This week, until 22 November, Kevin Mayhew Ltd are offering 10 per cent off No Ordinary Stories: Meditations and Worship Material on the Parables. With the book normally retailing at £19.99, that means a saving of £2.00 using the code STORIES10 when ordering the book from the company’s website. Just type the code into the relevant box at the online checkout between the dates given.
Meanwhile, here’s the second of the sessions I’ll be posting this week from the book, to run alongside this promotion.
THE SOWER
(This parable can also be found in Matthew 13:1-9 and Luke 8:4-15)
Reading
Again he began to teach beside the sea. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the sea and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’ And he said, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’ Mark 4:1-9
Meditation of Philip, one of the twelve disciples
He sowed a seed in me that day,
a seed that lay dormant for many years
before finally starting to shoot,
for I was concerned at first with just one question:
which was I –
the rocky, shallow soil or the good ground,
the fertile or the barren?
I knew one thing, anyway,
that his word had taken root within me;
but its growth was unsteady –
sometimes strong,
sometimes weak,
now full of promise,
now clinging to life,
and I was troubled as to what the future might hold,
whether in time it would finally be choked or wither away.
Yet is that the danger Jesus was warning of,
why he told us the parable,
or could I have misunderstood his meaning?
For it struck me today that maybe I’ve seen only half the picture,
so concerned with the soil and the seed
that I’ve failed to consider the sower.
I’ve always assumed that to be Jesus,
but what if he meant us instead?
Think about it, the challenge he gave later:
‘You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem,
in all Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,
baptising them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’
Have you done that?
Have you honoured that calling?
I did, for a time,
as eager and ardent as any,
and I kept going
even when the first flush of enthusiasm had faded.
But it gets harder, doesn’t it,
when you meet the same old response every day –
apathy,
indifference,
scorn –
and harder still when the few who do show interest fall away,
faith blossoming for a moment only to wither and die?
‘What’s the point?’ you wonder.
‘Why waste your breath?’
‘Who wants to hear anyway?’
Yet isn’t that the point Jesus is making –
that though much of the seed will be wasted,
however carefully it is sown,
some will fall on good soil and in time yield a harvest?
He’s urging us to carry on, despite apparent failure,
to continue sharing our faith and proclaiming the word,
however hopeless it may seem,
however futile our efforts may appear,
trusting that, though we may not see it, results will come.
We may not see them for ourselves,
we may never know what our witness has achieved,
but that doesn’t matter:
the important thing is that we do our bit,
faithfully discharge our responsibility –
the rest we can leave to God!
Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ,
you have called us to be your witnesses,
to proclaim your name and make known your love,
but, though we try to respond to that challenge,
we find it so hard.
When we speak of you
we are met with indifference, even hostility,
only the merest few willing to listen,
and of the fraction who show signs of responding
faith is all too often short-lived,
a brief curiosity which goes no further.
Though we keep on trying, in our hearts we give up,
no longer expecting lives to be changed by your word.
Teach us to look beyond appearances
and to recognise that, though we may not always see it,
the seed we may sow bears fruit in unexpected ways and places;
that though much will fall on barren soil
some will find fertile ground
and in the fullness of time bear a rich harvest.
Help us to trust, not in our own ability,
but in your life-giving power,
confident that, if we play our part, you will play yours.
In your name we ask it.
Amen.