Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen! (Matthew 13:23)

How many of you here had, or played with, a Magic Eight Ball when you were kids? This toy was first built in 1946, and it’s still being made now. Maybe you even have one at home today? The point of the toy, of course, is that you ask it a question and it gives you the answer—cut and dried. (In case you’ve ever wondered, the little window has ten positive responses, five negative ones, and five “unclear, ask again” responses.)

This toy, I’m afraid, is a pretty good representation of the way many people go to the Bible (if they read the Bible at all). They have a question or a problem, and they open the Bible and stick their finger in somewhere, and look for a definitive answer. Then they close the covers and go on their way.

That’s not what the Bible is for, and that’s not how we are to approach it. Joshua 1:8 says we are to meditate on Scripture day and night—and the word we translate as “meditate” has a broad and rich range of meanings in Hebrew, including: imagine, meditate, mutter to yourself, speak, study, and murmur. The Bible is given to us to ruminate on—to chew on, over and over day by day—to be nourished by. The truth is, the Bible is not a self-improvement book—not really something to be used, but rather something to be wrestled with. The Word of God is our most important way to learn to see God more, to desire God more, and to love God more. Today’s reading in Matthew, the Parable of the Sower, gives us an excellent way to explore this.

A little background first…“Parable” in the Bible is the name for a broad range of literary forms. “Parable” includes not just the stories Jesus tells, but sometimes just one or two sentences. Parables might be a little allegorical, a little bit metaphorical, a little bit symbolic. The point of a parable is to teach a lesson, but in a way that pushes us to look not for a simplistic or trivial answer, but to dig more deeply and find an ongoing, personal response to the story. The purpose of a parable is usually to invite us to see from a different perspective and from that new vantage point to look back at ourselves and see how we might change our own lives in response. It’s a generally accepted principle that a parable typically has one particular point it is trying to make—that is, the details of a parable are there only to help us engage with that overarching point. Today’s parable is one of only about two that show up in the Gospels with some explanation attached. Let’s hear it again:

Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!

Jesus explains that the seeds are the Word of God’s Kingdom and he talks about four kinds of soil that the seed falls on as four things that can happen when Word is encountered. It can just not be understood—ignored, trampled on the path and ruined. It can be heard and received but not take root and wither. It can be heard and received but choked out by cares and misguided desires. Finally, it can be heard, and received, and understood, flourish—one small seed yielding many times more.

You can see this explanation worked out in the people Jesus encounters in his ministry. There are those, like many of the Pharisees and Scribes, who hear him and simply turn away from and reject his simple message of love for God and neighbor. At times the disciples seemed to be those in whom the word cannot take root, and we see it wither in them as they encounter the trials at the end of Jesus’ ministry and abandon him in his darkest moments. There are those, like the rich young ruler, who come to Jesus and are inspired by his word—But who, like him, don’t follow through and follow Jesus because, we are told, he had much wealth and loved it more. And there are those who let Jesus’ word grow and flourish in their hearts—the disciples actually turn out to be among these—and the women who followed Jesus, and Paul and Barnabas and all those we hear about in the Book of Acts and the Epistles—all those very few who started the church and in the end created a movement that reached the world—thirty, sixty, and one hundred-fold.

As you hear and read this parable, you might come to see that the four kinds of soil also represent different times in your life. Stop for just a few seconds and think about where the Word is finding you right now: rocky, parched, crowded out, or fertile….

Something else you might think about, if you have any experience with farming or ranching or gardening, is what advice you’d give the sower in this story. Most of us, I think, would say something like, “Hey, you’ve wasted three-quarters of your seed! You need to be more careful where you scatter it!” And this gets to the heart of the parable for me.

The sower is, in fact, indiscriminate with the seeds—the seeds go everywhere. Jesus, the sower, is not worried about being economical with God’s Word and God’s grace. There is no shortage to be worried about; God’s grace is provisioned everywhere and offered to everyone. That is, in the giving, God does not make a distinction between the different types of soil—and in fact, when we look at the disciples, we see that transformation of the soil is really possible: Those who seemed to be infertile soil, in the end, became the most fertile soil of all.

Finally, you might think that maybe there are times when you are the seed—when you try your best and you find your efforts to be living out God’s word in the world fall on the rocky path, or get choked out by the weeds—In this parable, Jesus says don’t be discouraged, because, sometimes, your work will blossom and flourish and mature and spring forth a hundredfold. Always remember the verse from 1 Corinthians 15 I frequently quote: “You know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

My prayer for you this week is that, when you pick up the Bible, you will not simply give it a shake and ask it, “Should be a good person today or a bad person?” My prayer is that you will read it, and imagine, and meditate, and mutter, and ruminate, and wonder—and find all the ways Scripture invites you to see God more, to desire God more, and to love God more.