The parable of the sower depicts the different ways the human heart responds to hearing the good news.
Jesus never wrote a book. This is another remarkable sign of how much he emptied himself as he worked to save mankind. Jesus did not insist that we have the absolutely definitive version of his words and actions as written and checked editorially by his own hand. In the language of communication, the Gospels are feedback. They were editorially controlled by the Holy Spirit through men—for instance, using Luke’s gifts as an investigative reporter and historian.
This means that Jesus’ message was not just proclaimed. It was heard and understood and retold to a reporter (Luke) before it went down on paper. In the business of communication, the best way to make sure something will be understood is to have it fed back from somebody who has heard and understood it.
Through the agency of his disciples, Jesus got across to Luke his love for people—all sorts of people.
Note the people Luke mentions. He talks about men and women, old and young, children and even babies. He talks about fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters. He refers to engaged people, a bridegroom, husbands, wives, mothers-in-law, daughters-in-law. He mentions the barren, the divorced, and the adulterous. There are neighbors, relatives, and friends.
And what a variety of occupations Jesus moves among. Luke speaks of shepherds, farmers and their laborers, pig breeders, and fishermen. There are soldiers and their officers, guards, and police. There are those who make their living as thieves, prostitues, and beggars. He speaks of doctors, bankers, managers, tax collectors, and other officials. There are innkeepers, water carriers, housewives, builders, teachers and pupils, masters and slaves, landowners and their tenants, merchants and servants, priests and Levites, elders and teachers of the law. All these people grace Luke’s pages. Kings, governors, rulers and judges are not missing; even the party men are there, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Herodians.
Luke also describes the conditions people were in. There were hungry people, gluttons, and drunkards. There were the humble and the proud, the poor and the rich, the ignorant and the learned. There were wicked people, respectable people, greedy people. Some were blind, lame, crippled, deaf, demon possessed, or paralyzed. There were debtors, lepers, people with tom clothes, cheaters, and hypocrites. There were wise and foolish, dishonest and violent. They laughed and they cried, both the evil and the good. And there were Greeks and Romans, Jews and Samaritans, Galileans and countrymen, citizens and foreigners. Some were hated, some were in prison, some were oppressed and ill-treated, some were cursed by others and heartbroken. These were the people Luke registered as coming to Jesus from one town after another.
How did Jesus see these people? He tells us in the parable of the sower (Luke 8:5–15). They all fit into four categories of soil that he mentions.
Group One: Along The Path
Jesus notes demonic influence in some hearers: “The seeds that fell along the path stand for those who hear; but the Devil comes and takes the message away from their hearts in order to keep them from believing and being saved” (Luke 8:12, TEV). Even Jesus’ communication was not always successful. Sometimes his message got no more than the attention of his audiences. He explained this by pointing out the role of the Devil.
It is the Devil who makes the first kind of hearer Jesus describes different from the other three. We should not be deceived about our task or the origin of its difficulties. These hearers were brainwashed. They automatically closed their minds to what Jesus was saying as soon as they heard it. They were programmed to do this, and it was demonic. Paul gives the same analysis (seeing Satan’s activity behind all unbelief, in fact): “They do not believe, because their minds have been kept in the dark by the evil god of this world. He keeps them from seeing the light shining on them, the light that comes from the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). Clearly, it will take more than the technical skills of communication to convince this kind of hearer. There is someone who does not want them to believe and be saved, and he is hard at work. Let us look at his method.
The method of the Devil is to harden. “Grass does not grow on busy streets.” It is traffic that prevents the seed of the Word from getting into the soil where it might germinate and grow. Traffic is many feet padding over the pathway. The traffic Jesus is referring to has to do with other thoughts and other ideas. That dominance of other fixed ideas is the main means Satan uses to prevent the good news from penetrating the minds of those to whom God speaks. In Luke’s Gospel, what hearers are like the path? They are the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the teachers of the law, the priests, and the political leaders like Herod and Pilate. These were the people who turned off Jesus as soon as he had spoken.
The target of the Devil, then, is the opinion formers. They may be people who are obsessed about money and property. The man in Luke 12 no sooner hears Jesus speaking about courts than he ignores Jesus’ real subject and speaks about the court case uppermost in his mind. He asks Jesus to tell his brother to divide with him the property their father had left them (Luke 12:13). He had a one-track mind and could not hear what Jesus was saying.
Those who are preoccupied with social class have this hardness. In Luke 15, Pharisees object that Jesus is welcoming outcasts and eating with them. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, he paints these Pharisees as the elder brothers whom the most generous of fathers could not convince.
They may be those whose prejudices have immunized them against the power of the gospel. In Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem, Luke gives us examples of people who wanted to discuss questions of authority, taxation, life after death—all as a device to avoid the truth Jesus lived and taught.
They also include those who are caught up in power politics. In chapter 23, Luke shows that the chief priests and leaders of the people, Pilate, and Herod are all faced with Jesus, and entirely miss his significance.
Yet Jesus does not write off these opinion formers. When Peter despairs of the rich, asking if it is possible for them to be saved, Jesus confidently answers, “What is impossible with man is possible for God” (Luke 18:27). These antagonistic opinion formers provide the points against which Jesus defines his message. Sizable blocks of his teaching come in response to their opposition.
We have Jesus’ opponents to thank for the story of the Good Samaritan, and for other vital parts of his message. He defines the gospel in relation to money and property, and tells us about the rich fool in reply to that man who asked about his inheritance (Luke 12). In response to the people who are obsessed with social class, he tells us the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. To people with philosophical and religious prejudice, he speaks about authority and priorities and resurrection and how we ought not oppress widows. In contrast to those who were in the power politics of the time, he gives us rules about how his followers are to lead. It was his opponents who clearly brought out the fact that the good news has nothing to do with race and class, and is not imprisoned by legalistic attitudes. It is about love and grace and forgiveness, and not about merit and censorious attitudes.
The positive approach to opinion formers who do not welcome the good news is to ask why they reject it, and to state the message as an answer to their position. This is logical. The opinion formers influence everybody else. Their views will need to be combated if anyone else is to respond to the good news. For example, today we need to be defining the gospel against those who are propagating a gospel of consumerism, against our media moralists, our Marxists, our behaviorists in education, and so on. That is the only way we are going to have an effective work among all in whom God is interested.
Group Two: Rocky Ground
Jesus registered next the dazzled hearers. “The seeds that fell on rocky ground stand for those who hear the message and receive it gladly. But it does not sink deep into them; they believe only for a while but when the time of testing comes, they fall away” (Luke 8:13). Jesus provoked an instant emotional response. Luke points out how people were affected by the words of Jesus: “He … was praised by everyone” (4:15). “They were all well impressed with him, marveled at the eloquent words that he spoke” (4:22). “People … were filled with anger” (4:28). “People … were amazed (4:36). “Full of fear, they praised God” (5:26). This convinces me that the unforgivable sin in the preacher is to be dull!
Jesus compares the positive response that was mainly emotional to seeds that spring up too fast to last. “They believe only for a while.” The responses we note in Luke are from “the people,” “the crowd,” or “them all.” It is a collective response described by collective nouns. The heat in which these seeds germinate is group heat. The moisture that is eventually lacking is the ongoing support of other people. The time of testing shows that nothing has changed enough for it to be worthwhile for them to continue believing, so they wither away.
We need to recognize that this is how Jesus began. He went to all the people because God loved them all. He attracted and spoke to crowds. He was a mass evangelist. The popular response was vital in gaining the widespread attention he needed for his message. It was vital to challenge the set ways of the people, the tiresome traditions of their elders, and the partisan power play that went on in society. Jesus allowed himself to be mobbed, but he was not taken in by his apparent popularity. Luke shows us how he dealt with this immediate response.
Within the crowds, the interest narrows either to people who are named, like Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1), or unnamed persons to whom something specific happened (like the woman with the hemorrhage in Luke 8:43–49). The group response then becomes the context that enables personal change to occur. The other way in which Jesus combats this superficial response is to establish a second or specific level of commitment that he calls discipleship. From the crowds he chose 12 (Luke 6:12–16) and later 70 (Luke 10:1), and took great pains to teach them by word, example, and experience how to mature in the faith and to last.
There is, however, another more serious factor. False expectations of the gospel are the source of superficial response. Luke says that the moment of truth comes with these dazzled hearers at times of “testing.” Matthew and Mark analyze this further by the two words “trouble” and “persecution.” This implies that somehow people felt that following Jesus would give them a trouble-free life and on a popular path. Neither of these was true, but they got that message from what he said. Even toward the end of Jesus’ life on earth his disciples still thought of the kingdom as the way to personal advancement (Luke 22:24–27). The parable of the sower is an indication of how soon Jesus felt it necessary to start teaching the opposite. This is a clear warning of how easy it is for the good news to be heard wrongly with sad results. Dazzling presentations of the message can too easily end in dashed hopes by hiding the inevitability of the cross.
Group Three: Among Thorns
“The seeds that fell among thorn bushes stand for those who hear; but the worries and riches and pleasures of this life crowd in and choke them, and their fruit never ripens” (Luke 8:14). The hearers in this third group last longer than those in the second. They are not hardened or prejudiced like the first, or shallow and superficial like the second. But they want the best of both worlds, and they make a great attempt to get it. Luke implies that the fruit or seed forms on some stalks, but it never ripens. It remains green and bitter and gives pleasure or profit to no one. It is in the church situation that the green and bitter fruit is found. The problem is that two crops are competing in the same soil. The people are double-minded. Luke indicates three factors that insure that these Christians will always be immature: “worries,” “riches,” and “pleasures.”
The immature church is strangled by domestic worries. In the other places where Luke uses the word “worries,” it refers to worries at home. We are warned not to worry about food and clothes (Luke 12:22–30). Jesus cautions Martha against worrying too much about house and home (Luke 10:38–42). Church, family, and health are always potential rivals for our first loyalty. Putting Jesus before family without question is the only way to avoid the bitter fruit of immature Christianity. Churches where the human family dominates will continue to be unfruitful and the people immature.
The immature church is strangled by economic ambition. Riches constitute the second kind of thorn bush that keeps the fruit of Christianity bitter and void of nourishment. The rich young ruler is evidence that riches can close minds to the entrance of the good news (Luke 18:18–30). Judas is evidence that riches can be a powerful source of trouble within the fellowship of those who follow Jesus (Luke 22:3–6). The situations of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5) and of Demas (2 Tim. 4:10) demonstrate the same truth. There is no real growth in the faith of Jesus that is not matched by a lessening of greed in the disciple.
The immature church is also strangled by unregulated leisure. The third kind of thorn bush that saps the vitality from the true wheat is hunger for pleasure. Luke uses the word from which we get the word “hedonist”—one who lives for pleasure. He does not use this word again in his Gospel. He pictures the headlong pursuit of fun by the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:13), and the luxury and indulgence of both the rich fool and the rich friend of the beggar Lazarus (Luke 12:19; 16:19). Clearly, Jesus thought it right for his followers to enjoy themselves. Yet happiness in the kingdom was not an end in itself, but a by-product of a commitment to right attitudes. “Happy are those who are poor.”
This is a striking picture of the nominal church where self-interest is rife, and people are looking for God to advance their own economic and leisure concerns. Jesus pronounces inevitable immaturity on this kind of church—to say nothing of its ultimate loss. In the end, the fruit never ripens and the thorn bushes are burned up. To the outsider, churches of this kind are unattractive and bitter, and make people go “ugh” because they are a living contradiction of the good news.
How did Jesus deal with such people? In the case of the rich young ruler, he did not lower the standard for following him; although he loved the man, he let him walk away sad (Luke 18:18–29). He trusted Judas with the money within the company of the disciples, and then kept teaching specifically about wealth. And he loved Judas to the end (John 13:29–31). Where family tensions were concerned, he made it clear to the man who wanted to bury his father before following him that this was the wrong way around (Luke 9:59–62). In his relationship with his own family, Jesus showed the same priority (Luke 2:49; 8:19–21). When the Zebedee family within the fellowship got it wrong and wanted the top jobs, he taught them and the others specifically on the subject (Matt. 20:20–28). The scene at the cross where John took Mary to his own home indicates that Jesus’ teaching was making a difference (John 19:27) even in the Zebedee family.
In the realm of pleasure seeking, Jesus had nothing to do with Herod, and would not gratify his love of the spectacular (Luke 13:31–33; 23:6–12). And to his disciples he taught the folly of the people of Lot’s day, comparing it to the way it would be when the Son of Man came (Luke 17:28–30). We may sum up by saying that Jesus let the demands of following him be clearly known to those who inquired. Once they joined his company, he kept teaching specifically on those areas of double-mindedness in his disciples.
Group Four: Good Soil
“The seeds that fell in good soil stand for those who hear the message and retain it in a good and obedient heart, and they persist until they bear fruit” (Luke 8:15). It is in Luke’s translation of this saying of Jesus that his Greek culture shines through. When he speaks about the hearer receiving the message into “a good and obedient heart,” he uses words that the Greek philosophers had used for centuries to describe the ideal at which people should aim. It implies a moral discontent with what we are, and a wholehearted commitment to something better.
We must watch for these hearers. They will listen to what is really being said (v. 16). They will listen with humility because they want something more and something better (v. 17). They will make sacrifices to get it (v. 18). They are often the most unlikely people. Look at those described just before the parable of the sower (Luke 8:1–3). The twelve disciples were an unusual mixture of unlikely people whom most leaders might well have rejected out of hand. The fact that there were women among his hearers, and that they were noticed, was unusual. When we think of their previous lives, ranging from demon possession to court life, we are encouraged to believe that there is hope for all. The one thing they had in common was their devotion to Jesus Christ.
The Gospel of Luke and a good part of Acts are devoted to the development of these people: first in the inner company of Jesus, later by the inner working of the Holy Spirit. They are characterized by their decisive response to the good news. That decisiveness needs to be maintained in a multitude of little decisions, each leading to growth, just as the passing of days and nights leads to growing grain. It is for those hearers that the positive implications of the message need to be spelled out. The other sizable blocks of teaching in Luke come in response to the questions or needs of the disciples. Some of the teaching, like the Beatitudes (Luke 6:20), is initiated by Jesus just because he saw they needed to know. He taught at least as much, however, because of their questions, like “teach us to pray” (Luke 11:2–4) or because of a situation that called for it when they were squabbling about who was the greatest (Luke 22:24–25). Over a period of time, this teaching integrated with their experience became what we know as the Gospel of Luke.
The parable of the sower is Jesus’ major reflection on the different kinds of hearers he detected in the vast number of people to whom he spoke. Luke follows this parable with a story about Jesus’ mother and brothers trying unsuccessfully to get to him. And he says in that context, “My mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and obey it” (Luke 8:19–21).
Hearers become family. Audience becomes community. The move is from communication straight through to community. Notice the similarity of the two words: communication is effective only when it establishes and strengthens community. And the people to whom God speaks do not remain a number of individuals. They become a people, the people of God together doing the will of God.
When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
