Of course, I would prefer this sermon to do the latter, but we shall just have to wait and see about that, won't we? First, I must overcome a peculiar obstacle, found in the text of Matthew chapter thirteen itself. The obstacle is that in Matthew's version, Jesus very helpfully provides his disciples with the interpretation of the parable. Well, there you have it-commentary by the Master on the Master's own masterpiece. What more could I add?

Scholars have tried to get around this obstacle by asserting that this interpretation isn't actually Jesus', but that it reflects the concerns of the early church, projected backwards onto Jesus. So while the parable is genuinely Jesus' own words, his commentary isn't. In other words, we can just ignore it and move on.

Tempting as the scholars' solution might be, I can't ignore the fact that for centuries, this interpretation was accepted by the Church as Jesus' own, and thus shaped the way the Church understood Jesus' teaching, even if it is a reflection of an earlier period's understanding apart from Jesus' own. Beside all that, it's a perfectly plausible interpretation. The seed is "the word of the kingdom" and the soil types represent different sorts of people who hear the word. When people don't understand the word (I hesitate to call them dummies, since the disciples themselves didn't understand the parable without Jesus explaining it to them), Satan snatches it away. Then follow three other classes: the shallow, the worldly, and the wise. The seed of the word grows in each, but when the going gets tough, the shallow turn out to be fair-weather Christians, the worldly find that their possessions possess them and choke the word out of them, but the wise ones, the ones who hear and understand, bear fruit.

Great. Of course, this interpretation begs the question: how can I hear and understand the word? What will prevent me from ending up like the dummies, or the shallow, or the worldly? After all, I know that Jesus isn't talking about intellectual acumen or the wisdom of the world, so it's not a simple matter of brainpower. No, it's got to be something else that allows the understanding to understand.

The pious answer, of course, is that "God's grace helps us poor sinners understand." True enough, but what about those others, the dummies, the shallow, and the worldly? Don't they need God's grace, too? Are only the fruitful, the wise, inside the kingdom? Is Jesus saying that only they (dare I say, we) have access to salvation, and the rest of them can go to hell?

The only way out of this conundrum, that I can see, is to claim that our receiving of the word isn't about our ability to understand it, so much as it is about our willingness to understand it. The dummies aren't really dumb, you see. They just aren't listening-the seed falls on "the path," a hard surface, a hard heart. They aren't dumb; they're deaf. They're like those of us, particularly husbands, who have "selective hearing." We can't understand the word "garbage" even if it's shouted from across the room, but we can hear the word "dinner" whispered two floors below us.

So the parable is about how we choose, or don't choose, to respond to the word of the kingdom. God's grace is available in each case, but we either choose to avail ourselves of it, or don't.

Problem solved. Unfortunately, this explanation raises an even thornier problem: doesn't this interpretation give us a lot of power over how effective that word will be in the world? That is, is Christ's offer of salvation only for the chosen few? Or does this mean that we can frustrate God's grace, essentially holding God captive to our own stubborn, fallen, sinful wills? Such reflections are the stuff of great theological controversies: Calvinism versus Arminianism; Orthodoxy versus Pelagianism-lots of great "isms" and schisms. But if we get distracted by these debates, we'll miss something central to the parable: that the Sower sows the seed everywhere, and that the seed itself is the word-that is, not just the words of the gospel, but the Word Incarnate, Jesus himself.

Author and Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon in particular stresses that this parable is not so much about us and our response as it is about the Word with a capital "W" and how he works in the world. Father Capon writes in Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus:

It is the Word alone, and not the interference with it, that finally counts. True enough, and fittingly enough, the most obvious point in the whole parable is that the fullest enjoyment of the fruitfulness of the Word is available only to those who interfere with it least. But even in making that point, Jesus still hammers away at the sovereignty and sole effectiveness of the Word. Those on the good ground, he says, are those who simply hear the Word, accept it, and bear fruit: some thirty-, some sixty-, and some a hundredfold. It's not that they do anything, you see; rather, it's that they don't do things that get in the Word's way. It's the Word, and the Word alone, that does all the rest.

Father Capon's insight is worth exploring in greater depth, for it offers a unique way of appreciating the fact that, in Father Capon's words, our response to the Word isn't about the

…accomplishing of a work, but…the bearing of fruit. The goal it sets for us is not the amassing of deeds, good or bad, but simply the unimpeded experiencing of our own life as the Word abundantly bestows it upon us….[T]he parable is told to us by none other than the Word himself, whose final concern is nothing less than the reconciled you and me that he longs to offer his heavenly Father….He wills us whole and happy, you see; and the parable of the Sower says he will unfailingly have us so, if only we don't get in the way.

That's a wonderfully optimistic take on this parable, isn't it? But the pessimist in me asks: what about when we do get in the way? Doesn't this frustrate the work of the Word in our lives? In response to this question, we are asked to take a second look at the power of the seed in the parable of the Sower.

In the interpretation of the Sower, even before Jesus gets to those examples of our getting in the way, Jesus talks about the devil getting in the way, standing on the path, snatching up the word. In Jesus' interpretation, the birds represent the devil, or, if you prefer, the powers of evil. Father Capon writes, "the comparison, while perhaps hard on the birds, is by no means unflattering either way. The demons knew who Jesus was even when people didn't. Therefore, just as the birds recognize seed for what it is even if the pavement doesn't, so the devil recognizes the power of the Word even when human beings don't."

He also mischievously points out that when birds eat seeds, they also excrete them, which for some seeds is an essential part of their spread and germination. This led me to reflect that in the image of the bird eating the seed, we have a foreshadowing of the death and resurrection of Jesus: Satan/death tries to swallow up Jesus, but Jesus emerges out the other end (if you'll pardon the metaphor), a bit churned up, to be sure, but ultimately none the worse for wear. In fact, in Jesus' resurrection, we see a victorious Christ who conquers not with vengeful sword but the proclamation of forgiveness and reconciliation, one whose passage through death and hell could not stop him.

That's all fine and good, but what about those other responses to the seed sown? As for the stony soil, the thorny soil, and the good soil, Father Capon points out that "there are differences in the outcome of that work" but "the differences can never be interpreted as meaning that the operative power of the seed-or the operative power of the Word-is in any way dependent on circumstantial cooperation." He notes, however, that sadly, Christian preachers have perverted the gospel message implicit in the parable of the Sower and have made the salvation that Christ offers everyone into something conditional on our part: "'Sure,' we have said, 'the Lamb of God has taken away all the sins of the world.' But then we have proceeded to give the impression that unless people did something special to activate it, his forgiveness would remain only virtually, not actually, theirs." We give the impression that unless we do the right thing, "the seed, who is the Word present everywhere in all his forgiving power, might just as well not really have been sown."

Maybe the important question, then, is not one of who's in and who's out of the kingdom. Rather, the big question is whether we will get in the way of the Word's working in our lives. Or, to put it another way, the question is how long will we get in the way? Father Capon is an optimist-dare I say, even a universalist. He claims that we can't hold out against God forever, writing that

Nobody, in other words-not the devil, not the world, not the flesh, not even ourselves-can take us away from the Love that will not let us go. We can, of course, squirm in his grip and despise his holding of us, and we can no doubt get ourselves into one hell of a mess by doing so. But if he is God the Word who both makes and reconciles us, there is no way-no way, literally, even in hell-that we will ever find ourselves anywhere else than in the very thick of both our creation and our reconciliation. All the evil in the universe, whether from the devil or from us, is now and ever shall be just a part of the divine ecology.

For my part, I'm still a little pessimistic. I'm not so sure I'm ready to dismiss "all the evil in the universe" so handily. Does Jesus really let us off the hook and rescue us from the mess we've made of our lives that easily? I'd like to believe it's true. I can even see that Jesus might be hinting at just that in the parable of the Sower. But at the end of the day, I'm just another of Jesus' uncomprehending disciples. My question, then, is whether I will have the humility to ask Jesus to explain the parable to me and show me how to allow his seed to take root in my heart, and so bear fruit. Maybe it's not about doing anything big or great, or knowing any secret truth, but simply, reverently, humbling saying, "Here I am, O God, a piece of dirt that you made, ready for the seed of your Word. Dust I am, and to dust I shall return, but between now and then, use me to bear fruit for your kingdom." Then maybe, just maybe, I'll be given grace enough to yield a little something at harvest time. For all of us, it's never too late to hope that the Farmer will till out the stones and the thorns, and prepare in us fertile ground, ready for new growth. The Sower is still sowing, and the seed is still landing everywhere-even here, even now.