turn the page or merely rip it out, ball it up and discard it. One can turn off the radio or television. One can strain to hear the inner music of the spheres instead of taking in what is being told him by a competent source.

One can sense the desperation of the frustrated messenger in this parable and its interpretation. "Here I have this message which, if only you would hear, read, learn, mark and inwardly digest, would afford you life, and that abundantly. Why does my message fall on deaf ears as though such ears were rocky soil? Why does my message, so carefully formed, blow away in the wind instead of taking root? Why do those who grasp at it as if it were a lifeline let go as soon it taxes the strength to hold on? Why does it fall like manna in the wilderness in the presence of the very people for whom it could be the best meal of their lives if only they would swear off the super-sized blandishment of fast food?"

The messenger is almost abject in his gratitude that some few actually hear, heed, act on and relish the message, and so translate its words into action that, in turn, sows seeds of love and peace and justice.

A word about parable. The Greek is παραβολή from παραβάλλω, "to set or throw beside." Aristotle used the word to mean "illustration" or "analogy" or "figure of speech." The synoptic gospels uniformly give Jesus credit for the use of this form to communicate his message. In so doing, the Jesus(es) depicted by Mark, Matthew and Luke used everyday, often agricultural or horticultural analogies that would have been readily appreciated by peasant hearers. That undermines the Gnostic strains of 13: 10-11 (not included in this lection) with their suggestion that only to the chosen may be vouchsafed the μυστήρια (secrets or mysteries) of heaven's rule. Here appear signs of the tension that evidently existed in the late first century CE communities of Jesus Judaism in and around which lines of demarcation were surely drawn.

Matthew and Luke after him take up the parable of the sower (or of "the soils," as a few commentators see it), which originated with Mark or a Markan source. The context for Mark and Matthew is similar. In each case, the parable is preceded by a scene in which Jesus' mother and siblings come to take him away, and he is depicted as resisting by saying that those who do the will of God are his mother and his siblings. There is not much of a transition to the seaside setting wherein the parable is taught.

What precedes it in Luke (7: 36ff) is one of the most sensual scenes in scripture: the encounter with "the woman of the city who was a sinner."  "Soon afterwards," Luke says, Jesus went through the towns and villages "proclaiming the good news of the rule of God." Out of these contexts, then, comes what is known as the parable of the sower, which is soon enough turned into an allegory, first by Mark, which suggests that the allegory is a fairly early text. What may be the original text ends with the report of a bumper crop. In other words, the parable without the allegory is a sign of hope that, in spite of the vagaries of nature, the seed comes to fruition. Thus those with ears to hear will have heard it. But when the parable is allegorized, one is directed toward the more baleful aspects of the story with "the evil one" (in Mark "Satan" and in Luke "the devil.") The parable becomes a warning about what happens to the work of evangelism despite the preaching.

Evil is set against the message from the beginning, and in a very aggressive way. Then there is the relative shallowness of the rank-and-file and their short attention span, or those whose preoccupation with what's tickling their fancy (Matthew says "the preoccupation with wealth and riches") at the moment render them unable to be fertile ground for the seed of the message. On this latter point, of whom could Matthew be speaking? Who among the early bands of Jesus Jews were encumbered with riches? Or had the sweep of the evangel's net by that time been so broad as to take in numbers of affluent Gentiles? Most allegories are by nature extravagant and overwrought. This may be one of them.

Meanwhile the metaphors -- "the path" and "the rocky ground" -- are understandable enough. The "soil" for the message of the Jesus ethic is none too rich in any age. Post-Temple Judaism had its own internal conflicts with the Jesus movement. The Jewish-Roman war in light of the stories of Jesus' execution must have made the climate for a fresh, somewhat radical religious expression on the whole inhospitable. That Jesus Judaism became successful over time is obvious. So there must have been "good soil" for the seed. However, as time went along, plenty of weeds grew up in the patch having little to do with the ethical wisdom and more to do with pre-imperialist structure, ritual and mind control (church government, liturgy and creeds).

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The passage at hand makes a deal of the "word" or the "message" and the vehicle of its delivery, viz. the sower. However, on the basis of the assigned portion we are hard pressed to learn the content of the message. Some messages are not worth hearing, much less striving to understand. The evangelist makes no bones about it, though: This message matters.

I think we are to assume -- this being the Gospel of Matthew with its priceless collection of sayings attributed to Jesus (see ch. 5, 6 and 7) -- that the message is to be found in those sayings' straightforward counsel to turn the other cheek, walk the second mile, give up the shirt as well as the coat, love one's enemy as well as neighbor, forgive as often as must be and treat others as one wants to be treated.

If it is those principles that constitute the message, no wonder then that those who have been exposed to it over time have been inhospitable to it. Not one of those imperatives comes naturally to any human being unless he or she has been thoroughly conditioned to receive them with anything less than exasperation: "What do you mean: give up my shirt and my coat? I'd freeze to death instead of this other guy. What's the net gain here?"

A similar reaction is to be expected when one is told to turn the other cheek to the one who has already smitten the first. Millions of people who admired Gandhi could not bring themselves to practice his kind of passive resistance. Martin Luther King Jr. was denounced for pusillanimity by those who thought he was wasting time and energy by not fighting back aggressively against racist laws and customs. Phooey on exposing that other cheek!

This passage suggests that Jesus just sort of wandered around Palestine tossing the earnest bon mot here and there to whom it may have concerned, and damned be those who didn't gather them like rosebuds and change their ways on the spot. That's not how it works. How it works is that the person with the critical message packages it in ways that make attention to it irresistible. He or she markets the message in ways that stop people in their tracks, in ways that say, "Get this! This is really important!"

We know, of course, "the Word" on paper and in oral pronouncement, no matter how eloquent, does not pack the punch of the deed that makes the word flesh. The simple act of caring performed as if it were most natural thing in the world to do is the message that makes its mark. It is the seed that can grow in any soil, provided the seed is carefully tended and the soil enriched sufficiently to support it.