As a preacher, I loved shocking my congregation from the pulpit. That way I got their attention. One Sunday, I told them I was a compulsive gambler. They nearly fainted. Worse, I told them that I used God to justify my gambling because I believed that God is a gambler who wants me to gamble, too.
Now permit me to scandalize you. Do you know God is not even a good gambler? God is a reckless, irresponsible, and incompetent gambler. That’s what the Parable of the Sower is all about. It should be rebranded the “Parable of the Gambler.” No farmer would sow seed with the kind of reckless abandon the Sower in Jesus’s parable (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23) used. Most farmers in first century Israel were poor. Seed was expensive. The seed to be sown would be hand-selected from the best of the previous season’s crop. It would be carefully stored and protected from damp and insect infestation.
No one would sow seed on a path where birds are known to feed, or on rocky ground where there is no depth of soil and it will get scorched, or among thorns or weeds that will choke the seedlings to death. Sowers sow seed on ground that is prepared and promising. To take precious seed and sow it so recklessly is irresponsible at best and incompetent at worst.
This is a story that will shock anybody in a farming community. How can a farmer allow two-thirds of good seed to go to such waste?
Jesus Is Fulfilling Isaiah’s Prophecies
Jesus is the Sower. The Gospel is the seed. The response is disappointing. Matthew begins this parable by telling us that “great crowds gathered around Jesus” (13:2). But how many in the crowds actually respond and become His disciples?
Centuries ago, the prophet Isaiah had already warned: “The people are blockheads! They stick their fingers in their ears, so they won’t have to listen; they screw their eyes shut so they won’t have to look, so they won’t have to deal with me face-to-face and let me heal them” (13:14-15 The Message). Jesus quotes Isaiah’s warning when explaining the parable to His disciples.
Despite Isaiah’s warning, Jesus sows seed knowing that two-thirds of it will be wasted. Jesus doesn’t stop preaching just because Israel doesn’t respond. Why? Jesus, I suspect, is playing one prophecy from Isaiah against another. While Isaiah 6:9-10 talks about the people not responding to God’s word, Isaiah 55:10-11 describes how God’s Word is like seed and will “not return to me empty, but accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” God’s Word will not be wasted.
Let me suggest at least three ways of resolving this paradox.
Resolving the Paradox of the Parable
First, imagine Jesus going to a dodgy Las Vegas casino. He knows the dice are loaded, the tables are crooked, and the slot machines are rigged. And yet like a super-rich playboy whose dad is one of the richest men in the world, Jesus gambles His money away. Why? Because Jesus knows His father is super-rich. The cash He is scattering is small change.
Jesus also knows His dad is super-generous. He is not only a prodigal father, but a prodigal farmer. When He created the universe, He scattered hundreds of billions of stars in 100 billion galaxies. On Planet Earth, He created hundreds of thousands of species of birds, insects, trees, plants, and flowers.
Jesus also knows there is an underclass that will starve if not for the gambling industry — the cleaners, waiters, security guards, cooks, tellers, etc. Some of Jesus’s money is going to feed, clothe, and pay for their needs. Jesus knows that the religious leaders of His day will reject this underclass without the good news He is preaching. The prostitutes, tax collectors, drunkards, slaves, and outcasts are waiting for the crumbs to fall from His table. It does not matter if two-thirds of it is wasted. The people who really matter are being blessed.
Second, if God is so extravagantly generous in scattering His Word to the point of squandering it, I am immediately put to shame by so stingily receiving it. I am provoked into diagnosing the condition of my receptivity. Am I so closed-minded that birds can devour the seed without even giving it the faintest chance to sprout? Am I a shallow and fickle person with no depth whose life is like rocky ground? Am I so distracted by my worries and so attracted by worldly riches that I allow thorns and weeds to suffocate and strangle the good news of God’s Kingdom? Or am I like good soil waiting to burst forth with an abundance of 30-, 60- and 100-fold fruit?
Third, I am both the soil and the sower. God gambles. As a preacher, I gamble. I stand in the pulpit rolling dice and scattering the seed of God’s Word. Occasionally, I get lucky. Someone says, “Your sermon really touched me.” Once in a blue moon, I hit the jackpot. Someone comes up to me and says, “I have decided to follow Jesus.” But while I gamble away God’s Word, most of the time I know I am losing. Church attendance rises and falls, discipleship is shallow, and I am often disheartened, discouraged, and despondent.
Van Gogh’s Sower
One of the most inspiring paintings that gives me hope is Vincent van Gogh’s The Sower. Van Gogh was a committed Christian who served for a time as a missionary to coal miners in the Borinage district of Belgium. Some were sick and starving, without adequate food, water, or warm clothing. A mining explosion had left many in a horrible condition. They had little interest in his preaching.
But van Gogh did not give up. He gave away everything he owned, including most of his clothing. He ripped up his own bed sheets to provide them with bandages, gave up his bed to a poor man, and slept on straw on the floor. This was van Gogh gambling the Gospel and sowing the seed. By such actions he won the miners’ admiration and was able to convert some of them. The miners called him the “Christ of the coal mines.” A church committee overseeing van Gogh found him too zealous and fired him for not dressing well or preaching eloquently.
Van Gogh experienced the disappointment of his own sowing. He reflects this by giving two-thirds of his painting to seeds that are devoured by birds or scorched by the sun or choked by thorns. But he overcomes this discouragement with the vibrant blue color of the foreground, which represents the divine. He draws our attention away from the Sower’s failure by painting an abundant growth of the wheat in the background.
Notice how the sun and not the Sower dominates the painting. The huge sun is at the centre; the Sower is far to the right. For van Gogh, the sun symbolizes Jesus. Doug Adams notes that this is not the burning sun that scorches the seed; it is a nourishing sun that animates the growing wheat. For the Sower who often faces discouragement, the sun is a sign of hope. The Sower does not look back to see which seeds die and which ones grow. The sun rules the entire painting — and through the process of sowing, the Son of God will one day rule the entire earth. This painting is what inspires me even today to continue to sow the seed and gamble the Gospel.
I gamble because God wants me to gamble. I gamble because my Father God is a super-rich spendthrift who does not mind me scattering and squandering His resources. I gamble because God has promised that His Word will not come back void. I gamble because hitting the jackpot once in a while makes it worthwhile. I gamble (and you should, too) because God plays for high stakes — God so loved the world that He gambled away the life of His only Son so that all who believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Dr. Jules Gomes (BA, BD, MTh, PhD) has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.
