7th Sunday after Pentecost, Year A
Matthew 13:1–9, 18–23
July 12, 2026
I love to plant seeds. Inch by inch, row by row, I love to watch my garden grow, and while I have yet to master a yield of one hundred, sixty, or even thirtyfold in a harvest, there is nevertheless something innate in me that must plant those seeds regardless of the outcome. But any gardener would shake their head at the way this sower in the parable goes about it. A farmer would know that the business plan this sower has in regards to yields and productivity is ridiculous! One would most likely hear this parable and shake their heads muttering things like, “wasteful!” and “careless.” What is this person’s plan?
Yet, your ways are not my ways, says the Lord. And indeed they are not. What we might find wasteful and careless, lacking foresight and strategy for the highest yield on investment, God reveals an alternate plan. A plan that is ambiguous, a plan that is uncertain, a plan that scholar Amy Frykholm would call the “wisdom of insecurity.”
“Listen!” That’s the word which Jesus begins and ends this parable. He just walks out his door and sits by the sea, looks at everyone gathering around him and says, “Listen, the sower went out to sow.” And right away we think of a farmer who has prepared neat little rows, doling out just enough seed in case he might need more later or just in case there isn’t enough, a frugal farmer.
I feel like in almost every parable and teaching Jesus mentions in the Gospels tries to get people to understand that in God’s kingdom THERE IS ENOUGH. And to illustrate this Jesus talks about a sower, which can be God and by connection, also the disciples, and this sower is just tossing seed everywhere! The birds eat it, it lands on rocks where there wasn’t any soil, it lands on the parched earth with no water, tossed in the weeds, and only 20% was sown in good soil. Now that seems frivolous.
Can you imagine the people around Jesus, many of them farmers, most probably growing some food for themselves or scavenging for what was leftover from a harvest, all dependent on whatever the earth produces, puzzled and even laughing at Jesus’ depiction of the sower. What is this crazy person doing, scattering seed on ground that he knows won’t yield a harvest? Why bother?
Jesus tries to get us to open ourselves up to the idea of a God that does bother. “A sower went out to sow” invoked a common scene in Jesus’ day where a peasant is working hard to eke out a living in a harsh environment and inhospitable world. There are adversaries and obstacles for the poor who don’t have the privileges and opportunities that others have, so it just may be that what appears to be reckless, poor planning, or wasteful is actually not just an act of carelessness or frivolity, but of desperation. Yet even in desperation there is hope. And hope appears when some seed lands on good soil.
And in the case of the soil of our hearts that receives the seed, the word of God, some folks’ soil never even gets a chance before the birds snatch the seeds away from them. Some hearts are so hard the seed just bounces off. Some folks will hear God speak a word and not take it in long enough for it to take root. And honestly, the truth is that no one is fertile soil all the time. Yet God bothers with every single one of us, throwing the seed everywhere, acting more like the peasant than the elite, always giving the soil of our hearts another chance knowing that given time it just might become fertile. Giving every opportunity because of the inherent dignity of every human being, the belovedness of every creature of God’s creation.
Is God so desperate for all of Creation to become fertile soil, to receive a return that is so extravagant as to be more than enough, both spiritually and physically that God acts with such reckless abandon? Data on traditional cropping systems of the first century suggest typical yields of four, seven, up to elevenfold making the hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty all magnificently unusual. This plethora is the hallmark of the Kingdom of God, the Garden God is always leading us back to. Such yields anticipate the establishment of God’s just reign which provides abundant resources for all and the destruction of the cycle of poverty.1
Octavia Butler writes in her unsettling prophetic novel, “The Parable of the Sower,” about Lauren, who is in the process of inventing a new religion as she maneuvers the increasingly horrific conditions of the world around her. Instead of focusing on all of the endings, she concentrates her attention on all of the possible new beginnings. She calls her new religion Earthseed, and speaks of a God whose very essence is change. As Lauren sees it, we are the sowers, and as such, we have the constant opportunity to shape the forces of change.2
So what if we opened ourselves to this God that doesn’t plan things the way we think would be most profitable, who seems to change as much as God stays the same, and who challenges us through these weird parables to see things differently, who is always urging us to see possibility rather than this is how we’ve always done it? What if we considered the wisdom of insecurity?
Where we often don’t bother if we can’t have instant gratification or a dopamine fix, it might take us a minute to sit and ponder a God who does bother. And why. In this parable that demonstrates the wisdom of insecurity, the sower just scatters the seed on all kinds of different terrain instead of calculating how each and every seed should be planted and cultivated. Why bother if you can’t be sure of the outcome? Why bother with those that seem to serve no purpose or we would even call “useless?” Why would God bother with you and me? If the seed was only planted when the harvest could be assured, would God even plant at all?
This “wisdom of insecurity” just might be inviting us to sow the seeds of God’s word–the words of love, justice, hope, and compassion –regardless of outcome, casting these seeds without any guarantees. What if that was what Jesus was calling the church to do? To cultivate a willingness to be surprised. Perhaps the invitation to sow in this way is more important than the outcome.
One of my brothers in the Franciscan Order I belong to, Gary Nabhan, is a renowned agricultural ecologist and botanist who writes that farmers in Syria will sow in such a way in that arid climate and sow a variety of barley seeds at the same time. “This is because different seeds respond to different conditions,” he writes. “Resilience, adaptability, and diversity are the vital factors.”3
Since Jesus uses parables to teach, these agricultural stories are meant for us. A parable is more than a story but the word is difficult to define. In the Greek it means, “to throw along beside.” (Kind of a perfect pun for the parable of the sower!) This indicates a comparison in which one thing, in this case God’s kingdom, is set beside something else. Most parables start off with a comparison: “The kingdom of Heaven is like…” co-opting an imperial worldview to assert the triumph of God’s empire over that of the Roman empire, and any empire. God is constantly turning our worldview upside down.
This parable of the Sower is Jesus’ way of teaching his followers to live in this way. And today that points to the power of resilience, adaptability, and diversity when what lies before us looks like a hopeless landscape. Those that claim to be followers and disciples of Jesus not only prepare the soil of their own hearts to receive the word of God and let it flourish, but also throw that seed out everywhere without judgment.
And how do we know it has taken root? How do we know the lovers of God? By their fruit. And what is the fruit of the Spirit of God? Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control. While all this fruit is a work in progress, and sometimes our hearts are rocky, nevertheless, in God’s reckless abandon and jubilant abundance, God will, with suspected frivolity, give everything until these seeds take root.
Do you have ears? Listen! Jesus says. The kingdom of heaven is like a God who will throw seeds to everyone, everywhere. You get some seeds and you get some seeds, everybody gets the seeds of God’s love. Throw it out there, my friends. May we cultivate good soil in our own hearts and may we have that wisdom of insecurity in us that we may not withhold the scattering of God’s love in the world–our job is to sow with God, toss the seeds of love and hope and food for all–it’s God’s job to worry about the results.
Magdalena's Musings 