Mark chapter 4 is probably titled something like “The Parable of the Sower” in your Bible. If you were German, it would be more likely to be called “the Four Soils”. Preparing for my seminar on Friday, I found some of the commentators want to talk about the four (or six) seeds, rather than where they land or who throws them out. That suggestion is embarrassingly easy to shoot down with a copy of the Greek – the word “seed” may be in the English translation, but it’s implied in the Greek – it says that a Sower went out sowing and some landed on the path, some on rocky ground…
If it’s not about the seed, that leaves the soils and the sower. One suggestion for finding the meaning of parables is to look for what’s shocking or “wrong” in the parable and interpret from there. So who would go out sowing seeds all over the place, even in the places where they obviously wouldn’t grow? And despite this foolish approach to sowing, the crop is good – 30 or 60 or 100 grains per plant in the good ground.
Who does the Sower represent? Of all the many possible suggestions, it seems to make sense that it’s Jesus in the context – he’s sowing the Word on the field of a great crowd, knowing that some of them will be like the path, some like the stony ground and others like the thorn patch. And yet when the word falls on good ground, the fruit is great. It’s a defence of his teaching methods – why focus on the crowd instead of a small group of “special ones”?
Since Sunday School, I’ve been taught a very Subjective version of the story, where I’m invited to think about what it means for me (the subject), which soil I am. Perhaps, rather, I should be looking at this (and other parables) as Objective – what does it tell me about Jesus or the Father, rather than myself. It seems with a little reflection that not many of the teachings of Jesus were primarily about the individual(s) listening, but more the reality they needed to get in touch with.
Of course, the beauty of a parable is that it can an will be interpreted differently by different people, so I’ll let you decide if this is helpful…