The Parable of the Sower: A Prophetic Think Tank
The Parable of the Sower -The Context of Apostasy
This is my interpretation of the Parable of the Sower. I first want to just gripe. Gripe about how easy this is and having to live in a world filled to the brim with brilliant people who use their brilliance only to make it hard. I’ll get to the Sower in a minute, but for now, just indulge me.
Matthew 13:13-30 Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them. Hear ye therefore the parable of the sower. When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side. But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; Yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended. He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
Mark 4:3 Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: Mark 4:13 And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?
Luke 8:5: A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it.
Matthew 12:17-21: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory. And in his name shall the Gentiles trust.
I have aggregated the scriptures that bear on the Parable of the Sower, found in Matthew 13, Mark 4 and Luke 8. The last is the prefatory statement to the version in Matthew, which is I think the key to all of it.
Paul Tillich and a useless brilliance
Now the gripe.
I recently had a conversation with my son Ritchie, who is away at Union University studying for a degree in biblical studies. He was writing a paper on Paul Tillich and his book The Dynamics of Faith.
We talked at length about Tillich and those like him and tried to reduce his book to one dominant point. Ritchie’s takeaway from the book was particularly that about symbolism, how its purpose in the religious act is to point to ultimate reality as an ultimate concern. That symbols are for pointing to an object that can never become an object. It was important for Tillich that these symbols don’t make the transcendent-immanent or make God part of the sensorial world.
All this seemed good, but there are hidden cues within this language that belies what seems like his deep sincerity in being an honest broker of serious truth claims.
I cant dive deep into Tillich here. No one can and come back up with enough sense left to even take a breath. I don’t think that even he could, or did, either
Suffice it to say that, we learn, symbols he is talking about are primarily the Sacraments, which rank of first importance in his category of the “ontological” type of faith. The implications of his logic on sacramental symbolism are taken into the issue of biblical literalism, but not in the way that we might think. The problem is not that Tillich believes that to take the bible literally is a kind of blasphemy. I take this opinion as my own as long as it means assuming that the “natural” meaning of hundreds of passages, such as the Sermon on the Mount (“persecution” means, for example, the mistreatment of any professed “believer,” by any party to any party irrespective of their religious motivations), are blasphemous when they serve the assumption of the faith of a pedestrian religionist.
It’s because Tillich not only thinks that our greatest, most rich and powerful symbols are not words and that to believe that words convey anything true in their representation of the Ultimate is a blasphemy. In other words, believe that it’s all a myth or its true, but it really does not matter in your relationship with the object of Ultimate Concern. To effectively paraphrase Tillich, “the Divine Jesus’ incarnation is a blasphemy and a myth, by the way, but don’t have any faith in what I am saying is true because the idea that faith must involve Truth and is around something you believe to be true by its perspicuous demonstration is not true faith.”
To those that love Tillich, I can already hear the howls of indignation and accusations of misrepresentation, but I persist.
Tillich makes no sense. Modern Christianity makes no sense. Post apostolic Christianity makes no sense, ala Tillich. Even when they do its a worthless revelation, impossible to apply except as a means of trying doubt from another angle. And this is why.
Its all about, in the end, reducing something remarkable to a lot of talk and feelings. I guess you could then say I’m not griping so much as hating on. I think I’m allowed to hate on apostasy.
People like Tillich have nothing positive to offer the world. Can someone please tell me what the Dynamics of Faith adds to our understanding of the faith dynamics in a way that a revelation is produced which makes Christianity seen more like what it says it is and less what Paul Tillich does? If not, then what’s the point in using the Bible at all? Can someone tell me what practical applications to interpretation that we are sure are original to Jesus are revealed by Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, Martin Buber, Marcus Borg, Scott Hahn, Albert Schweitzer, Rudolph Bultman, B.B. Warfield, or for that matter Billy Graham, Francis Schaeffer, C.S. Lewis, Thomas Aquinas, and ad infinitum?
You might be surprised then when I say it’s not only liberals that are charged with this but, but also conservatives offer nothing to interpretation and any moral stewardship of the meaning of the Bible. Liberals are in the business of just gratuitously smashing what they see as conservative idols and conservatives are in the business of tepidly protesting what they see as the smashing of their idols. Conservatives and liberals are in the business of building, maintaining and interpreting symbols, trying ever to bring Christianity down to an essential essence that gives us nothing more than any other religion except some invisible spiritual quality or novel take on sin, righteousness, and God.
What I am in the business of doing, however, is throwing cold water on the idea that the Ancient of Days must have been no more intelligent and crafty than only forward the idea that the great symbol of the Sermon on the Mount is a call to be nice to people and not squish bugs.
Call me crazy, but I protest at any implication of the idea that Jesus only entered time and space as the enfleshment of the Word, in a display of the power and intent of an eternal intelligence, to just cast out one platitude and prosaism after another. Like some politician running on a religious platform making sure that his bromides are only delivered louder and more emphatic than the guy running against him.
Parabolic speech, whether it is called that by the speaker or not, is certainly with Jesus more about merely talking in veiled speech. It’s more than a fundamental level of obscurity that the Church rejects for 80% of what he said and did. Jesus’s style of parabola hides what it is because it is an objection to the notion of the obvious for the parabolic speech itself. Its an objection to the notion that Divine Truth is laying around on a table somewhere, like your car keys, and all you have to do it pick them up and turn over your car to Heaven. God is hidden. To see him is only through, not in the things around you. Jesus’ parabola is one of the wholly unexpected parabola of subject than it is of function, and it’s even deeper about a parabola of kind.
Tillich was wrong because he rejected the idea that through language we can know something sufficiently true and real about the Ultimate, and conservatives are wrong because they reject that we can know sufficiently a certain true, real and fundamental biblical subject which is both about the supernatural and is supernatural that is what Jesus wanted as the divinely ordained to rule our faith. They both are trying to constantly distract the world from looking at a real supernatural display of God before their eyes and saying either that it is impossible or that the only way it can be understood as a miracle is through another three-points-and-a-poem or, a doctrinal check mark or, God forbid, their version of Dynamics of Faith.
The Parable of the Sower is the one key symbolic, supernatural display that we have to understand in order to know all of the parables, and only by knowing all, in the same way, can it finally hit us what demonstration of the power of God he was revealing before the people to inspire and control a New (Jer 31:31) conception of righteous faith, and why most of the world did not want it or did not see it.
Parable of the Sower: Who hath ears to hear, let him hear
In Matthew, we first give attention to Jesus’ command and commentary on his audience: “Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Is this merely Jesus saying that some will not understand, but saying nothing foremost about exactly what they are not understanding that he intends to be indispensable for faith in him? This statement itself is parabolic when we start to break it down.
The phrase is found in Mt 13:16, 43; 11:15; Mr 4:9,23; 7:14-16; Re 2:7,11,17,29; 3:6,13,22; 13:8-9. It is more than significant that it appears so frequently in the most prophetic book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation.
In Mark 11:15, Jesus uses it to call for discernment in his calling John the Baptist the Elijah that was prophesied to come: “for all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.”
In Mat 13:34, Jesus quotes the messianic prophecy of Daniel 12:3.
Three verses after Mark 4:9, Jesus again quotes prophecy.
This statement is found in several forms from De 29:4; Isa 6:9-10; 44:18; Jer 5:21. In Mark 7:6 he uses the prophecy of Isaiah 29:13. In v.14, the meaning is obvious: “Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among these people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.”
Then there is the meaning of the “Word of God” and the “Word of the Kingdom,” which Jesus puts for the seed of the sower. The Word of the Kingdom is quite obvious since this Kingdom is a future, eschatological, therefore prophesied Kingdom. The Word of God is the same: messianic prophecy and its complete fulfillment by Jesus. This messianic prophecy is the Word of God cast into the heart of man. No, the seed is not “the Bible” or any scripture you want. It’s only the scriptures that speak of the Messiah to come, which is Jesus of Nazareth.
The Parable of the Sower is about the stopped up ears of the people to the prophetic Word that was being fulfilled by Jesus. But, to cement this, please keep in mind that Jesus was also uttering a prophecy of the Church dominated first by people whose ears are stopped, and then whose ears are not stopped to this truth.
We think that when Jesus speaks the parable and then offers his interpretation its the end of the matter, but far from it.
I give Jesus’ parabolic statement, then his interpretation of the statement.
1. Parable: Matthew 13:4-6: And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and devoured them up:
Interpretation: Matthew 13:19 When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.
After each Sower parable is finished, Jesus gives another parable, completing his revelation of what corresponds to one of these three types of corrupt faith.
Therefore we add this parable to an understanding of the seed cast on the wayside:
Explanatory Parble: Matthew 13:24-30: Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.
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