Recorded in Mark 4 are two of Jesus’ agrarian-related stories (parables). The first one is about sowing seeds in God’s economy. The kingdom message is sown indiscriminately in all kinds of soil – rocky, gravely, and good soil. Since we tend to be people focused on outcomes, we have terribly moralized this story with a focus on trying hard to be good soil, entirely missing the point of the story. Wanting to continue our conversation about doing right things, we are going to turn our attention to the second seed-sowing parable in Mark.
In first century Israel, farmers did not prepare the seedbed in any manner close to the way it’s done today. Same when planting seeds. In the first century, the farmer found a plot of ground capable of growing a crop, scratched the surface with primitive tools, and then threw seed randomly over the “prepared” soil. This seed scattering is what the first Mark 4 parable is all about – some seed landed on the road, some landed on less favorable soil, some among weeds, and a majority (presumably) of the seed landed on the prepared seedbed.
Because of the tendency to moralize Jesus’ words, the second seed scattering parable gets overlooked. It’s short and can be found in Mark 4:26-28:
He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.
Back to the Hinkle farm. Each spring, after preparing a good seedbed (doing right things) and sowing seeds in a meticulous manner (doing things right), my dad used to say something to the effect of, “Well, not much we can do now. It will be interesting to see what kind of crop we end up with.” That’s the exact point of the parable! The farmer sows the seeds and goes to bed! And all by itself, the soil produces grain. In the margin of my Bible, I jotted, “And all by himself, God can…”
Through the centuries, God has enlisted his people to be the seed sowers in his kingdom. As Christ-followers, we are kingdom people with one basic job – scattering seeds. Reading these two parables, it appears that we are to do this randomly, intentionally, and indiscriminately. The rest is God’s job. All by himself, God can produce fruit. This is what doing right things is all about!
Next week: I will share the contents of an email that a friend of mine, Mark Johansson, wrote to a friend of his after a conversation over dinner. His little epistle is focused on this parable. It is one of the most freeing things I have ever read! You will not want to miss it.
Practical Theology Today 
This is one of many important lessons I have learned from you. I use this parable every year as a prepare a short term team for Ecuador. We, the team, simply share the gospel message and God does the rest. The Holy Spirit does the hard work, our role is to spread seeds!
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Thanks, Bruce. It’s really freeing, isn’t it?
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