In Matthew 13 Jesus told the story of the farmer who goes out to sow the seeds of his harvest. This is often called the Parable of the Soils, or The Parable of the Sower. Usually the lesson is on the seed of the Gospel being planted and how it grows or gets choked out or eaten by birds, but I noticed something maybe for the first time as I was thinking about the parable this week: There’s dirt everywhere.
Stock Photo by Andreas Krappweis
One of the things I love about the Parables of Jesus is that you can read them over and over and get wisdom and different insight each time. The story is the same, but each time you can learn something new.
Usually the teaching on this parable most often focuses on the seed, that good news of salvation that goes out and how it grows or gets choked or gets snatched up. Sometimes we talk about the farmer who’s doing the sowing. Sometimes we talk about the birds, and the devil, and the world, and all the ways the seed fails to grow. Sometimes the focus is on how only some of the seed actually grows and flourishes and bears fruit.
But I noticed that the sower throws his seed with what seems to be little thought or concern for where it actually falls. Some seed falls in the dirt beside the road, some lands in rocky soil, or it lands where thorns and other plants are already growing. Some of the seed lands in rich soil where it can sprout and grow and thrive and bear lots of fruit for harvest.
It seems to me that a hidden truth of this parable is that there is dirt everywhere! If the seed is the Word of God, and the soils are the people who receive the gospel message, everywhere the farmer went he left some of God. He didn’t discriminate. He didn’t say, this soil is too hard, or rocky, or doesn’t look like it can take root. He didn’t say this person is unworthy, or won’t be receptive, or doesn’t deserve to be given the chance to receive something from God.
There was dirt everywhere he went. And everywhere he went the sower left something behind. He took the message of God with him, and he left the word wherever he went.
Jesus explains to his disciples the connection between dirt and humanity and the seed and the Word of God. After all it’s the Word of God that brings life. It was the Word of God that created. And while words are made of breath, and breath is made of life, it was God’s hands that formed man from the dirt, and His breath that gave him life.
And when we bring that same word, that breath of life to humanity all around us, without discrimination and without pre-judging, we’re doing the work of God and being his hands. Because there’s dirt everywhere, and we’re all dirt, after all.