Jesus explains the parable’s meaning. Notice that in these verses Jesus talks to the disciples privately. Jesus is God incarnate, omnipotent, and eternal. It must surely have occurred to him that these twelve men would tell others, who in turn would tell others again, and so on until someone thought to write his words down. Jesus talks to the twelve, and he addresses us too.
So if these are our stories, who are we in this particular story? Are we the soil that sits there, waiting to see what hap- pens? Are we the seeds that simply fall to the ground? Are we the sower?
Notice that the farmer isn’t talking to the ground; he’s scat- tering seeds. And he scatters indiscriminately. He’s de ned by his own action not by the action of the soil (that which experi- ences his witness). His witness comes in the form of action, of service. Are we the farmer? Yes, indeed. We scatter gospel seeds wherever we go.
Are we the soil? You bet. The seed falls on us, all of us, all the time. It’s falling on us right now. Our receptivity is key. And we make choices. If we don’t understand, we’re the path. If we don’t have roots, we don’t last. Thorny? As verse 22 reminds us, “The cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing.” You get the idea.
We are soil with hearts and brains. Thinking, feeling human beings raised from that same soil, from dust, to become lled with spirit. We can think, we can consider, we can question, we can pray. And through his parables, Jesus calls us to be good soil, to bear fruit and produce. For those of us who hear and understand, the harvest will be bounteous—”in one case a hun- dredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”