In the parable of the sower,
Jesus tells a story of a man who sowed seeds into different ground, but only
one of those kinds of grounds actually received the seed and produced
something. He tells the story to "great multitudes" who gather
on the shore while he speaks to them from a ship. Just after he tells
this story, his disciples enter and ask what he's doing, and the rest of the
chapter appears to be an in-depth explanation of his doctrine, one that is
meant strictly for these disciples. He tells them it's because they get
to know "the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven," but the rest of the
population doesn't.
This could sound pretty biased and exclusive. Only a fraction of the people who hear him get to know what he's really saying? But when he tells them the meaning of the parable of the sower, it becomes evident why.
First, he goes through what each kind of ground represents: people who never really understand and are easily deceived, people who are happy to find truth but have "no root" in themselves (they can't stick it out) and get offended, people who care more about worldliness. Last is the good ground, and the only real distinction Jesus makes between this ground and the rest is that, not only do these people hear the word, they understand it. That's it. Once that happens, they bear fruit. But they also bear different amounts of fruit; the amount itself doesn't seem to matter so much as that fruit happens. That's the object of sowing seeds, after all.
For the last month I've been listening to a book on tape called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It's an account of her family's year-long goal to only eat food they have either grown or raised themselves or that has been grown or raised in their community by someone they know personally. It's inspiring, and I think about how beautiful her descriptions of tomatoes are as I eat my peanut butter and honey sandwich made out of store-bought bread, mass-produced peanut butter and (okay, I did one thing right) my cousin's homemade honey. Then I wash that down with store-bought, pasturized, 1% milk and a delicious processed chocolate bar. I love the idea of eating the way Kingsolver does. I even do a lot of the things she suggests. But when it comes down to it, to eat exactly the way she does, well, that's a kind of devotion I'm just not ready to fully embrace. I believe in it, but I feel daunted by the task of changing my everyday habits. Maybe I just don't fully understand yet.
Kingsolver is a terrific example of someone who knows what sowing seeds and using good ground means because, in this one-year experiment of hers, that's her life. So far, nearly half the book has just been her planting and reporting how her seeds are doing and how delicious those fruits are when they come. She watches the process unfold from that tiny tomato seed to the full, robust, hearty Dolly Parton tomato whose seductive shape speaks for itself. She gives so much care to her garden, so much thought to planning out what to plant and when, how to avoid frost, how to keep out the weeds, that when that fruit finally shows up you can hear thehallelujah! in her voice.
I'm happy to say that I do know what that feels like. Every year we plant a garden. Instead of a 40 acre garden like Kingsolver's, it's a tiny kitchen garden (just outside our kitchen window) that provides the perfect herbs and basic vegetables for me to run out just before dinner in the summer and gather whatever is ripe and plentiful, wash it, chop it up, steam, sautee or toss it in a salad, and enjoy its fresh flavor while my kids pull faces and beg to be excused from the table. That fruit sustains us through a good part of the summer, and those that don't get eaten immediately float in their glass jars on the shelves of the storage room until we gobble them all up in due time.
Fruit, in the literal sense, takes a long time to develop. Asparagus, one of the slowest growers, can take three years after it's been planted to finally show signs of life, but once it does, it becomes a perennial crop for up to 20 years. (It's grown from "crowns" - the bulbs of one-year plants - instead of seeds, but the ground is still a prime participant since it's got to be babied all that time in just the right drainage and mulch.) In the meantime, the gardener goes by faith that, after all her best and continued efforts, something will come of it. I'm guessing that fruits, in the context of the parable, are not simply actions then, but the results of those actions, whatever develops from them. And maybe, like the asparagus, they keep developing a long time after those actions.
Jesus essentially says that people who do not use the word (the seed) are unfruitful. And this is when it sounds really radical to me. They don't produce any fruit? Understanding has nothing to do with talent or wealth, and certainly nothing to do with intellect. For all the rewards we give people who embody those attributes, Jesus doesn't think much of them (on their own) in the end. Understanding suggests a sincere desire to "get it." It means we take something into ourselves and are changed by it. In this way, Jesus's definitions of plentiful and barren are vastly different than the world's.
A pile of dirt (like our garden spot is from late October to early April) can become almost tropical, a maze of green with bulbous, bright yellows and reds hanging from their stems like cheerful holiday lights. In a few weeks we'll start that process again. We'll churn the dirt with our new tiller, open it with our trowels and gloved hands and drop in our heirloom seeds, one by one. We'll water, and wait.
This could sound pretty biased and exclusive. Only a fraction of the people who hear him get to know what he's really saying? But when he tells them the meaning of the parable of the sower, it becomes evident why.
First, he goes through what each kind of ground represents: people who never really understand and are easily deceived, people who are happy to find truth but have "no root" in themselves (they can't stick it out) and get offended, people who care more about worldliness. Last is the good ground, and the only real distinction Jesus makes between this ground and the rest is that, not only do these people hear the word, they understand it. That's it. Once that happens, they bear fruit. But they also bear different amounts of fruit; the amount itself doesn't seem to matter so much as that fruit happens. That's the object of sowing seeds, after all.
For the last month I've been listening to a book on tape called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It's an account of her family's year-long goal to only eat food they have either grown or raised themselves or that has been grown or raised in their community by someone they know personally. It's inspiring, and I think about how beautiful her descriptions of tomatoes are as I eat my peanut butter and honey sandwich made out of store-bought bread, mass-produced peanut butter and (okay, I did one thing right) my cousin's homemade honey. Then I wash that down with store-bought, pasturized, 1% milk and a delicious processed chocolate bar. I love the idea of eating the way Kingsolver does. I even do a lot of the things she suggests. But when it comes down to it, to eat exactly the way she does, well, that's a kind of devotion I'm just not ready to fully embrace. I believe in it, but I feel daunted by the task of changing my everyday habits. Maybe I just don't fully understand yet.
Kingsolver is a terrific example of someone who knows what sowing seeds and using good ground means because, in this one-year experiment of hers, that's her life. So far, nearly half the book has just been her planting and reporting how her seeds are doing and how delicious those fruits are when they come. She watches the process unfold from that tiny tomato seed to the full, robust, hearty Dolly Parton tomato whose seductive shape speaks for itself. She gives so much care to her garden, so much thought to planning out what to plant and when, how to avoid frost, how to keep out the weeds, that when that fruit finally shows up you can hear thehallelujah! in her voice.
I'm happy to say that I do know what that feels like. Every year we plant a garden. Instead of a 40 acre garden like Kingsolver's, it's a tiny kitchen garden (just outside our kitchen window) that provides the perfect herbs and basic vegetables for me to run out just before dinner in the summer and gather whatever is ripe and plentiful, wash it, chop it up, steam, sautee or toss it in a salad, and enjoy its fresh flavor while my kids pull faces and beg to be excused from the table. That fruit sustains us through a good part of the summer, and those that don't get eaten immediately float in their glass jars on the shelves of the storage room until we gobble them all up in due time.
Fruit, in the literal sense, takes a long time to develop. Asparagus, one of the slowest growers, can take three years after it's been planted to finally show signs of life, but once it does, it becomes a perennial crop for up to 20 years. (It's grown from "crowns" - the bulbs of one-year plants - instead of seeds, but the ground is still a prime participant since it's got to be babied all that time in just the right drainage and mulch.) In the meantime, the gardener goes by faith that, after all her best and continued efforts, something will come of it. I'm guessing that fruits, in the context of the parable, are not simply actions then, but the results of those actions, whatever develops from them. And maybe, like the asparagus, they keep developing a long time after those actions.
Jesus essentially says that people who do not use the word (the seed) are unfruitful. And this is when it sounds really radical to me. They don't produce any fruit? Understanding has nothing to do with talent or wealth, and certainly nothing to do with intellect. For all the rewards we give people who embody those attributes, Jesus doesn't think much of them (on their own) in the end. Understanding suggests a sincere desire to "get it." It means we take something into ourselves and are changed by it. In this way, Jesus's definitions of plentiful and barren are vastly different than the world's.
A pile of dirt (like our garden spot is from late October to early April) can become almost tropical, a maze of green with bulbous, bright yellows and reds hanging from their stems like cheerful holiday lights. In a few weeks we'll start that process again. We'll churn the dirt with our new tiller, open it with our trowels and gloved hands and drop in our heirloom seeds, one by one. We'll water, and wait.
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