Sowing Discipleship

Bishop Pete Wilcox

One of the unusual things about the Parable of the Sower is that Jesus also gave us an interpretation of it. In all three versions of the story (in Matthew 13:1–9, Mark 4:1–9 & Luke 8:4–8), it is immediately followed by a key to help us understand and apply it (Matthew 13:18–23, Mark 4:13–20 & Luke 8:11–15). Jesus rarely did that: mostly, he left his parables open-ended for his hearers to ponder; he let his stories speak for themselves. Interestingly, the only other example was also a parable about sowing seed: the Parable of the Weeds in Matthew 13:24–30 (with the interpretation in 13:36–43).

Anyway, in the Parable of the Sower, the key to the story is that the four types of soil which Jesus describes are the conditions not for conversion but for discipleship – not for receiving the Word Jesus proclaims, but for allowing it to grow in us and bear fruit in us over time, and in particular in seasons of difficulty.

Of course, it’s vital for the Church to proclaim the Gospel, in such a way that people become Christians. But in our efforts to evangelise we must not depart from the emphasis we find in the Gospels. While of course Jesus calls people to himself and looks for their decision, his call is not just to turn, to convert, but to follow him. Our priority must always be to make not so much converts for Jesus but disciples for him: to help people to grow up to maturity in Christ and in turn to play their full part in the mission of God in the world. 

And what Jesus offers us in this parable is a snapshot of three of the conditions which can most often threaten our growth in discipleship, our maturing to full potential as his followers, and one condition which most often enables that to happen.

Jesus refers first to those who hardly get started in the Christian life. They hear the message, but they don’t understand it. For whatever reason, they’re like a trodden down path, hardened so that the gospel never really penetrates, it just sits there on the surface so that the Evil One is able to snatch it away. Jesus doesn’t explain how people get to that point – my guess is bitterness mostly, or cynicism, and even more dangerously, complacency – where a person is so sure they’re right that they’re no longer truly open, and before they know it they’ve shut down on God and shut out his Spirit.

Then Jesus refers to those who make a good beginning with Jesus, who hear his word and receive it with joy, but who fall away when trouble comes and persecution in the world. This is what Jesus calls rocky ground. Trouble and persecution are different. Trouble just means difficulty. This pandemic is trouble. Many young Christians will have found it hard to keep up in following Jesus over the past 18 months. But persecution is more than difficulty: it’s hostility, it’s when people have a go at us precisely because we follow Jesus – whether people at work, or people at home. For us, it’s not often the state, as it is for Christians in other parts of the world: but most of us will be tested by hostility at some point and it’s a key moment in our discipleship.

Much more threatening in our culture, at least until this year, has been not difficulty, but ease; not hardship, but comfort and plenty. Jesus warns about the threat which his followers will meet in the thorns. Actually he speaks not only of what he calls the lure of wealth, but the cares of this world, which means the stuff which worries us: health and relationships and debt. These are the things which compete with Jesus for number one place in our lives, or distract us from him. 

And then there’s the good soil, in which the word so takes root that it multiplies. 

I honestly think Jesus is being a bit mischievous here. You see, you could read the story and conclude that the seed had no real choice where it fell, and the soil had no real power to change itself, so the sowing of the seed was just bound to result in the sort of different outcomes Jesus’ describes – and so by the same token, Christians will either grow to fruitful maturity in Christ, or they’ll fall by the way, and that’s all there is to it.

But surely Jesus didn’t tell this parable just so that we’d think ‘Oh yes, that’s true: I recognise that as an accurate description of my experience: not every Christian who hears and accepts the Gospel lasts the course’. Surely Jesus told it to challenge us? And if Jesus meant this story to challenge us, it means he thought that there are things we can each do in order to locate ourselves in the good soil. As his followers, we’re not just passive seeds!

So how do you become seed sown in good soil? By making yourself as open to the Word of God as you can be – the Word of God in Scripture and the Word of God enlivened by the Spirit. Daily, we can present ourselves to God, with our spiritual ears open, attentive to what God is saying to us. We can do it by reading our Bibles, and we can do it in prayer. If we make a habit of a lively daily time with God, we will end up as good soil, as sure as day follows night. 

And while I believe that the primary application of this parable is to the individual Christian, I do think it also applies to the local church. The parable challenges us to ask ourselves, ‘Is the Gospel flourishing in me, personally – or am I at risk of proving fruitless for Jesus?’, but also ‘Is our church providing good soil in which the disciples of Jesus can grow, or not?’

It seems to me that one of the challenges for every baptised Christian, as we emerge out of this wretched pandemic, will be for us to take stock of our faith and to ask ourselves how we are doing. Are we now well placed to grow up to maturity in Christ? And the same challenge faces every local church: are we now creating the conditions in which our members can grow to maximum fruitfulness in the Gospel?