Luke 8:4-15
When a great crowd gathered and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable: “A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell on the earth and was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered for lack of moisture. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. Some fell into good soil, and when it grew it produced a hundredfold.” As he said this, he called out, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen.”
Then his disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables, so that ‘looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand.’
“Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. The ones on the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved. The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe only for awhile and in time of testing fall away. As for what fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear; but they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.. But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.”
Rabbi or teacher is a title used in the Gospels for Jesus, and in these verses we see that skill exercised so well as historian Luke continues his account of Jesus’ peripatetic ministry. He has been more located in one area but is now out and moving again with his group up to Magdala, a village near the city of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. The companions are the 12 disciples and several women (including Mary Magdalene) cured of what are called “evil spirits and infirmities.” Knowing He was coming, the local people have gathered, and now Jesus speaks to them.
He will tell them a parable (by definition a story in any of several styles—metaphor, fable, proverb, etc.) It is a story that as people close to the soil, villagers and farmers, they can relate to. He tells the parable, perhaps more clear to some than others, then calls out, Let anyone with ears to hear listen!
Those ready to receive the parable’s message could believe they have received a secret of God about His kingdom and now being given to the people through the teaching of Jesus. Those not ready for this message of the Lord, the ones opposed to Jesus, refusing to receive him as their rabbi, teaching of God, would hear it, understand it in only a vague, indirect or shadowy form. They did not “get it.”
So there Jesus is as the disciples are asking what the parable means, and He is answering with a reference, as often, to an Israelite prophet of centuries before (Isaiah 6:9), To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables, so that ‘looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand.
by Ken Wylie
for the Adult Discipleship and Membership Development Council
