“SOIL PREPARATIONS”
Text: Mark 4: 1-20 Esv
1 Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. 2 And he was teaching 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 along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. 5 Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, 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 And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold." 9 And he said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” 10 And when he was alone, those around him 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 is in parables, 12 so that "they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven." 13 And he said to them, "Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? 14 The sower sows the word. 15 And these are the ones along 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: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy. 17 And they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. 18 And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, 19 but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. 20 But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold." †
A PULPIT ON THE LAKE
The crowds are starting to press in on Jesus, and, as he forecast in last week’s text, they now need a boat to keep Jesus from being crushed. It’s Beatlemania in Galilee, so they get into a boat, push off from the shore, and Jesus teaches the people from the veritable pulpit. The people line the banks of the lake and Jesus speaks to them across the water (which would have been very good for sound).
There is a place on the north side of the lake in Galilee known as the Sower’s Cove. It is traditionally thought of as the place where Jesus spoke. A kind of amphitheater is formed by the cove.
It’s not hard to imagine Jesus floating there in the center of the circle preaching to hundreds of people on the shores all around. When he teaches, he teaches in parables. Today’s parable is about farming.
Reckless farming tactics
Jesus parable—given to his original hearers—might have sounded something like this:
A man went to put gas in his car. He put his card in the machine, punched in his ATM number, and pressed the premium button. He turned on the hose. A bunch of gas started spilling on the ground and it began to stink up the area immediately. The man stopped the nozzle and opened the hood of the car and started spraying gas at the engine, hoping some might get inside, but this seemed pointless (and steamy), so he opened the door of the car and sprayed some gas inside the car. This gas soaked into the upholstery and caused the colors of the fabric to run. Finally, he saw the small lever that opens the gas hatch. He went back, unscrewed the cap, and filled the tank to the top. I tell you, that full tank will now get 100 miles per gallon!. Let everyone with ears to hear hear.
If that sounds bizarre, I need to let you know a few things about farming in Jesus’ day, but I assure you, Jesus’ parable struck his original hearers as equally strange.
First, seed was very precious. You couldn’t go down to the store and buy prepared packets of seeds, let alone big bags of seed to cover lots of ground. Seed was precious and not easy to come by. Seeds were like coins; each one was considered precious.
Second, farmers tended to be followers of a family tradition, as many are today. Farmland was preserved and protected from generation to generation. Farmers grew up to be farmers and to pass the farmable land onto their children. Not all land was farmable—far from it—farmers of Jesus day knew which land was fertile and which was not. They knew it by the foot and knew which spots would yield and which would not.
Ancient farmers would have planted the way you or I might plant very expensive, exotic, pricey seeds. We would prepare the ground, dig one hole at a time, place one precious seed at a time, and then carefully water it, watch and pray for God to bring growth.
So, what of this story of a sower who apparently takes handfuls of seed and throws them here and there, hoping for a random hit? No one sews that way except a complete fool. Jesus would have had the people in stitches! This is a humorous story that time has hallowed and stained-glass-windows have solemnized out of all recognition. The farmer is wildly reckless, humorously so.
THE PURPOSE OF PARABLES
Jesus teaches in parables so that we might relate to him by faith. He doesn’t simply spell things out, saying, “I am the Messiah—the one you’ve been waiting for—and everything is going according to plan.” He doesn’t prove himself; he leaves room for doubters to doubt. We are to relate to him by faith or not at all.
He teaches so that some may hear, but not perceive and see, but not really see. It’s a quote from Isaiah 6:9-10:
"Go, and say to this people: "'Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.' Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed."
Some will see but not believe; others may hear, but persist in disbelief. The parable is, at heart, an encouragement to persevere and persist in the faith.
Question: If we, like the disciples, had not been given the clue to the parable’s meaning, what might we have made of it? The best I can think is, like the guy at the gas station, don’t be an idiot. If you farm, be careful with the seed and only plant it in good soil. End of story.
But Jesus lets us in on the secrets of the kingdom. He explains the parable of the Sower for us, thank God.
We’re going to look at the four different soils and see if we can see something of our world and ourselves reflected back to us. May each of us have ears to hear and eyes to see!
1. On the Road
These seeds didn’t even hit the soil; they landed on the road or just off the side. They found no soil and were exposed to the sun, so naturally, the birds came and ate them.
Jesus tells us that this is about Satan coming and stealing the word from our hearts. What a terrifying thought! It is Satan who is the author of evil and misery in our world. The Satan birds are quick to snatch up any hope of salvation that can come to a person.
How does Satan steal the word from people?
- 1.From poverty, disease and distractions.
- 2.By making us feel unworthy.
- 3.By keeping us too busy to listen or care.
R.E.M. wrote a song about Courtney Love after Kurt Cobain died. The song describes her as “three miles of bad road.” And she was.
Ever known someone who was like that—three miles of hard road? It is that hardened heart—hardened by the pains of this world—that makes a person like a soil-less patch of asphalt.
Jesus says that Satan can take away the word that is sown in the human heart. Faith can be pick-pocketed, and the victims won’t even seem to care. Satan has a predisposition to block germination—he doesn’t want the seed to hit human heart soil. He wants a world of asphalt and hardened road.
What can we do about it?
- 1.Know: the environment has changed and will change yet.
- 2.Examine the hardness of our own hearts and see if there is a way to soften up the soil.
- 3.Pray for the hard-hearted and cynical
- 1.Know: the environment has changed and will change yet.
- 2. On the Rocks
The second soil allows seeds to spring up like weeds, but they wither like weeds as well. The rocks stand for an incapacity for maturation—permanent spiritual infancy.
Have you seen new converts with more passion and zeal than any long-term Christian? Their faith burns with a hot, hot fire, but also burns out quickly as the fuel runs out. This is faith “on the rocks” a short-lived faith that cannot endure. Faith without endurance is simply a personal fad.
When I did one of my internships in Lubbock, Texas, it was said: Faith is like a tree in west Texas: if you don’t water it and look after it, it’s gonna die. We are so lucky to have a faith practiced in freedom! Our life is so unlike the early Christians whose mere profession of faith in Christ put them on death row the moment the news hit the streets.
Or the Christians of Indonesia, whose churches are under constant attack by Muslims with guns and political power. Can we really imagine it? Can you imagine a gang of thugs bursting in here as we worship in order to declare our worship illegal? Could you stand being pushed around for the gospel? Followed home? Harassed by phone calls in the middle of the night? Refused service at restaurants or even grocery stores simply because you associate with Christians? It is easy--perhaps too easy--to join a church in America. How well would you do in a real trial?
The rocky soil also points toward all forms of rootlessness in the faith. In this century, perhaps more than any other, we have seen churches that sprout up like weeds, but without roots, wither at the first signs of difficulty. We have McChurches serving up junk food for the masses. Or Gerber churches, whose teaching will never rise above baby food formula. There are people who prefer to remain perpetual toddlers rather than to grow up, refusing adult food. It’s E-Z faith, cotton candy, that goes down easily but does not feed. When trouble comes, or hardship, such faith looks useless, and people walk away from it. Mega-congregations exploding into the thousands in no time--then you hear of a scandal, and the congregation splits. Friends, there are some advantages to being a member of a denomination--for all the things we may lack, I tell you, we have roots. Our fire may not light up the sky as some others do, but we are burning for the Lord with a smoldering that is not likely to ever be quenched.
What can we do about it?
- 1.Examine our own preference for shallow soil.
- 2.We need to deliberately cultivate our roots.
- 3.Do what is not easy but good.
- 4.Connect with our deep tradition.
3. In the Thorns
"You a golfer?"
"Yeah."
"How do you play?"
"In the rough, mostly."
It occurs to me that this whole parable would work with golf metaphors just fine. A man went out to golf, topped it and ended up on a cart path out of bounds on another fairway. He re-tees and slices a big drive into a rockpile. He tees up a third (laying 5) and pulls it hard left into a massive lot of thistles, etc. etc.
I’m a big hitter, which means I don’t spend much time in the fairway. Yeah—leave the low grasses to the sissies, I say—anyone can hit a ball off carpeting. It takes real golfers to hack a wedge repeatedly through patches of foxtail, nettles, sand traps.and rock-hard dirt-clods.
Where’s the challenge in hitting a ball straight down the fairway, wide as a football field? I like to break a sweat when I play golf—get some real exercise—at least, that’s the story I’m sticking to.
The seeds that fall in among the thorns present a true challenge to American Christians, for we are obscenely wealthy with thorn opportunities.
We all know about materialism—the obsession with things, stuff, and the acquisition of surplus security. They used to say, “Wine, women and song” but now it’s “Sex and drugs and rock and roll.” Worldliness is the New Testament term. The thorny life is to love this world and and invest in this world rather than in the Kingdom of God.
Not the love of God, but love of self, love of pleasure, and love of personal control are what our thorns look like. .
The apostle John says in 1 John 2: 15:
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
We must remember that we are passing through this life—crossing a bridge—and it is unwise to pitch the tents of our hearts here.
What can we do about it?
- 1.Seek first the Kingdom of God.
- 2.Examine our own hearts for thorns.
- 3.Pray for the shallow and lost.
4. IN GOOD SOIL
Good soil is open to receiving God’s message of good news. Like good soil, a good heart is one that can receive the seed and hold it fast, considering it precious.
Good soil can patiently wait on the Lord to grow the seed at his pace, in his time.
Good soil is ready and willing to be adjusted by God—to allow a new thing to take root inside—and to give all for its nourishment.
Isn’t this the longing of every one of our hearts? To be used by God for bearing fruit and to stay constantly hungry for his Word?
What can we do about it?
- 1.Stay hungry for God’s will and Word.
- 2.Cultivate a willing spirit.
- 3.Cultivate a discerning mind.
- 4.Cultivate a submissive will (to God).
SOIL PREPARATION
A good deal of our work as a church is soil preparation. This is the work of Christian Education, Christian Nurture, and Christian Fellowship. We offer love and care to strangers not so they will think of us as nice people, but so the soil of their hearts may receive the good news of Jesus Christ.
Presbyterians who helped found America believed in education not because they believe that knowledge was inherently good, but because they believed that learning enabled people to understand and live-out the gospels more fully. Reading was taught in order that people would be empowered read the Bible
Fellowship groups--church softball teams, women’s groups, and youth groups--these are places where the soil is enriched and readied for planting.
Even with Mission work--we feed hungry mouths in order that the ears and heart become open to the message of salvation in Christ.
You may have sown a lot of seed with friends or family members who seemed incapable of receiving it. The good news is this: People can change. People do change. Every testimonial you’ve ever heard is the firsthand account of changing soil.
It doesn’t matter if you’re hard-hearted, fickle in your loyalties, strangled by other concerns--God is at work among us and in you and in the hearts of those you love. As planters, we must exercise some diligence in sowing—with the same recklessly generous hand of God—and pray for the harvest only he can produce.
†