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Our Gospel lesson this morning presents us with one of the better-known of Jesus’ parables, one that most of us recognize under the title “The Parable of the Sower.” In Matthew’s Gospel, from which we are reading all summer long, this parable actually stands as the first in a whole series of parables, a whole discourse of Jesus, like the Sermon on the Mount or the Teaching of the Disciples, a whole connected block of teaching material in the Gospel in which Jesus teaches the people what the kingdom of heaven is like. That kingdom-teaching begins with this very parable, the Parable of the Sower; and that beginning is one of the things that makes this parable such a key to understanding all of the parables that Jesus tells.

 That may also be why this parable is one of the very few parables in all the Gospels to have an explanation given for it right there in the Gospel text. Matthew is so concerned that his readers don’t miss the point of this parable—so concerned that they’ll be able to understand all the parables that come after it—that he provides a detailed allegorical interpretation of the parable and puts it in the mouth of Jesus in the form of a private teaching for the disciples only. It is in that allegorical interpretation that we learn that the four kinds of soil on which the seeds fall represent four kinds of personalities—or perhaps it would be better to say four dispositions of the soul, four conditions of the heart, four ways of responding to God’s holy word. People’s hearts can be hard-packed like the path, or people’s hearts can be shallow and superficial like the rocky soil, or people’s hearts can be distracted and depleted like the soil full of weeds, or people’s hearts can be rich and fruitful like the good soil. The four kinds of soils represent four kinds of souls; and the big question of the parable in this interpretation is, “What kind of soil are you? and what kind of soul do you want to be?”

But the thing about parables is that they never stay neatly confined to the little interpretive boxes we make for them. Parables function on many levels of meaning, and one of the things that makes parables such good teaching tools is that parables make us think. A parable doesn’t just present a nugget of spiritual knowledge in a homey, down-to-earth package. A parable isn’t that passive. A parable presents a situation that seems simple enough on the surface, something that seems like an ordinary little story; but it always includes some sort of surprise, some sort of twist, something that turns the story in an unexpected direction and triggers an unexpected insight. The Greek word for parable is parabola, and a parabola is a kind of geometrical curve—so a parable is a story that throws you a curve. And that curve is intended to surprise you into thinking about things in a new way, it gives you an “Aha!” moment in which you see things with a new kind of vision. A parable doesn’t just passively give you information; a parable actively changes you, it changes the way you understand, it changes the way you respond to God.

And that is true of the Parable of the Sower, too: it doesn’t just stay in its neat little interpretive box, even if that box is provided by the Gospel text itself. The parable bursts out of the box and suggests other sorts of meanings, and opens up the possibility of other sorts of relationships with God. We think the parable is about us, and about how we treat the Word of God; but one of the unexpected meanings of the parable is what it says about God, and about how the Word of God treats us.

What the parable has to say about God is focused, not in the imagery of the soils, but in the character of the Sower. The Sower goes out to sow—and as he sows he throws the seed all over the place, on all the ground around, as far as his fling can reach. And that is not a very typical way to sow. A good farmer, a careful farmer, a prudent farmer, would prepare the soil ahead of time, would break up the hard earth and pick out the bigger rocks and pull up the unwanted weeds. Any of you who keep even small gardens know that you don’t just go out and dump seeds on the ground, but you till up the soil and plant the seeds in proper furrows so that the plants will have the chance to grow up and to flourish so that the seeds won’t be wasted. But the Sower in the story has an altogether different style: he’s not worried about whether the seeds will be wasted; he apparently has plenty of seeds; and he’s willing to throw the seeds wherever, without any preparation or any preconditions, so that any soil that has even the slightest chance of growing a seed will not miss its chance to do it. The seeds go everywhere, and there is nowhere that is without its seed.

If we take it on this level, the parable is trying to get us to see something about God, it is trying to open our eyes to the tremendous, unexpected, profligate, crazy generosity of God, the wonder that God gives his word, his love, his grace, all over the place, in all times and places—whether the time and place “deserve” that grace or not. The insight of the parable is that God’s gracious love goes absolutely everywhere, and there is nowhere that is without God’s love.

And if Jesus says that in his parable, then Jesus also demonstrates it in the way he uses his parable. The set-up for the parable tells us that Jesus is teaching a great crowd—such a great crowd that the only way they all can see him and hear him is for Jesus to get into a boat and push out from the shore while they all gather on the beach and the rise of land like a kind of natural amphitheater—the crowd is that big. Now in the Gospels, big crowds are always funny things, big crowds always mixed bags—or as somebody said in Bible study on Wednesday, a big crowd is a motley crew. This crowd includes people who are merely curious about Jesus and who’ve come just to see what Jesus is like. This crowd includes people who’ve heard that Jesus is a great healer, and who want to be healed themselves, who’ve come because they want to get something from Jesus. This crowd includes people who are hostile to Jesus, who’ve heard from their local rabbi or Pharisee that Jesus teaches things about the Law that are wrongheaded or unrighteous or downright dangerous, who’ve come because they want to catch Jesus saying something they can accuse him for. And this crowd includes people who have heard Jesus preach before, and who have been deeply moved by what he has to say, and who genuinely want to learn from him more about what God’s love really means and how God’s reign can come into their lives. In fact, Jesus knows there are people in the crowd who fit the descriptions of all four kinds of soil, all four kinds of soul, that he’s going to put in his parable. And Jesus doesn’t say, “Only those of you who are good soil can stay and hear this.” Jesus doesn’t say, “You there, your heart is obviously hardened and sinful; you can’t listen to what I have to say, go away. And you, in the rich-looking robe, you’re wealthy, your soul is choked with the concerns of the world and the lure of wealth; you won’t be able to understand this, go away.” Of course Jesus doesn’t turn away anyone who comes to him, but he shares God’s word, he shares the seed of God’s grace, with everyone; and there is no one without their seed, there is no one without the possibility of new life in God that Jesus is willing to share with them.

So Jesus not only talks about God’s crazy-generous love—Jesus shows God’s crazy-generous love in his own teaching and in his own action and in his very self. Jesus tells the parable—and in a way he is the parable, too.

And the really remarkable thing is that Jesus invites us to be the parable with him. The invitation to us is not only that we can be good soil, and let God’s grace grow in us thirty or sixty or a hundredfold; but the invitation to us is that we can be good sowers, we can share the grace of God by flinging God’s love all around us, hither and yon, on every path and every rock and every thorn and every soil, in all the places our lives can take us. We can sow the seed of God’s word, we can be open to the possibility of new life in God’s grace, in all kinds of ways—in the way we welcome strangers and visitors to our church—in the way we forgive each other in our families or marriages or partnerships when there is a fight or a misunderstanding—in the way we conduct ourselves with ethical and moral integrity in our businesses and finances and investments—in the way we work together to create a social and cultural climate that actually rewards ethical and moral integrity—in the way we celebrate God’s Creation in the glories of the summer season, and the way we work in our environment to build right relationships and well-being for all God’s creatures—in the way we laugh with those who laugh and weep with those who weep and share our joys and sorrows together—in the way we are faithful to look for God even in places where it seems like God must be a million miles away. We can sow the seed of God’s word, we can be witnesses to the possibilities of new life in God’s grace, in all kinds of soils, in all kinds of souls, because we ourselves receive the seed from God who sows more than we can ask or imagine, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.

Jesus said, “A sower went out to sow”—and Jesus invites us to go out and sow with him.

In the Name of God: the Holy One, the Holy Word, the Holy Spirit. Amen.