I preached this sermon on Sunday, July 12, 2026, at Christ Presbyterian Church in Milford, Ohio.
The lectionary text is Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23.
This passage is called “The Parable of the Sower.” The quilters in the congregation might have been disappointed to hear the passage and discover it isn’t about needlepoint. It’s a different kind of sowing, though we could see the parallel between spreading the Word with your quilts, and what Jesus is telling us in this story.
Like the “Parable of the Prodigal Son,” and the “Parable of the Good Samaritan,” the title added by the translators is misleading. Think about the Prodigal Son story. Is it about the son who desperately returns to his father after squandering all his money? Or is it about the forgiving father who graciously welcomes back his young son with open arms? Or is it about the brother who resents the way his prodigal sibling is being treated while he has toiled faithfully all his life.
So what is this parable about? Even though Jesus, in a rare action, explains the parable, he remains somewhat opaque about it. Is it about the sower? Or is it about the seed? Is it about the soil or is it about the listener to the story? Why does he remain opaque? Is Jesus really opaque, or is it us?
In the Hebrew Scriptures, God is depicted as one who sows. In Jeremiah 31:27, 27 “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will plant the kingdoms of Israel and Judah with the offspring of people and of animals.” In the gospels, we are told specifically that it is Jesus who is the sower of the Word of the kingdom, and that the disciples will eventually become sowers of the Word.
The seed in the parable is considered the Word of God. No matter where it is sown, on the path, on the rocks, into the thorns, or on fertile soil, the seed, the Word, remains the same. So the foundation of this parable from Jesus – the sower and the seed – are somewhat obvious and accepted.
Jesus spent most of this parable talking about where the seed lands, whether it has a chance to germinate, whether it has a chance to grow. So it appears that Jesus wants us to think about the soil that receives the Word.
I may have mentioned that I grew up on a farm in Holmes County, a small gentleman’s farm that provided my siblings and me a wonderful place to grow up.
My rural high school offered vocational agriculture, Vo-ag, which I took instead of shop class. We studied various agriculture subjects, including soil science, which involved how to judge a field. We took a field trip, which involved walking to the farm next to the school, where the farmer had used his backhoe to dig a trench for our class.
We were taught to judge a field using many metrics, including the slope, how rocky it was on the surface and beneath, how deep the top soil was, how deep the subsoil was, how moist the soil was, and about sandy, clay and loam soil types. I remember how we would take a clump of soil, work water into it and try to make a ribbon. If the ribbon was short, it was sandy soil, which dries out too quickly.
If the ribbon was long, the soil was clay, which holds too much water. If the ribbon was 3-4 inches long, it indicated a loam soil, the ideal balance of sand, silt and clay – every farmer’s dream.
Other factors to be judged included being littered with rocks and trees, and if there was too much slope.
So I have learned to judge soil in a past life. And the principles remain the same for millennia. Through the miracle of germination, farmers are reasonably confident that if they take care of the soil, the soil is going to take care of them and their crops. Jesus was speaking with a society who knew this, who knew the challenges of raising a crop and what would affect the yield. Even the fishermen, who lived and worked by the farmers, would have known how sowing of seeds worked.
Jesus first explains how the evil one – in Mark it’s Satan and in Luke it’s the devil – how the evil one is represented by birds, steals the seeds that fall on the path. Then we learn that seeds that fall on rocky ground and form shallow root systems represent those who hear the word of the Kingdom but quickly fall away from it when faced with opposition. Next, we hear of the “thorns” of worldly concerns, those weeds that strangle the Word so that it had no yield.
[Woody Hayes?] Jesus’ audience may not have made the connection that well, but they knew Jesus had just listed four results that happen when sowing, three of them are bad. It’s the same seed. The same sower. Only the soil is different. This is a bleak picture of what happens to much of his ministry, Jesus is saying.
So we might be amazed and relieved how the parable concludes, surprised that any seed lands on fertile soil, germinate and produce any crop, much less an abundant one. A hundredfold would be beyond exceptional for a crop. But it is important to notice here that even when seeds germinate and grow in good soil, the yield differs. Matthew writes, “Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain. Some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” The sower hits his mark, the seed lands on good soil, yet the sower sows not knowing what the yield might be. That’s Jesus’ ministry, again.
The lectionary leaves out vv. 10-17, where Jesus waits until he is alone with the twelve disciples to explain why he tells parables. Jesus quotes Isaiah 6:9-10, where God is telling Isaiah what to say to a faction of people of Israel who had turned away from God:
9 He said, “Go and tell this people [that faction of Israel who had turned away from God]:
“‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’
10 Make the heart of this people calloused;
make their ears dull
and close their eyes. [Sounds like a curse, doesn’t it?]
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”
Jesus wants to be heard by those willing to listen. The parable, as told in Mark, starts with Jesus saying, “Listen!” and ends with “He who has ears, let him hear.” The New English Translation says it a bit more forcefully: “The one who has ears had better listen!” [Sounds like your mom, doesn’t it?] Those who listen, who want to understand, who are willing to do the work of tilling their soil – those are the ones who will receive the seed being sown.
And perhaps that’s when we realize the parable has been about the listener all along. We had presumed that this parable is only about the soil. Maybe we’ve had this parable backward all along. It’s also about listening, and hearing.
Physically hearing the words of a parable is not enough. Discernment, or the ability to hear spiritually, is necessary to understand this teaching. Jesus says, “Listen!” He wants us to listen deeply, until the Word takes root instead of merely passing through our ears.
Listen with intention, specifically with the intent to act. Listen with compassion – to open one’s ears is to open one’s heart.
Jesus says to the disciples, in these skipped-over verses, “But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.” Jesus has blessed the eyes and ears of his disciples so they can understand what he is saying with his parables. And through the Great Commission, we become disciples in Christ, with eyes and ears that can discern. Ears that can listen and understand, if we’re willing to till our own soil.
And once we till our own soil, we’re ready to till the soil of those around us and sow seeds for Jesus.
We spend so much time trying to decide which soil we are. Am I the rocky ground? Am I surrounded by thorns? Is my heart too hard like the path? But the good news is that Jesus doesn’t wait until the soil is perfect before he begins to sow.
God the Sower scatters seed everywhere. He doesn’t sow because the soil deserves it. He sows because that is who He is.
The question, then, is not whether God is still sowing. The question is whether we will keep preparing our hearts to receive what God is planting. Are we listening? Do we have ears that hear? Do we have the discernment to hear spiritually what Jesus is saying?
Every day we dig up new rocks to remove—old grudges, stubborn pride, lingering fears. Every day there are new weeds to pull—those worries that grow faster than our faith if we leave them untended, the distractions that consume our attention. Every day there is hard ground that cannot be broken by a plow, only by prayer.
And as we till the soil of our hearts, something remarkable happens. We become sowers ourselves. We scatter words of hope instead of despair. We sow forgiveness instead of resentment. We sow kindness instead of indifference. We sow the good news of Christ wherever God has planted us.
Jesus says, “Listen!” So listen. Listen deeply.
Let God soften the hard places in your heart. Pull the weeds. Remove the stones. Receive the seed.
Every quilt begins with one stitch. Every harvest begins with one seed. Every disciple begins by listening. So let us hear the Word until it takes root in our hearts.
To the Lord our God, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, be all glory and honor forever.
