Cultivation and Preparation

by    11th October 2009    0 responses

marathon

Image: Martineric @ Flickr

Mark 4:1-20   Expand passage

1Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water's edge. 2He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: 3"Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. 8Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times."

9Then Jesus said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

10When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. 11He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables 12so that,
" 'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
and ever hearing but never understanding;
otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'"

13Then Jesus said to them, "Don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? 14The farmer sows the word. 15Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. 16Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. 17But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. 18Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; 19but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. 20Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was sown."

Collapse passage

Neo: “Are you saying I have to choose whether Trinity lives or dies?”

Oracle: “No, you’ve already made the choice. Now you have to understand it.”

For those of you who didn’t spot it, that was a quote from The Matrix Reloaded. That’s right – diving in at the deep end, I’m raising the issue of free-will vs. predestination. Ouch. How does that relate to our reading? Take a look at the parable of the sower and you’ll see that whether or not a person accepts the Word of God appears to depend entirely on their situation, and there doesn’t seem that there is anything we can do to change that. People hear the Word, and many reject it. It’s fate. Some people will just never know God, and there is nothing we can do about it.

Now, that may sound like a very negative message, and not at all what we’re used to hearing, and there’s a very good reason for that – it’s wrong. And to understand why we need to know a little about farming – something that Jesus’ audience would have known very well, but which to many city-dwelling folk I’m sure will be quite foreign.

Let’s say you’re a farmer wanting to plant seed in a field. The aim of that exercise is to get as much seed as possible into the ground so that it germinates and grows into something you can harvest. You have a large area to cover, and seeds are usually tiny, so planting each seed individually would take forever and be very inefficient, so you have to spread your seed far and wide and hope for the best. Back then it was all done by hand, by walking along a path through the field with a bag of seed, throwing great handfuls in every which direction. Nature then takes its course, with (hopefully) the vast majority of the seed landing on good soil, taking root and growing into healthy plants. Today the seed scattering process is done by farm machinery, but it’s the same principle.

Some seed inevitably falls on the path – the path needs to be there for you to have somewhere to walk, so the path isn’t a bad thing in itself, it’s just a by-product of the process of owning a field. If there are rocky patches in your field, and seed happens to fall on that, the seeds will have a hard job growing. Of course, it’s not necessarily easy to spot rocky ground, since the rocks are often mostly under the surface of the soil, so it’s not easy to tell. Then there are the hedgerows, separating your field from the next, and these are undoubtedly filled with brambles and nettles and other weeds. At least in this country. In the Mediterranean they probably have their own brand of weeds.

So, that’s a quick introduction to farming, courtesy of someone who actually grew up in the countryside. However, we’ve missed out a key part of the planting process – cultivation. This happens before you even open the seed bags, and involves churning up the soil, preparing it, bringing the soil that was underneath up to the surface, and vice versa. This helps to break up solid bits of earth, allows the nutrients to move around more freely, and provides lots more nooks and crannies in the soil for seeds to lodge themselves away in, away from the prying beaks of passing birds. We do cultivation today in this country with tractors towing ploughs, and they did it back in Jesus’ day too (and earlier) with animals yoked together pulling a plough. Jesus’ audience would have been well aware of that.

And this is the key, I think, to understanding this passage – it’s all about cultivation and preparation. Yes, there are paths through the fields, but a good farmer will try to keep those paths to a minimum so that as little seed as possible is lost. Yes, there are rocky patches, but a good farmer will take note of where they are and will try to dig the rocks up before the planting season begins. Yes, there are brambles at the edges of the field, but a good farmer will cut them back if they get too wild, dig them up if they’re taking over, and try to keep them away from the crop.

This should be the case with us, too, as we help God’s Word to spread through the world. We need to be cultivating friendships, slowly but surely preparing them for the Word, when it comes, so that the Word can take hold in their lives. Clearly we can’t do all that ourselves, which is why the Holy Spirit takes such a big role in preparing hearts, but we can help by being a good example to others, by being honest and open about our beliefs, by practising what we preach, by being prepared to stand up for what we believe, by showing them practically how much God loves them. We may not be able to do much about the seed that is lost to inhospitable land, but we sure can do our best to make sure the ground near us is cultivated and ready!

Bringing us back to the Matrix quote I started with, and the argument of free-will vs. predestination, I think it’s a little of both. If we let God’s Word come to people who really don’t want to know, one could argue that they really are predestined to reject it. However, we can offer them the chance to change, give them the opportunity to use their free-will to become more receptive to the gospel; if we can get them to that stage of cultivation, one could argue that they are equally predestined to accept the Word of God.

So here’s a challenge for you. Take a look at the people around you, the people you meet, your friends and family who don’t yet know Jesus. If they were given the gospel right now, would they accept it? If not, what can we do to help break down their barriers, to challenge their preconceptions, to inspire their curiosity? Are we praying not just for them to hear the Word, but that they would be ready and eager to hear it?

Leave a Reply

Allowed tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> <span style="">

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.

Matthew has long had a strong involvement with Christian websites. He was a keen contributor to the original Crossring site, and subsequently launched his own website, Focus On Faith. Focus On Faith was incorporated into Crossring in September 2009, and Matthew took on the role of lead writer for the site. Matthew works as a web designer, and lives in the West Country with his wife, Ellie.

What's On Crossring

Crossring is a community of Christians who meet together online in fellowship around the Christian faith and the Bible.

As part of our active lifestyle of prayer and Bible reading, we are currently reading a small section of the Bible together each day and sharing our responses to it with each other. We also publish a short devotional thought on a key verse or two from each day's passage to prompt prayer or reflection.

Introducing Daily Readings

Introducing Crossring Forums