THE SOWER

When Jesus spoke about kings and fathers and masters and landlords in his parables he was not alluding to God. He was speaking about kings and fathers and masters and landlords. (How the early church and the gospel writers appropriated these parables as allegories for their concrete life setting decades later is topic for another post.)

Sunday's lection is about a sower. Yes, a farmer. Then, like now, farmers were among the poorest of the poor. Displaced. Dispossessed. Disenfranchised. During Jesus's time, almost 90% had no land to call their own. Life was so hard half of the population was slowly starving to death. Life was so hard the average life expectancy was 28!

The parable is not about a farmer who did not know how to sow. The parable is about farmers who had no access to agricultural land; farmers who had to sow where it would take a miracle for the seed to actually grow. Along the path, among rocks, among thorns. And the seed that fall on good soil? The good soil owned by the rich, the powerful, and the privileged? They all grow, bringing a yield of a hundred, sixty, thirty fold. A bountiful harvest indeed. For the rich, the powerful, and the privileged.

Do not forget this. Ever. Parables are subversive speech. Parables got Jesus executed.

*art, "The Parable of the Sower," JESUS MAFA 1973 (Cameroon), from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.