The Sowing Business

Matthew 13:1-3 & 9

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. And great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat down. And the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. . . . He who has ears, let him hear.”

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)

Seedtime and harvest, part of God’s created order, had long been a picture of how God the creator would act to redeem his people from their sins, rescue them from exile, deliver them from oppression (157).

[N]obody would have missed the underlying meaning. Yes, Jesus was saying; what you have been longing for and praying for really is coming true. I’m here to make it happen. It’s going to be hard for you to understand, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Stick with me. Listen to me. Figure it out. Come back for more (158-9).

A. Orendorff

God is in the business of sowing. Doubtless there are more efficient ways of building a kingdom than by scattering seed. Nonetheless, Jesus insists, God is in the business of sowing. What’s more, not only is God a sower, He is a blatantly inefficient sower at that. He is generous, liberal, uninhibited, careless, even wasteful. The seed, it appears, falls without direction or intent, as likely to land on good soil as it is to land on bad. God sows not only where a return would be unlike; but where a return would literally be impossible.

How do our kingdom-building efforts stack up against this standard? Are we willing to be generous for the sake of spreading seed? How about inefficient? Are we willing to be dangerously uninhibited, willfully careless, even patently wasteful? Are we willing to give ourselves to people and projects from which a return not only seems unlikely but is quite literally impossible? Are we willing to give ourselves to the business of sowing?