1 On that day Jesus went out of the house, and sat by the seaside. 2 Great multitudes gathered to him, so that he entered into a boat, and sat, and all the multitude stood on the beach. 3 He spoke to them many things in parables, saying, “Behold, a farmer went out to sow. 4 As he sowed, some seeds fell by the roadside, and the birds came and devoured them. 5 Others fell on rocky ground, where they didn’t have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of earth. 6 When the sun had risen, they were scorched. Because they had no root, they withered away. 7 Others fell among thorns. The thorns grew up and choked them. 8 Others fell on good soil, and yielded fruit: some one hundred times as much, some sixty, and some thirty. 9 He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Matthew 13:1-9 - World English Bible

In Matthew 13, Jesus taught the people from a boat, just offshore. In our minds, we can see the people standing on the side of a hill towards the shore, so they could hear the Lord clearly. There, he told the parable of the Sower and the Seed. I like to call this story the parable of the Wasteful Farmer. Even though Galilee had rich soil and produced greater yields than neighboring areas, foreigners owned the land, rented it out to tenant farmers and extracted so much profit these farmers lived a subsistent levels. Beyond that, the tenants fed their families from their take and kept just enough seed to plant for the next season. They tended the soil, planted carefully, nursed the seedlings and prayed drought or disease would not devastate the crop; that misfortune would mean starvation and death for family members. So, when Jesus told this story, he pricked the ears of his audience by its absurdity. What farmer in his right mind would be so careless, so wasteful? He threw seed every which way. The yields Jesus described were equally absurd. Most farmers hoped for a yield two to three times what they planted; yields of thirty, sixty or a hundred were unthinkable. And that was why he told such stories; there absurdity made people wonder: what was this rabbi really talking about?

We'll explore the answer to that riddle next time.

Have you wondered what the Lord was telling you?