The Parable of the Sower

A homily delivered at Sunday Service on 12 July, 2026

The Parable of the Sower, sometimes called the Parable of the Seeds (Matthew 13:1-23), is probably one of the most famous stories in the Bible, certainly one of the most famous parables. For me I think it was one of the earliest stories I ever heard in Sunday School. So we are often very familiar with it, but it’s important that we can hear it afresh.

Jesus gets into a boat and pushes out from the shore, so that all the people on the beach can see him, and he tells this story about a farmer sowing seeds as they used to do in those days, by hand. Some seed falls to the ground and the birds eat them up before they can take root. Some seed falls on rocky ground, and they start to grow, but they just dry up in the sun. Some falls among thorns, but the thorns grow stronger and choke them out. And some seeds fall on good soil, and grow into beautiful heads of grain for the harvest.

The Parable of the Sower is a picture of how people respond to God’s message when it comes to them.

Jesus was essentially describing what he was seeing in the people on the beach in front of him. Many people had probably been following him around for days. Among those people in the crowd some were probably listening intently and nodding with him, some were sceptical, some probably just didn’t stay till the end of the story.

What I love about this story is that it recognises that life is hard, and belief is fragile. It recognises how vulnerable we are to letting go of faith. These various influences that Jesus talks about – trouble, persecution, money – they’re things impact a person from outside of them, and they can also  impact the growth of the message of Jesus inside a person.

But we know we’re meant to be the people of the harvest. They’re the good guys in the story. So why is it that sometimes we’re feeling more like the dry and rocky ground, or that we’re being swallowed up by the thorns of life, and faith seems uncertain?

I think the answer is in the Romans passage we read today, Romans 8:1-11, where Paul paints this picture of a life of the flesh and a life of the Spirit. As humans, we struggle in dealing with spiritual things in a spiritual realm and a God who is Spirit, when our human existence is so physical. We understand things through sight, and touch and scent and sound – that’s our human experience. And God knows this. He designed us as we are, as creatures suited to the physical world – but still having this spiritual dimension designed for connection with him as our Creator.

But the truth is, spiritual things can seem just out of our reach or distant. And the Bible tells us that the distance between us and God is increased by our sin, this stuff we think and do that’s wrong and that just reinforces how far away we are from God – who as Spirit is pure and holy and good.

So it is a good thing for us that this very Creator, seeing the world he has made and the trouble it has gotten itself into, adopted into himself the frailty of human flesh in his Son Jesus. We call this the Incarnation – as one of my old priests used to say (I think after C.S. Lewis): “Jesus is God with skin on”. In Jesus God meets us exactly in this place of difference between us and God, and to bring these two worlds, that gap between the spiritual and the physical together united fully and completely in his holy Son.

And this is the message of the kingdom that Jesus was talking about: God comes to us. God meets us as we are, reconciles with us through Jesus in his death on the cross.  Paul says in that passage – all that stuff that belongs to the flesh: our weakness, our sin, our mistakes, our falling short - "There is now no condemnation" for that, for those who are in Christ Jesus, because God in Jesus  has taken it all away – all of it.

And we now have an invitation to a new way of life under his kingly rule, because he is the king of his kingdom – and we must take a step from a life ruled only by the physical human experience, to a life focused on the spiritual. When we welcome the seed of Jesus’ message into our lives, this shift starts to take place. And it becomes clear to us as it says in Romans 8 verse 6 that “to set the mind on the flesh is death,” – we become like the seeds that die off – “but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” – and that’s like the harvest.

So if we want to be the people of the harvest, we must become more and more people of the Spirit rather than people of the flesh alone. That means turning our eyes, our hearts, our minds to spiritual things – with the help of reading Scripture and prayer, with the help of church – so we are more and more influenced by God’s ways, God’s will and God’s choices – than we are influenced by troubles, and persecutions and wealth. When we share this message of transformation with others, and others also receive the seed of faith, we see the harvest grow and grow and grow.

But we forget this brilliant message sometimes, don’t we?

If there’s one other thing the Parable of the Sower reminds us: it’s that so much of faith is holding on – just keeping the faith in the midst of doubt. Because life is full of all kinds of troubles - like invading birds, rocky ground, thorns and weeds. Human life is full of suffering and challenge. And in some of those hard times it is easy to doubt and let go. We might start asking, “Where are you, God, in all of this? I can’t see you!”

Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians that we walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor 5:7). In those times of difficulty, we need to hold onto the seed of faith within us – that God does love us, that God is faithful, that he is for us – especially when it’s not clear what God is doing or why life has turned out the way it has.

And we need to recognise that the doubt we experience is – profoundly human.

Do you ever think that faith would have been easier if you were right there with Jesus in the flesh, by the lake of Galilee? Well, the truth is, even those who were present with Jesus in the flesh did not have “perfect” faith.

How many times did Jesus exclaim, “O you of little faith!” to his closest friends?

In Mark chapter 9, there was the father of the child who kept having fits and convulsions, and he brings the child to Jesus for healing, saying “I believe, help my unbelief”. He had faith and doubt together.

There was also doubting Thomas, who would not believe that Jesus had risen unless he could see the marks in Jesus’ hand and side from his crucifixion.

And right at the end of the gospel of Matthew, after Jesus’ resurrection, when he is sending the disciples out into all the world to make disciples in the Great Commission, the Bible says in Matthew 28:17, “they worshipped him, but some doubted”.

And there it is. Faith is almost always mixed with doubt. Even so, the call on us is to live by the Spirit.

So doubt need not frighten us. Having doubts does not mean there is no faith. Doubt actually points to the fact that faith is present. 

The challenge of our faith is to move through the physical world constantly returning our mind spiritual things. When we have feelings of doubt, we need to recognise that moment, and invite the Holy Spirit to come and refresh us, to help us once again reorient our minds and hearts to the things of God. It can also help us to go back to the Bible – in Psalm 119 we read, “Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path” – reading the Bible switches on the light so we can see and understand spiritual things.

I used to think the sower in the Parable of the Seeds was very careless. Why would you waste so many seeds on hard ground. But since the sower represents God, I now see it as God’s generosity to us, in our feebleness. He throws out his message into the world with such abandon, such wildness, that it reaches every corner of the earth – if only we have the ears to hear. God will honour the heart who seeks him. And those seeds can land anywhere – even in me, and even in you.

Elizabeth Scott