Mark 4: 1-20 The Sower Went Out to Sow

Jesus gives his Apostles and us a very clear reason why he gives us parables, "to those on the outside, everything comes in parables so that they may look and see but not perceive, and hear and listen but not understand, in order that they may not be converted and forgiven."  He then fully breaks down the parable of the sower for them to understand. 

If you grew up with the Way, then you have no difficulty understanding parables, but there are those in RCIA programs and other Christian faiths who do not understand and strive to know better how we come to know what we know.  This was true of Jesus' own disciples as they start following him compared to the others whose parents were followers or who had been with Jesus since the beginning.  There were those too who watched him heal, but did not stay to hear him preach, and also those who plotted against him.  Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God in images that were common to the people.  What a wonderful thing because they could go back home and in their daily work, they could meditate upon his words about the sower as they themselves sowed in the field planting the seeds in the rows by throwing it and leaving what grew up to God.  How much more poignant would the lesson come!  To understand that the sower plants the seeds of the Word in each life, but then to see the crows come and snatch the seed away, like Satan comes to take away the Word sown in their hearts.  But the seeds are also sown on rocky ground, and although they "receive it with joy.  But they have no roots; they last only for a short time."  How many of us have known someone try to make a new year's resolution only to drop it after several months?  Sometimes people do that with faith too in trying to understand better they jump fully into their faith without realizing that faith is a way of life, not some commodity easily come to a person.  "Those sown among thorns...they are the people who hear the word, but worldly anxiety, the lure of riches, and the craving for other things choke the word."  To those who are fertile ground, those who are nourished in the way of life, those who find loving and supportive friends and families, those are the ones who will bear good fruit and whose lives will bear the fruit of the Kingdom and share it with others, Jesus indicates.  It is through their lives that they follow the Way.   Jesus tells them that they will "bear fruit thirty and sixty and a hundredfold, "  which are incredible percentages of the harvest to yield.  They would have been amazed and it would have been more than they could imagine.  That is our hope too, that God will allow us to have that kind of good fruit be produced in us to the point that we can't even imagine the good it does for others.