Have you ever been surprised to find something growing where you didn’t expect it? I can remember my mom coming in the house one day and saying that she had some surprise squash. This squash vine was growing in her compost pile. When she had thrown out an old squash with the rest of the compost, she hadn’t expected anything to come out of it. She didn’t even give it a second thought. Nevertheless, the squash grew.

In the back of our house, I have been feeding the birds sunflower seeds. I also have a small tray feeder that I put some seed in for the squirrels. The squirrels are great foragers. They not only eat the seed in the tray feeder but they intently clean up anything that birds drop from the feeder.

This year, I decided to plant a few sunflowers around the house and the squirrels found most of those too. But one day, not long ago Eric and I were walking around the house checking on a few plants when we saw that right next to the squirrel feeder, inside of an old brick grill, there was something green growing and it wasn’t grass. Apparently, the squirrels missed a sunflower seed and in their frenzy to eat the seeds, this one seed had been planted in the ground.

In the parable of the sower, Jesus tells of a sower who goes out to spread seeds. He doesn’t follow the ordinary techniques of farming. He doesn’t first plow the ground and make furrows to hold the seeds. He doesn’t carefully inspect the ground to remove any rocks or weeds. He doesn’t even seem to be paying that much attention to where the seed is going. He is just flinging it everywhere.

The sower’s technique reminds me of a dandelion and how they spread their seeds. The dandelion changes from a beautiful yellow flower to a puffy headed seed flinger. As the wind blows, the white fluffy seeds release and the seeds get spread wherever. Some of them land on a path and are squashed into oblivion, some land on the asphalt only to find that the cracks are not big enough to support their life. Others take root only to have weed killer douse them. Then others find their way to ground that will welcome them. The dandelion spreads its seeds like the sower, flinging them with the wind without taking notice of where they are going to land.

A couple of months ago, when my parents were in town, we went to the Natural Bridge. As we walked around a bend in the path, we enjoyed looking at the fish in the stream and the wildflowers that grew along the path, some in carefully tended beds others in natural areas. Then we looked up and saw the massive structure of the bridge. We were struck by the magnitude and decided to sit on one of the benches and look at it or a while.

After sitting there, listening to the water flow through the archway simply amazed that water had cut this channel, I looked at the side of the rock wall and saw not just a small wildflower growing in the cracks but a tree! About 20 feet off the ground there was a tree growing on the rock wall. This wasn’t just a sapling either. The trunk of this tree was a good foot and a half wide. I couldn’t imagine how the tree could have enough roots to live even less thrive. But yet, here it was, a tree growing on the rock. Certainly no one had planted that tree there. A pinecone just happened to deposit its seed in just the right place at just the right time for this tree to take root. The seeds had to be spread haphazardly to find this piece of good soil.

Jesus offers his interpretation to the parable in which he describes what the various types of soil represent. There are the birds that snatch away the word before it can grow, rocky soil in which believers can thrive but only until the going gets tough, soil that is covered in thorns in which believers can thrive until the thorns of this world lure them away and choke the word out of them. But then there is the good soil – that place where the seed will not only yield fruit but an amazing and unexpected amount of fruit. The returns that Jesus is talking about would have been unheard of in his time. A tenfold yield would have been a pretty good yield of grain but Jesus is talking about thirty-fold, sixty-fold, and even one hundredfold! That’s a little over the top. But that is what Jesus says happens when one hears and understands the word.

We all want to be the good soil. We want the have God’s word planted in us and to grow and thrive in the Word, right? Do we want to be ground that yields an amazing and unexpected amount of grain? What would it mean to yield that much fruit? We don’t want to think about being any type of ground besides the good ground.

I was reading a sermon by Barbara Brown Taylor on this passage and she pointed out that this parable is called the parable of the sower and not the parable of the different types of ground. The focus of the parable is on the actions of the sower. The sower, that slightly crazy-seeming spreader of seeds who flings them to the wind, abundantly spreading the seed wherever it may land, is indeed the focus of the parable.

This parable is a part of a series of parables that we will be looking at over the next few weeks known as the Kingdom Parables. All of the parables in this section where Jesus is teaching from a boat pushed a little out from the shore tells the listeners something about this kingdom that Jesus is proclaiming. Each of the parables gives the listeners a snapshot of one aspect of the kingdom.

In the parable of the sower the seeds of the kingdom are being flung far and wide. The sower (who is God) tosses the seed all over the earth, just to see where it might sprout. We can’t always identify where the good soil is. Sometimes we can see a plot of land that looks to be good soil only to find that it is not. Other times, we see places where we think nothing can grow and yet we find trees growing out of the side of a rock wall. The sower is always tossing seed knowing that good soil can be in the most unexpected places.

The sower is throwing seed to the ends of the earth. Perhaps instead of trying to make sure that we have our own ground neatly drawn out into furrows, we should be a little like the sower and fling the seed we have received all over the place. Perhaps we can spread the seed of the gospel all over the place, since we can never tell where there might be good soil on the side of a rock or where there might be good soil in the midst of a briar patch. We are to fling the gospel wide, not knowing where it will land and whether it will bear fruit. But we are to spread it nonetheless.

God has flung the seed of the kingdom wide. This kingdom we will hear in the coming weeks is like wheat that is sown with weeds, like a mustard seed, yeast, treasure in a field, a pearl, and a net full of fish. One theme that runs throughout these parables is abundance. The kingdom of God is abundant. The seeds are flung wide and will yield abundant fruit. Let us fling the seeds we have been given, sharing them with all we can, knowing that God is the one who can make them grow.

The kingdom of God is like a sower who went out and sowed seed on the path, in the rocks, in the briar patch, and in good soil. Then the seed yielded an abundant harvest. Let anyone with ears to hear, hear.