Originally published April 19, 2010

Jesus’ sower plants his seeds in many different environments. The stones, the thorns, and the wayside all cause the seed to die, whereas the good ground is the one place where the seed may grow and become fruitful. Each of these environments are paralleled by the student and his or her ability to learn, and if the seed of knowledge is planted in a student with a good mind, it will be able to grow, and its fruits will be unique ideas developed by that student. The difficulty shared by the teacher and sower is the challenge of finding the good ground for their seeds to be planted in.

            The sower’s seeds represent the educational material that a teacher has to offer his or her students. The sower can choose what to do with these seeds or where to plant them, just as the teacher may choose whom he enlightens with his knowledge. However, first the sower must find good ground to plant his seeds in, and know how to plant them properly, so that they may grow “some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty” (Matthew 13, 23). Such is the job of a teacher, who must find a good student to educate, and then know how to teach him or her in a way that they understand the concept, and actually learn from the teaching, and thus are able to create their own ideas about it. Jesus demonstrates this ability to teach as he delivers his lessons in parables, so that his disciples can understand his teachings and benefit from them.  Jesus uses the parable of the sower so that his disciples may learn and understand how to receive the Word of God. A teacher may use various methods to make his or her students comprehend the material, and provide the seeds with fertile ground to grow in.

            It is possible, however, that this benefit is only temporary, as a seed may be cast into a stony place and grow, but have shallow roots, then die off when faced with adversity, similar to a student who maintains a provisional, and shallow, interest in the teachings, but then disregards them as they become unimportant. This superficial interest can be seen in the question asked by Phillip in the Sermon on the Mount. “Is this going to be on the test?” (Sermon on the Mount, Phillip) Phillip asked Jesus. The question demonstrates an initial growth of the seed of Jesus’ sermon, however this seed will soon die, and the length of its life depends on the answer Jesus gives him. If Jesus says no, then Phillip will ignore Jesus’ sermon that day because he will not need to know it for the test. If Jesus says yes, then Phillip will pay attention, but then after the test he will cast the knowledge from his memory, because the only reason he learned it in the first place was to do well on the test.

            The next possibility is that the seeds could land amongst the thorns, where they would be choked and die, like a teaching cast upon an unwilling learner. During the Sermon on the Mount, Andrew claims that “John the Baptist’s disciples don’t have to learn this stuff” (Sermon on the Mount, Andrew). Andrew’s statement demonstrates the choking of the Word, and exhibits an attempt to discourage Jesus from teaching anything more than what other religious figures teach, so that Andrew does not have to learn any material excess to the ‘standardized religious curriculum’ at that time. However, Jesus knows that “many prophets and righteous men have desired to hear those things that ye hear, and have not heard them” (Matthew 13, 17). Jesus sees it as a privilege to learn what his disciples are learning, while Andrew sees it as a burden, which reveals to Jesus the thorns of Andrew’s mind that Jesus has tossed his seeds in to, never to become fruitful.

            An unfruitful outcome of a seed can also be seen as it falls by the wayside, and does not develop at all, which compares to a lesson taught to one who is not paying attention or does not understand it. A teaching that fell to the wayside can be seen in Matthew. During the Sermon on the Mount, Mathew simply exclaimed “Huh?” (Sermon on the Mount, Mathew) as Jesus was giving his Sermon. This exclamation exposes Matthew’s lack of either an understanding or an attention span, or both, and shows how Jesus’ seed simply fell into unfertile ground, and nothing happened to it.

            All of these possibilities, stones, thorns, and the wayside, end up in a seed not being able to grow healthily and fruitfully, just as the parallel environments within a student’s mind provide no foundation for the lesson to be processed and be turned into independent ideas of the student. However, there is one environment where seeds may survive and become fruitful, and ideas can bloom. This environment is the good ground.

            The good ground is the one place where a seed may fall and grow to become a flowering plant, just as a good mind provides the necessities for a teaching to become genuine knowledge within the student. The closest example of good ground in the Sermon on the Mount is John. John asks “Would you repeat that, slower?” (Sermon on the Mount, John). Although the seed may have initially fallen by the wayside, as John didn’t understand the Sermon at first, the ground is good enough that there is potential for the seed to grow. What the seed needs is for the sower to take time and replant it more carefully, or, in John’s case, for Jesus to explain the lesson to John again, just with more care. Because as long as the ground is good, and has potential for the seed’s growth, the sower will be able to replant it, just as the teacher can clarify the concept and enlighten the student.