“Sowing Abundance”

Mark 4:1-9

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

October 29, 2023

Upon hearing the parable, the disciples nodded gravely, internalized the wisdom given, and promised to share the Good News far and wide.

Just kidding. What they really did was go up to Jesus and say, “Seriously, Jesus. Why do you keep preaching in riddles? No one understands what you’re talking about. It’s unreasonable. It doesn’t make any sense. And, honestly, dude? It’s really tiring to listen to these sermons. It’s too much work. Didn’t you pay any attention in speech class? You know…tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you just told them. Maybe try that next time and you’ll have better luck.”

Ah, but Jesus. He rarely listened to criticism, dontchaknow. I feel like he would have been incredibly difficult to supervise. Probably never would have listened to anything you said during a performance evaluation. He goes on speaking in riddles – parables. 

Of all the parables Jesus gave us, something like 40, he only explained 2 of them. And lots of Biblical scholars doubt that he even did that because It’s not his style to explain parables in an easy, one-two-three pattern. After all, the thing that makes a parable an excellent tool for teaching is that it can’t be easily explained. If you think you’ve got it figured out, chances are you don’t. Parables just don’t work that way. Instead, they invite us into their world. We are lured into the story and encouraged to imagine ourselves as various characters….perhaps today we find ourselves identifying with the seeds, but tomorrow we’ll notice we could also be the soil, and next year when we heard the story we’ll be the sower. We get invited in, again and again, to make new meaning in these old, old stories. 

One way to enter into a parable is to rewrite it in a contemporary setting. After all, most of us aren’t farmers anymore. Jesus’s parables often used agricultural imagery because that was the world he lived in but that doesn’t mean it’s the only world that matters. Try these on for size:

“Listen! A bank executive pulled into her reserved parking space, checked her e-mail on her phone, and briskly walked into the office to begin another day’s work….” 

“Listen! A ten-year-old child carefully took their piggy bank down off the shelf and counted out all the coins they could find from saving up their weekly allowance. They got on their bike and headed downtown to spend the money….”

“Listen! A graduate student cashed in his financial aid check at the beginning of the semester, opened up an Excel spreadsheet, and carefully began budgeting how he’d make the money last until Christmas...”

There are a million ways you could re-tell this story. If you go home and work on some of your own, I’d love to hear them. 

Traditionally, many interpretations of this passage have focused intently on the different kinds of soil in the parable. People have spent centuries wondering, “What exactly does it look like to be rocky soil? How do I know if I am just a hard path and the birds might come along and take the seeds?” And, of course, “How do I become the GOOD soil? How do I make sure I am the most hospitable place possible for the Spirit’s Love so I can make it multiply and grow?”

These are lovely questions. But let’s try a different angle, too. Instead of focusing on the soil, what if we shine a light on the sower. 

What a weirdo. I mean, has anyone ever taught this guy anything about farming? I know very little about growing food to eat but I do know is that in Jesus’s time, if we were farmers we would typically have a limited amount of seed saved up from last year. So if we wanted to get the highest yield possible - enough to feed our family, our livestock, maybe even sell a bit at market - we need to use that seed carefully. We’d check the soil. Make sure it’s good soil - ready to use. And then we’d plan our seeds at the right time and tend them carefully so they can flourish. 

Here’s what we wouldn’t do. We wouldn’t take the seed and just throw it all over the place willy nilly. We wouldn’t drop a bunch of it on the path where we’re walking. We wouldn’t throw it down in rocky soil or scatter it where there are thorns. 

That’s just wasteful. Ignorant. Misguided. It makes no sense at all. 

And yet – this sower. This unskilled sower manages to get some seeds into the good soil through this scattershot method of planting. And the seeds that got into the good soil did great. Unbelievably amazing, actually. They yielded huge amounts – 30, 60, even 100 times what was originally planted.

So maybe this sower has skills after all. Their method is unconventional, that’s for sure, but they’re getting good results. 

Reminds me a little of Jesus. Unconventional methods. Good results. 

Although Jesus’s followers complained that he was hard to understand, people kept flocking to him. So many people came to hear him that he had to make the sea itself into an amphitheater. Backed up to the sea by the throngs that came hear him speak, he hopped into a boat so he could talk to the people who followed him everywhere. They may not have fully understood everything he was saying, but they sure did love to hear him say it.

Jesus told stories that made no sense. The world turned upside down. And he did things that made no sense. Water into wine. Feeding thousands with just a few loaves. The dead rising and breathing again. And so the people kept coming. Kept following. Kept watching and listening. 

Because just like the sower who scattered that seed with abandon, Jesus poured himself out time and time again for anyone who had ears to hear and eyes to see. “Listen!” he said. He sowed the seeds of righteousness and justice every which way. He paid little attention to whether or not the seeds were landing on rocky ground or fertile soil. He just kept telling stories -  traveling, listening, giving, healing, feeding, turning the world upside-down. 

Both Jesus and the sower lived and breathed and worked and taught from a position of ENOUGH. Chances are good that they, like us, lived in a world where they were constantly told “conserve, save, be cautious, make plans, be careful, keep track, don’t waste, watch the bottom line, increase your efficiency.” But, Jesus and the sower resisted these messages. They lived in a world of ENOUGH. 

They weren’t weren’t operating from a scarcity mindset. Instead, they were living in a world of abundance: Enough seed. Enough resources. Enough loaves. Enough fishes. Enough manna. Enough water. Enough wine. Enough. 

We, too, live in a world where the gods of scarcity are loud. From birth, we are inundated with messages that there is not enough to go around. We are told that we cannot possibly have enough or be enough to be worth much of anything in this world. 

And into this myth of scarcity, Jesus whispers words of abundance. 

Quiet now. There’s a big crowd and he’s all the way out there on the sea in that boat. Can you hear him?

“Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”