Today in Sunday school, we looked at the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13 and a number of thoughts came to mind.
1) We talked about the concept of nurturing, noting that sometimes our soil isn’t always receptive just as others’ soil is not always receptive. We often/always need to nurture soils–ours and others’. As we talked about this, I made a linguistic connection: in German, the verbs for planting and nurturing have a common root. One verb form of to plant is pflanzen, while one verb form of to nurture is pflegen. It seems to me that just as there is a linguistic connection between these two concepts, there is a strong connection between nurturing others with the Word and helping to plant the Word. In fact, it seems that we are often doing both at the same time.
2) It occurred to me that the concept of “wayside” is perhaps more crucial than we often times may recognize. The wayside is the part of a path that is not part of our goal, it’s what at the side of the road, so to speak. The sower in this parable manages to sow in the wayside, meaning he sowed where he did not “mean” to sow. It struck me that one of the way to read this is as a reminder that our actions and words are the action of sowing, even when we don’t intend to do so. Are our words and actions spreading the Word? There’s a kind of philosophical distinction between “acting” and “being”that comes into play here. Action is the surface, while being is much deeper. One can act compassionately, without being compassionate; but, if one is compassionate, then they can only act compassionately. If we are always sowing, through our actions and words, then we must ask ourselves whether we are merely acting like disciples of Christ or are we disciples of Christ in essence. If we are essential disciples, then we will sow good seeds. If we merely act the part, then the quality of our seeds may be wanting.
3) I think sometimes we read the parable in a kind of “one-shot” fashion. The Word was sown and “they” either accepted it or did not. The action of sowing, however, is cyclical. A farmer has to sow a number of times if he/she is going to remain a farmer. Similarly, we, as sowers of the Word, must sow over and over again. One implication of this is that we need to think of sowing, or sharing the Gospel, as a process, rather than an event.
4) Related to the preceding observation, the element of the soil is perhaps more complex than I had appreciated earlier. Soils change over time. Good soil can be made barren, while barren soil can improve. In the parable, several different types of soils are named, but there is nothing to say that these kinds of soils could not change. The discussion made me think of my grandfather who had been born in Salt Lake City and raised in the church, but had an “uneasy” relationship with it throughout his life. However, over time, he became a rather solid member of the church who received a remarkable patriarchal blessing rather late in life in which he was basically told that he would be received of the Lord because he had never given up and would end his life faithfully. His soil needed to be pflegt, or nurtured, for many years before the seed finally took root.
leftofmormon 