New Thoughts (03/17/07-03/18/07)
In terms of images and symbols, it seems this parable does not add anything new. We have seen this man cast his seeds before in the parables, and we have seen the harvest. We have been given understanding of the seed and the soil, and we have seen why it is that even the best of soil seems to suffer from the weeds of sin and evil. That being the case, it is needful to consider why Jesus includes this parable alongside those others. He does not seem to be one to harp on a single point ad nauseam. If He saw fit to teach this parable, then there must be something in what He says that builds upon what He has said already.
As with the parable of the wheat and the tares, Jesus changes the focus of His parables from the immediate concerns of His disciples to the kingdom they serve. He has moved to explanations of how the kingdom of God operates, so that its earthly representatives can better fulfill their role in heaven’s economy. The wheat and the tares went far towards explaining the presence of evil in this creation that is an extension of God’s kingdom. What is it that this parable adds to our understanding of the operation of that kingdom on earth?
At first glance, we could easily come away with the idea that God has decided not to involve Himself in the progress of things on earth. If we were to see Him as the one casting seed, this parable would suggest that He cast and ran. He’ll keep an eye on things, but only to see when the crop is ready. He will do nothing in the interim to help or to hinder. The soil is on its own. Through the course of time, many have taken just such a view of God. Deism built for itself just such an image of God. They looked upon whatever supreme being they had reasoned must exist as being thoroughly uninvolved in the development of his creation. He was an absentee landlord, a watchmaker. He was there to create and to start the mechanisms created, but after that, he was content to let things run as they would. If the watch should malfunction, he would not be inclined to fix it. If it ran a bit fast or a bit slow, so be it.
If we come away from this parable with such a view of God, however, we are failing to take into account the whole counsel of Scripture. One cannot come through reading the history of Israel that is found in the Old Testament and think that God was uninvolved. You cannot hear the messages that the prophets of Israel brought forth and think that God is uninvolved. You certainly cannot receive the revelation of God as not only the Father, but as your Abba, and still believe He is a disinterested observer of life on earth. He is not an absentee landlord, and He is certainly not a derelict Dad. Understanding this, we must eliminate God as the man who casts in this story.
The hardest aspect of this parable for me is the statement that the soil produces by itself. Perhaps it is a byproduct of having grown up on a farm after the American tradition, but that is not the way I tend to think of good things growing. The garden my grandfather kept produced well, but it took a great deal of attention on his part between the sowing and the reaping. He was out there daily, pulling up weeds, eliminating bugs, watering and fertilizing. On his land, the soil did not produce by itself. It had every bit of help he could think of.
From what I have read of farming as it would have been understood in the time of Jesus, things were radically different. That much is evident in that first parable of the sower and the soil (Mt 13:1-13). To us, the idea of throwing seed all over seems at the very least foolish. Seeds are to be planted in neat rows, are they not? It’s not like he’s trying to grow a nice yard, here. We’re talking garden, and gardens are orderly places. But, it was not always so. It was not so for those whom Jesus is teaching. The sower who cast so widely was not an aberrant fool by their thinking. He was just a typical farmer doing what a farmer typically does. Likewise with the behavior we see in this parable. This, I suspect, is probably still pretty typical behavior for growing wheat. Sure, we will see irrigation provided, particularly where the grain is grown for man’s consumption. We can also be pretty certain that pesticides and fertilizers will have been put into play to ensure (as well as anyone can ensure) an abundant and salable crop. But, you’re not likely to find the owner or his laborers out there pulling up weeds on a daily basis. You’re not terribly likely to find them anywhere near the fields until there is reason to think the harvest time is approaching. There’s nothing much for them to do in those fields, and there’s plenty to be done elsewhere.
Still, this idea that ‘the earth bears fruit spontaneously,’ as the NET translation has it, seems at odds with what we have learned with regard to the soil. Surely it’s not spontaneous! If God does not see fit to provide sun and rain in their proper time and proportion, the seed will not grow well, and may not grow at all. Ask any farmer, he’ll tell you the same. As we saw back in the parable of the sower, if the soil conditions are not right, the seed won’t grow even if the sun and rain are provided perfectly. What we take away from this parable cannot contradict the things we already understand. Either what has been learned already requires correction, or we have not yet understood what is before us now.
One thing to bear in mind is that when we look at a parable we must not seek to press the details too hard. It is not an allegory, where every least detail of the story is fraught with significance. It is but the verbal painting of a commonly understood picture, an image painted to help us see the point He is really teaching. The point, then, is not necessarily to be found in the detachment we see in the sower, or in the spontaneity of the soil in nurturing the seed. Well! Having just typed that last sentence, I hear a whispering in my thoughts that the spontaneity of the soil is rather the point!
We are being shown a sower who has no real involvement, no further duties beyond sowing the seed. He has done his part and moved on. Add to that the spontaneous response of the soil, and something starts to come clear. It is even clearer if added to what the parable of the sower taught us. Consider: if the soil is a roadway, nothing the sower can do is going to change that. If the soil is shallow, can the sower move the bedrock that lies just below the surface? As for that thorny soil, consider the size of a typical seed. Do we really think that the sower could go through that field and eliminate every seed that wasn’t of his own sowing? I don’t care how diligently he gets after the effort. He will either destroy every possibility of his own seed taking root as he constantly disturbs the field sifting out the weeds, or he will be there until well after his own seeds have grown to maturity, still focused on the impossible task.
No, whatever the condition of the soil, the response of the soil to the seed is indeed spontaneous. The nature of the soil will determine the nature of the response, but it will be certain to respond. In this light, any effort by the sower to change the outcome will more than likely prove futile and may well prove counter-productive. Think about the slaves we met in the field strewn with tares (Mt 13:24-30). Their first thought was to go pull up the weeds they saw, but the landlord was wiser. Leave them be, lest you destroy the crop trying to protect it.
In this case, what we see is the sower of the Word casting his seed and moving on. In the parable of the sower, we saw the disciples being instructed against selective preaching: against trying to predict where the Word would be best appreciated. Preach to one and all, and if those who hear have ears to listen, the seed will grow. Here, it seems He is adding an admonition against getting caught up with tending to one particular field. The sower doesn’t plant and then devote all his energies to monitoring progress in the field. He has plenty of other work to attend to, plenty of other fields that need planting. He does not just go off and forget about the field, but he doesn’t become a planting in that field himself. He will check in. He will be aware when things have grown to fruition, but in the meantime he will be accomplishing other duties for the kingdom.
That’s what the kingdom is like. Remember that this is what Jesus is trying to drive home: what the kingdom is like. Can this be the point: in the economy of the kingdom, the connection between sower and sown must not become so close as to eclipse the connection with the Son. In the modern setting of the Church, we might translate this as indicating that the pastor is not to become so wholly identified with his congregation as to be inseparable. Neither is the congregation to become such a ‘cult of personality’ that the loss of its pastor would be the end of the body. The pastor is not the head of that body. Jesus is the head. There can be no other.
We mustn’t lose sight of the fact that the church as we know it was not present to hear this message. The message was for the disciples, and perhaps for the people of Israel as being the people of God. To the disciples, the message would seem to be that they ought not to limit their effectiveness by becoming rooted to a particular group. They were not to seek the establishment of dynasties for themselves. They were to plant and move on, plant and move on. They were not to lose touch with those amongst whom they had sown the Word, for it is indeed a communion of saints, a fellowship of believers, but their office restricted them from settling down in one place.
If the message should be extended to the people of God, perhaps we should hear God saying that He would not be restricted to the field of Israel either. He would send His sowers to other fields as well, and there, too, He would have a harvest. Truth be told, He had given Israel this task for years but they had insisted on keeping the sower close to home to tend to them. The sower is not the tender, though. He is the sower. They had kept him at home to his harm, and the Owner of the fields of the nations was not pleased.
The sower is to go on to other efforts, as this parable declares. This raises at least a couple of questions. First, there is the matter of discipling. The commission that Jesus gives to His disciples at the end of His ministry is not to go cast seeds and run, it is to go and make more disciples. Disciples are not an entirely spontaneous crop. To disciple somebody indicates a more long-term association, and a higher degree of care. By Jesus’ own example this is seen to be the case. He did not merely tell those first four men to come be fishers of men and then walk away. He took them on a three year training exercise. Likewise, Matthew was not simply pulled from his profession as a tax gatherer and left with no idea what to do next. He, too, joined the lengthy training program.
This effort of discipleship clearly continued as the church grew. Paul spent time with each church he planted, making sure it was well established and provided for before he moved on to the next one. He instructed his own disciples (who were, after all, Jesus’ disciples) to instruct and disciple others in the things they had learned from him. How had they learned these things? Well, Paul urges his readers to emulate his own example. For them to even know his example, they would have to have been with him for some time. Clearly, then, when Jesus tells us that the soil produces by itself, it is not to be understood as giving us a mandate to be absentee landlords ourselves.
Another question that might arise is whether this was a parable intended to instruct a particular group in a particular time and place or whether it is a general instruction that applies as fully today as it did then. This question, I think, fades in significance once we accept that the message here is not an instruction to preach and run. If that were the case, I might be more inclined to view this as a specific instruction for the apostles at the founding of the church. However, the setting in which this parable is delivered is one with a much wider audience than just the apostles and the idea of an uninvolved and impersonal ministry is at odds with too much of the testimony of Scripture to be believed.
So, if the parable is not about maintaining a degree of detachment in ministry, what is it about? I suggest that it is about understanding the limits of our role. The farmer is uninvolved in the process of growth in that he can neither change the nature of the soil on which he has cast nor can he change the nature of the seed. Both will do and be what they will do and be, whether he would have it so or not. Take this in conjunction with the message regarding the tares. The slaves thought it would be smart to go rip up those tares now that they had been found out. The owner of the field was wiser, though. He knew that to get rid of the tares a large portion of the good crop would wind up ruined. It is similar when we get into this mode of trying to force the growth of the seed or trying to force the soil to be what it isn’t. We aren’t going to change the outcome in the one we are working on, and we are liable to cause a lot of collateral damage in trying.
Does this mean we don’t disciple our charges? No. But, it does seem to provide a boundary on our efforts. To disciple is not to ride herd on the one we would teach. We are not to disciple by brow-beating. We cannot insist that they must learn our ways or else. That does nobody any good. We can only provide the wisdom and the example and allow the disciple to grow. If he is good soil, the growth will be good growth. If not, we have discharged our duty and can do no more. We cannot change the tare into wheat any more than the tare could make the wheat after its own image.
It is as if God were saying, “Don’t try to help too much.” This is something I suppose every parent understands. There is an age when children want to help. They want to be involved in what Mom or Dad is doing, even if they have almost no clue what that is or how they can help. They are determined to help and sometimes that determination makes them more a hindrance than a help. Should it surprise us that in many ways we children of God are in a like position with Him? How often does our insistence on helping His work go smoothly actually accomplish just the opposite? Of course, He is still Daddy God, and He is a much better Dad than you or I shall ever be. He doesn’t get angry at us for trying. He simply sets down some boundaries for us so that we can really help instead of just thinking we help. These situations are precisely where He is discipling us.
It is not as though I was any devoted aid to my grandfather when he was in his garden, but there were occasions when I was out there to help, like it or not. This whole matter of helping God brings back thoughts of those times. Did I really help him much? Probably not. I was not wise enough in the ways of the garden to realize that stepping on a runner for a strawberry plant might actually impact the results when strawberry season came around. I was not terribly conscientious about keeping myself to the pathways. For that matter, I wasn’t terribly conscientious at all. For the most part, I was there because I had to be. If I was to go hunting for potato bugs, I would do so, but not with the diligence that the task deserved. Either way, I was probably doing at least as much harm as good. I was creating work for my grandfather to boot, for not only would he wind up having to do whatever task it was I was supposedly doing, but he also had to keep an eye on me while he did his own work. Pretty helpful, huh? Yet, he never sent me packing, never complained. He accepted whatever effort I could manage to put in.
Don’t you think God is rather like that? He accepts us. He is perhaps a bit amused to watch our efforts, knowing that for the most part we are just making more work for Him. But, He also sees the earnest desire behind our efforts (unlike my gardening work). He sees that we want to be helpful, whether or not we really are, and He welcomes us to His side. He declares us co-laborers with His Son. He takes the opportunity to show us how to help more effectively. He trains us up so that what when we try to help Him, we can actually be helpful.
Here, He is simply reminding us of our limitations so that we won’t get ourselves into that place of doing damage in our helpfulness. Just plant. Do your part and allow God to do His. If there is going to be good growth, it will be because He has given you good seed to cast, and He has led you to cast in a good place. He has not restricted you to only cast in good places. No, you cast with abandon as He provides you with abundant seed. But, where the good seed and the good soil meet, rest in the assurance that He will send His sun and His rain in good season to bring forth a good harvest.
Don’t lose touch, He tells us. Don’t just walk away from what you’ve begun. But, don’t think that you can somehow change the outcome. Go on your mission, but don’t think that you can somehow decide the effectiveness of the mission. Preach to one and all, but don’t take the response as a comment on your ability. You have cast good seed, and you have cast it as you were instructed: to one and all. Now, give things time to grow. Don’t stand there watering the field night and day, for you will only drown it. Don’t set up floodlights all around, you will only distort the growth. You sowed. You’ve done your job, now wait upon the Lord of the harvest. Keep your eye on the growth, to be sure. Water if He calls you to water, but otherwise let the matter rest in His hands. Watch and wait. When the time for harvest is come, you will know it.
Should we take that harvest as being one with the harvest of judgment? I tend to think not. In that harvest, Jesus declares that the angels themselves will be the harvesters. Here, it is left to the sower to harvest. Given that we are talking about kingdom growth here, I might suggest that the harvest is not a harvest of believers but a harvest of co-laborers. When you see the fruit of the Spirit grown to maturity in those places where you have planted, go and reap a harvest. You have raised a new generation of sowers, of preachers and evangelists. Don’t leave them in the field to rot, now that they are ready. Set them about at their own labors.
Once again, I would set the example of Paul before our eyes. As he saw those in the churches that he was planting who were truly coming into their own spiritually, he did not simply nod his head and say how nice that was. No, he put them in places where that maturity they exhibited could benefit the kingdom. Here was one whose capabilities in dealing with a foundling church were in clear evidence. Send him to Crete. The church there needs him. But, as the needs of that church changed, other workers more fit to that later need could be sent, freeing Titus to go elsewhere where his talents were in particular need. Likewise, Timothy. Here was a young man, yet his gifting in pastoring were already exemplary. Should he be forced to wait because of his youth? No way! Paul admonishes him to let no man ignore him because of his youth. That wasn’t a call to get in their face and insist on a right to lead. It was a call to lead by an unimpeachable example. Prove your ability to lead by your lifestyle.
Where am I going with this? Two places, really. First, I will return once more to the point that God provides seed for the sower (Isa 55:10, 2Co 9:10). How is that seed provided? Well, if I take my cue from the natural order God establishes, the seed comes from the fruit. He provides our seed by the growth of our own fruit in our own lives. It is our own abundant growth as He causes it that gives us the wherewithal to sow into the lives around us. If we are seedless, I can only surmise that we are not His, for He doesn’t plant seedless crops. He provides seed from our own growth so that we can get busy casting that seed as far and wide as our circumstance permits. Is this not at least a portion of that good work He has set out in advance for us to do? If we are not doing this much, we have become farmers who won’t farm. We have our bag of seed, but we’re keeping it in the closet against our own need for flour. We are short sighted in this. We think we supply our need, even if it must be at the expense of another, but in truth, we have not even supplied ourselves. A day, a week, a year perhaps, that grain will keep us going, but if it is not planted, it will run out. Abundant fruit is given to provide abundant seed, and abundant seed is provided that it might produce abundant harvest.
Clearly, our own growth is our first responsibility. Paul admonishes us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling; knowing that it is God who works in us to will and to work for what is after all His own good and perfect pleasure (Php 2:12-13). He is working, but you work. The nature of the growth is His to determine, but you grow. Put your all into it, knowing that He is with you urging you on in that growth, and empowering you to grow by His own chosen pattern. Grow. Be fruitful. Of course, when God calls you to be fruitful, He also calls you to multiply (Ge 1:22, and many other places). In fact, He says “I will make you fruitful and multiply you” (Lev 26:9).
That multiplication is the other issue we are talking about. Go, and make disciples. Plant seeds, and when you see the fruit, get them going in their own good labor. Don’t let them go to waste in the pews. Set them to their appointed tasks. Give them fields of their own to plant. Don’t waste the good gifts of God. If the Church is lacking in sending capacity, it is only because they’ve made the storehouse to big. We’ve been storing up the manna, instead of doing things God’s way. Let us return to holding only what we need for our continuance, and sending the rest out to supply a starving world. Let’s see those gifts that God has grown up in our communion put to work for His kingdom, not set out as trophies in ours.
