THE PARABLE OF THE

SOWER

WHY DOES JESUS SAY:

“Do you not understand this parable? How then will you
understand all the parables?”

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 To Nivo,
To Tsiry and Dermott and their wives Noémie and Christelle

For Marine and Natasha

Quotations of the Bible are from The New King James version

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 Introduction: The Kingdom of God

The Gospel of Mark is chronologically the first of the Gospels. The parable of
the sower is his first parable. It introduces Jesus’ teaching in chapter 4.

Until then, Jesus has manifested the “Kingdom of God” / “Kingship of God”
through exorcisms and healings. The concept of the Kingdom of God is broad.
The statements that describe it are diverse. It is good to give an overview here.

The Kingdom of God

First of all, the Kingdom of God that Jesus speaks of is something alive. It is
mobile (Mk 1.15), it comes to us (Mt 12.28), it is proclaimed (Mk 1.15).
Then its nature is particularly active. It radiates (Mt 13.44), it attracts (Lk
16:16). It grows (Mk 4.26) and makes one grow (Mt 13.33). It acts with power
(Mt 12.28) and it heals (Lk 9.11).
At the same time, its offer’s feature is very relational. It calls, it hires (Mt
20.21), it invites to the feast (Mt 22.2). It is given (Lk 12.32) and it is received
(Mt 10.15), it avails itself to be taken (Lk 16.16) but it can also be taken back
(Mt 21.43). It confers (Mt 16.19) but it can also reject (Mt 13.47). Hence, it
delimits an inside and an outside (Mk 4.11); from inside it is deemed obvious,
from outside it seems totally obscure.
It still has specific entry conditions. The person who wants to enter in it must
consider it as a priority (Mt 6.33), as an absolute (Mt 5.20) and in his quest he
must go beyond the point of no return (Lk 9.62). In other words, he must give
himself entirely. To this end, he must convert (Mk 1.15), believe (Mk 1.15),
repent (Mk 9.47). He must show humility (Mk 10.14), fidelity (Mt 5.10),
obedience (Mt 7.21). He must let go of all attachment to wealth (Mk 10.23). He
must consider the sacrifice (Mt 19.12) and remain ultimately aware that
meeting all of these conditions is a work of God’s grace (Mk 10.27).

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Finally, the identity of the Kingdom is eternal. The Kingdom is transcendent (Mt
20.21). It is a heavenly legacy (Mt 25.34) and a promise of communion with the
Father (Lk 22.30). As such it is a beatitude: Blessed is he who shall eat bread in
the Kingdom of God (Lk 14.15).

In the end, it appears that the definition of the Kingdom that Jesus describes or
alludes to includes the gift, the Giver and the recipient. The Kingdom is above
all a gracious gift from God. It is the powerful manifestation of a God who gives
himself and wants to make his supremacy prevail on earth as in heaven: Your
kingdom come, says Jesus. The Kingdom of God is the expression within the
apparent emptiness of the world, of a paternal Presence that asks only to
invest us in order to make us reign with it. It is the gift of a new authority. It is
the territory that the Holy Spirit appropriates.

The Holy Spirit awakens by his power, his energy, and his love what is inert,
virtual or potential. It brings faith in the unbeliever, hope in the desperate,
concern for others in the narcissist. He heals what is sick, protects what is
weak, resuscitates what is dead, brings closer what is far away. The Holy Spirit
associates, links, grants and ultimately unites. It creates an interaction that
brings life, makes one stand up (Mt 13.33), makes one grow. The partnership it
creates between the giver, the gift and the recipient intricately involve the
protagonists between themselves. This entanglement now binds the partners
in such a way that they will not stop interacting and that the fate of one will
affect the fate of the other. The story of Jesus goes on and in particular his
resurrection attests that even death cannot interrupt this communion. The
apostle Paul put it this way: “neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities
nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,  nor height nor depth, nor
any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8.38-39). In the words of Jesus: “Assuredly, I
say to you, there is no one who has left (all) for my sake and the gospel’s, who
shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time…and in the age to come,

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eternal life” (Mk 10.29-30). The Kingdom is the most excellent investment ever.
“Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” says Jesus (Matt 6:20).

Hostility to the Kingdom: a new definition

After preaching, Jesus came under radical criticism which attributes his
deliverance and healing power to Satan. One cannot imagine a greater and more
offending misunderstanding of the ministry of Jesus. Jesus says of this offense
that it is an unforgivable blasphemy against the Holy Spirit whose power is at
work. Salvation cannot reach a person who attributes to the devil what God is
doing.
Marc’s reader won’t miss the paradox. It lies in the fact that the unclean spirit,
from which Jesus had freed a possessed man in an inaugural deliverance in
chapter 1, had himself asserted that Jesus had come to destroy evil spirits:
“What have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? Did You come to destroy us?
I know who You are—the Holy One of God” (Mk 1.24). In its own way, the
unclean spirit makes the first “confession of faith” relating to Jesus: he came to
destroy the works of Satan.

The two anchors of Jesus’ battle

The “confession of faith” of the unclean spirit offers a complementary
interpretation of what the Kingdom of God is. Jesus comes to give God back to
human beings and to give human beings back to God. In this sense, he is a
mediator; he comes to reunite what has been separated. To this end, he
manifests a power, the power of the Spirit of God, capable of destroying the
obstacles that stand in the way of this communion, capable of snatching from
the hands of the devil what does not belong to him and of casting out the latter
from the space it has occupied. Jesus is led by a pathos of conquest or of re-
conquest. He comes to reclaim what belongs to god and is due to Him. This is
the first anchor of its action, the most fundamental.

This pathos of conquest, through the claim it expresses, explains why some,
including Judas, saw in Jesus the one who would fight the Roman occupation

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and challenge its sovereignty. But his purpose is different, as evidenced by the
healing story of the demonic of Gerasa (Mk 5.1-20) in which the sick person
turns out to be possessed by a "legion" : For He said to him, “Come out of the
man, unclean spirit!” Then He asked him, “What is your name?” And he
answered, saying, “My name is Legion; for we are many (Mk 5.8-9). If Jesus
attacks any "legions", it is first and foremost those within us. The parallel with
the Roman occupation1 is especially present to allow an allegory and underline
a paradox: the real enemy, the impure occupant, the one who should be
expelled and sent home, is a spiritual enemy.

Ce pathos of conquest also explains the concern of the Jewish authorities in

Jerusalem (the Sadducees) towards Jesus, the reason for his accusation, his
appearance before the prefect of Judea Pontius Pilate, his humiliation and his
death on the cross on which was inscribed the inscription: Jesus the Nazarene,
king of the Jews (Jn 19.19).
The pathos of conquest is a Yes addressed to the human being and a No
addressed to the forces and powers which alienate him. In Jesus' preaching and
actions therefore, like Jeremiah’s vocation, there is no construction without
destruction, no rehabilitation without decline, no admission without exclusion,
no yes without a no. “Behold, I have put My words in your mouth. See, I have
this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out and to pull
down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant.” (Jer 1.10). The
kingdom of the Evil One and his “avatars” must be dismantled. Satan is the
adversary that stands between God and humans. Jesus came to overcome him
and to teach us how to overcome him in turn. It is the second anchor of his
ministry which is actually the backside of the first. As the German scholar
Joachim Jeremias writes in his New Testament Theology :
“In this world enslaved by Satan, Jesus makes his appearance and he comes
with the authority of God, not only to exercise mercy, but especially to resume
the fight against the Evil One.”
The author of the first epistle of John puts it this way: The Son of God was
manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil (1 Jn 3.8). The New
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The 10th Fretensis Legion, dispatched to Judea during the First Jewish War and subsequently maintained as an
occupying force in Jerusalem, sported a boar on its standard.

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Testament thoroughly covers this battle between 2 kingdoms, the kingdom of
Evil, Satan, and the kingdom of God that Jesus comes to proclaim.

The center of gravity of Jesus’ ministry

The two anchors which are the re-conquest of what belongs to God and the
victory against the Evil One at work in the world are the center of gravity of the
ministry of Jesus. They are the common denominator and the barycenter of all
his actions and all his teachings. They therefore represent the Main Set which
contains all the other subsets such as that of justice, forgiveness, healing,
deliverance, freedom, holiness ..., or even justification by faith and even of
grace. It is necessary to bring this perspective. We are too inclined to think of
certain subsets of Jesus’ ministry as the main set that would sum up all of his
work. The emphasis, sometimes disproportionate, seen among Protestants on
justification by faith is a good illustration. The emphasis on social justice is
another example. There are many examples. If we give a sub-set the status of a
main set, we lose sight of the main purpose or objective of Jesus and we
generate blind spots. In these cases, some of Jesus’ words lose their meaning.
Eventually, our theology can turn into an ideology.

Jesus’ adversary
In fact, Jesus’ adversary is not something: guilt, injustice, disease, alienation,
impiety, guilty attachment, hypocrisy, or still suffering (as in Buddhism). Even
sin is not Jesus’ first adversary although Satan and sin are closely related. Jesus’
adversary, Radical Evil - to use the words of the philosopher Immanuel Kant -
whom he came to challenge, is someone. This someone is not a human being, a
group of human beings, a race or a social class, but a spiritual force hostile to
God whom he calls Satan, adversary first (Ge 3) then accuser (Za 3) of human
beings. In the Old Testament, the book of Job represents the best testimony of
his action and the fight that God encourages us to wage against him. The
Egyptian images of the Leviathan (crocodile) and Behemoth (hippopotamus),
which represent him in Job 40, picture his character both monstrous and
hostile to human beings. These two animals were considered in Egypt (low

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epoch) as incarnations of Seth the diabolical, the god of terror, confusion and
chaos. The prophet Isaiah already used this bestial image of the Evil One by
affirming: In that day the Lord with His severe sword, great and strong, will
punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan that twisted serpent; And He
will slay the reptile that is in the sea. (27.1).

It is because he managed to resist his temptations in the desert that Jesus was
able to manifest the Kingdom of God. And it was after the Kingdom had been
spread out through the success of the mission of his disciples that Jesus said: “I
saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10.18). The apostle Paul in turn
proclaims this prophecy in his last book: “And the God of Peace will crush Satan
under your feet shortly” (Rom 16.20). The New Testament closes with the
majestic rollout of this victory in the book of Revelation which, with the
account of the fall of the human being from the book of Genesis, forms a
wonderful inclusion. We come full circle.

The parable of the sower

The human being can show solidarity with the Evil One. We have just seen it
during the controversy triggered by Jesus’ opponents who accuse him of
delivering people possessed by an unclean spirit in the name of the devil. The
accusation is logically nonsense, because the devil cannot fight against himself
and divide his own kingdom (Mk 3.24). It is also an offense against the Holy
Spirit about which Jesus can only issue a stern warning. Here we reach the
limits of the forgivable. We fall into a “black hole”.

The human being can become without noticing it or by weakness the

accomplice of the Evil One. This is why Jesus wants to teach him. He does this
in particular by means of parables, stories of the visible world told to describe
the reality of the invisible, spiritual world, both exterior and interior to human
beings. There are 4 of these parables in chapter 4 of the Gospel of Mark. Three
of them take up the agricultural image of the growth of a seed. The first is the

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parable of the sower. It is therefore already emblematic, given its preeminent
position. But it is for another even more crucial reason as well. What is this
second reason? This is the only parable about which Jesus says:

“Do you not understand this parable?

How then will you understand all the parables”.

According to Jesus, the parable of the sower gives the key to understanding the
other parables, i.e. Jesus’ other words. Why? How? What should we discover in
this parable which opens to us the spiritual world of the other parables and of
the preaching of the Kingdom of God? What is so important and precious to
discern about this story? This is precisely what we will find out.

The text

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A sower went out to sow.

 Some seed fell by the wayside,

and the birds of the air came and devoured it.
 Some fell on stony ground, where it did not have much earth;

and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth.

But when the sun was up it was scorched, and because it had no
root it withered away.

 And some seed fell among thorns;

and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop.

 But other seed fell on good ground

and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced:

some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred.

And He said to them, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

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 Interpretation
The explanation of the parable is given by Jesus himself. It must be taken into
consideration. Here it is:

 These are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown.

When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the
word that was sown in their hearts.

 These likewise are the ones sown on stony ground who, when they hear
the word, immediately receive it with gladness;

and they have no root in themselves, and so endure only for a time.

Afterward, when tribulation or persecution arises for the word’s

sake, immediately they stumble.

 Now these are the ones sown among thorns; these are the ones who
hear the word,

and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the
desires for other things entering in choke the word and it becomes
unfruitful.

 But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word,
accept it and bear fruit: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred.

We therefore have 4 different fields which correspond to 4 states of the person

scanned by Jesus - so to speak. The first 3 are negative while the last is positive.
The last sees the promise of the fruitfulness of the Kingdom being fulfilled. The
first 3 represent 3 obstacles to its achievement. Let’s see the characteristics of
these 3 negative fields.

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The first field
The first field is characterized by its insensitive, impassive, blasé, closed
character (“curved on itself”, Luther would have said). Like an unploughed road
on which the seed bounces without entering it, it shows itself impervious to the
word that God addresses to it. The Satan has no difficulty in removing this word
from him. He’s not holding it back. He doesn’t consider it. He gives it no weight,
no glory. It does not relate to him. Indifference, impassiveness, disinterest,
closure, self-sufficiency, pride, weariness, resignation, inaccessibility…? So
many categories which outline a closed understanding, an alienated frame of
mind, a real unavailability. It was in the presence of such undecidedness that
Jesus was able to say:
“ We played the flute for you, and you didn’t dance.
We mourned to you, and you did not weep. ” (Luke 7.32).
The pathos of the word of the Kingdom meets no sympathy.

This soil would need a real knowledge of the One who speaks to him. He would
need a less disenchanted listening, an appetite, a spiritual thirst, an expectation
of God in any case. He would need an inward poverty, a destitute spirit:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit” says Jesus in his first beatitude (Mt 5.3), taking
up Isaiah’s affirmation: (God) revives the spirit of the humble (Es 57.15).
The New Testament defines this state of openness with the word FAITH (Mk
2.5; 4.40; see Jn 7.37). Otherwise, it speaks of a lack of faith (Mk 4.40). The Old
Testament speaks in this case of an opening of the heart, of a heart of flesh,
that is to say a heart receptive to the word of its God. Otherwise, it speaks of a
fat heart (Ps 119.70), of a heart of stone. Hence, the prophet Ezekiel (Ez 36.26)
says: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the
heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” It consists of
exchanging a dead heart with a living heart. Lack of faith is associated with
hardness of heart in Mark 6.52 when Jesus finds that his apostles do not
understand the meaning of his miracles because their hearts were hardened.

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You will love God with all your heart
The HEART in the Bible (‫ = לב‬leb) is precisely and specifically the seat of the
inward frame of mind and refers to the inner disposition of a person. It is also
the seat of emotions, affections, will, intention and conscience. It is the
person’s hidden and deep deposit. For instance, Jesus compares it to a treasure
in which the person would draw spontaneously: “A good man out of the good
treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure
of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth
speaks.” (Luke 6.45). One of the most beautiful say about the heart comes from
the book of Proverbs (4.23): “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it
spring the issues of life”.
The heart is the subject of the most beautiful promise of God: “I will give you a
new heart” (Ezekiel 36.26). It is also subject to circumcision: “Therefore
circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer. For the
Lord your God is God of gods” (Dt 10.16). Circumcision of the heart represents
the oblation of the narcissistic part of the human being, what the apostle Paul
calls "the flesh" (Rom 8) ". In this regard, it designates a notch, a breach, a
spiritual opening, through which God can speak to His own and guide them. But
it also designates the recovered ability to LOVE GOD as attested by Ezekiel’s
same prophecy: “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My
statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.” (Ez 36.26-27). Even
more explicit is the word of Deuteronomy 30.6: "The Lord your God will
circumcise your heart, and the heart of your seed, that you love the Lord your
God  with all your heart, ... that you may live. "
Basically, it is precisely this inability or this struggle to love god with all your
heart that Jesus deplores. The deafness of the human being, his bad frame of
mind, his apathy, make God’s initiative inefficient. This is the first obstacle that
faces the preaching of the Kingdom of God. Jesus speaks about it many times
and in all tones.

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The second field
The second field is characterized by its superficial and pusillanimous character.
Like a field with stony subsoil which makes the soil level insufficient for the
seed to take root deeply, it struggles to keep the word that God addresses to it.
It stops at the surface, which is to say the appearance. This word touches him
without really questioning him, therefore without reaching him. It does not
cross his doubts, mistrust, weaknesses or fears. He is concerned, he worries, he
gets anxious. He forgets the word of trust addressed to him: “But seek first the
kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to
you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its
own things” (Mt 6.33-34). Beware of fears, anguish, bitterness that invade us,
overwhelm us and conceal the presence of God. Beware of our lack of trust in
divine justice and providence. Often the adversary of grace is the feeling of
scarcity, the fear of lacking.

The word does not cross neither his history, his weaknesses, his desires for
revenge, his postures or his religious identity. It doesn’t really penetrate him. It
does not create in him a visceral attachment. The conviction for a moment
does not extend into a persuasion to act in order to engage in the fight against
Evil and its demons. His house is built on the sand (Lk 6). He struggles to move
himself and the trials and temptations are unbearable, even prohibitive. He
could make Oscar Wilde’s words his own: “the best way to fight temptation is
to succumb to it.”

He will therefore not fight to defend the God’s good. Unlike the widow whom
Jesus praises for her obstinacy in obtaining justice from an iniquitous judge by
banging on her door all night (Lk 18.1-8), he does not insist. Fragility, fear of
losing, fear of getting lost, weakness, inconsistency, lack of sincerity, hypocrisy,
religiosity ...? So many lines that draw the outlines of a temperament hardly
willing to fight and meet the demands of the spiritual life of the Kingdom of
God.

This human field lacks a fighting frame of mind, a refusal to lose what God has
given, an aptitude to anger against anything that would endanger the divine
legacy. It lacks an eagerness, a certain violence, what the Bible calls zeal. It
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lacks that fire that Jesus was filled with when he drove the merchants out of
the temple (Mk 11.15-18). The Fathers called this aggressive mobilization the
“irascible” dimension of spiritual life. Jesus alludes to this in a word that is
often misunderstood when he speaks of the success of violent people:
“The kingdom of heaven suffers violence,
and the violent take it by force.” (Mt 11.12).

First of all, this field would need an ability to perceive the challenges of growth
and maturity against the trials it is going through, an ability to discern the
differences between the apparent posture, politically, socially or religiously
correct, and the real passion for God.
Secondly, he would need a more solid trust in the faithfulness of God, in order
to pass from believing today to believing also tomorrow, despite the
vicissitudes and torments. This ability to believe in the future and not just in
the present is called in the New Testament HOPE. It involves the crossing of
distresses and understanding what they produce. Here is how the apostle Paul
speaks of it in Romans 5.3-5: “we also glory in tribulations, knowing that
tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character,
hope.”.
Thirdly, he would have to recover the genuine zeal jealously concerned with
preserving the integrity of God’s legacy. Recover the warmth of the fire Jesus
came to ignite on earth (Lk 12.49). At the cost of spiritual warfare.

You will love God with all your strength

The Jewish Bible calls this attitude TO LOVE GOD WITH ALL OUR EDGES
(STRENGTHS). The Hebrew word used (‫ = מאוד‬strength) also means power,
ardour, violence, the considerable range of a quantity or quality, that is,
abundance and intensity. It is therefore about loving God EXTREMELY; to fight
until the “end” to keep what he has given or promised us. The reader of the
Bible will think here of Jacob’s fight with the angel (Gen 32) or even and
especially of Jesus’ fight in Gethsemane during which the devil probed the
edges of Jesus’ zeal of love for God before acknowledging its defeat.

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Jesus encourages perseverance. Forgiveness is a permanent attitude. Praying is
frequently fighting, he says (cf. Lk 18). He warns that the cross of testimony is
inevitable for those who are sincere (Mt 16). He promises God’s help or
consideration for those who face persecutions (Lk 21). He warns his disciples to
be on their guard and to watch (Mt 25). He encourages endurance. He finally
announces vomiting the lukewarm, those who dare not have the courage to be
cold nor hot (Rev 3.15-16), those who claim to disarm the believer, these
priests without God who hide behind a satisfied posture their pseudo beliefs
for which they would not sacrifice a hair.

Jesus noted and deplored our lack of zeal, the challenge we face in loving God
with all our strength. This is the second obstacle facing the establishment of
the Kingdom of God. There again, many words of Jesus allude to it.

The third field

The third field is characterized by its congested aspect. Like a field filled with
thorns and brambles in which the sown seed no longer manages to compete
with the appetite of wild plants and ends up lacking in resources, it struggles to
give the word of God the priority it is due. The latter withers and dies. Like salt
which has lost its flavour and which is good to throw away (Mt 5.13), the word
loses its uniqueness and ends up disappearing in the flood of worldly
solicitations and attachments.
In this area, mixing is the essence, everything has value and everything is worth
comparing. This field struggles to discriminate, sort, order and especially
eliminate, weed out or exclude. He is willing to say yes, but he says yes to
everything. His problem is that he can’t say no. He struggles to choose among
all the proposals he receives, struggles to keep in perspective the concerns that
assail him, struggles to prioritize and direct his desires, his passions, his
relationships, his goals, confuses the imperatives of the earthy world with
those of the Kingdom of God.
He gets tied to others, he bonds and it will end up binding him and deprive him
of his freedom. Alienation again. “grasp all, lose all” says popular wisdom.
“Woe to those who have their eyes fixed on two paths” would better suit the
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biblical context whose traditions have meditated a lot on the crucial alternative
brought by these two possible life paths. Jesus warned about this: “Enter by
the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to
destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate
and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Mt
7.13-14). God is a jealous God. He wants us all for Him and nothing but Him!
Any other attachment is considered idolatry.

Beware of overly inclusive thought systems, which want to plant without

uprooting, welcome without discriminating, consent without rejecting, saying
yes without saying no. Supporters of syncretism or relativism, their followers
do not know the precious say that in the spiritual life one does not advance
without perfect disagreement. Beware of the solicitations of appetites which
turn into covetousness and end up reigning over their subject. On such ground,
the appetite for the Kingdom of God is dulled and the person finds himself
deprived of the only food that is beneficial to him. The epitome! Covetousness,
confusion of pleasures and thoughts, attraction to personal ambitions, misuse
of freedom, fears, extreme solicitations, so many tendencies which draw a
restless, confused temperament, struggling to unite his desires with divine
desire, drawing his energy without ceasing, like the Samaritan woman (Jn 4), in
the well of illusions. This person no longer hears the psalmist’s exhortation:
“Delight yourself also in the Lord, and he shall give you the desires of your
heart” (Ps 37.4). Unlike the hero of a parable of Jesus (Mt 13), he sees the
treasure in the field, but he is not ready to sell all his goods to acquire it. He
thus sees the treasure escaping him. He will be jealous of the fervent who gave
away everything to receive it.

This field lacks desire to serve God, a capacity to direct one’s desires in such a
way as to educate them and to fine tune them to the divine musical score. This
field lacks capacity to discriminate, discernment to distinguish what is
superfluous from what is essential. This field lacks the acceptance of the tool
that prepares the ground and weeds it, prunes it and makes it grow. This field
lacks a discipline, a resolution, an ability to choose the one of which it will be
the subject: God or his desires, God or Mammon. God or the world, says the

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Gospel of John. “No one can serve two masters”, says Jesus. “For either he will
hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise
the other” (Mt 6.24 // Lk 16.13). Jesus issues many vibrant exhortations to
gather a heavenly treasure (Mt 6.19-20), to guard oneself from the riches of
this world (Lk 18.18-24), to advance one-eyed or one-armed towards the
Kingdom of God rather than disappear entirely in Gehena (Mt 5.29-30). The
condition for bearing fruit is to remain firmly attached, like a branch to its vine,
to the Word that God addresses (Jn 15). If this condition is not met, the person
is reduced to the deceptive appearance of a fig tree filled with leaves but
fruitless (Mk 11.13-14 : And seeing from afar a fig tree having leaves, Jesus
went to see if perhaps He would find something on it. When He came to it, He
found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. In response Jesus
said to it, “Let no one eat fruit from you ever again.”). The growth of the
Kingdom depends on the growth of the Word. Luke insists a lot on this fact in
his book of the Acts of the Apostles at the price sometimes of formulations
which can appear strange to us. See for example Acts 6.7: And the word of God
increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem; Acts
12:24: But the word of God increased and multiplied; or Ac 19.20: So the word
of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed (increased in power and in strength).
The whole book of the Acts of the Apostles runs through this theme of the
growth of the Word. If the true and unique hero of the book of Acts is the Holy
Spirit (Acts 4), his main success and his constant concern is to make the seed of
the Kingdom preached by Jesus grow.

You will love God with all your soul

In the Bible, the soul (‫ = נשמה‬soul) is the principle and expression of all bodily
life, the very vitality of that body and therefore the place of appetites and
passions. The soul is said to reside in the blood; it is for this reason that animals
also have a soul in the Bible. The soul is specifically the seat of desires.
Depending on the nature of its desires, the soul can be “carnal” or “spiritual”,
in other words: living for itself or living for God. The apostle Paul has written
extensively on the antagonism between a carnal (Galatians 5.16-21, Romans

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8.5-17) or psychic (1 Corinthians 2.6-15) soul, and a spiritual soul. The first must
surrender its rights to the other, he says. It must mourn to live for itself; such is
the process of the believer initiated during baptism (Rom 6).

We clearly realize that what Jesus deplores of the 3rd field of the parable is our
struggle to love god with all our soul. Here, it is no longer so much a question
of faith or hope but of LOVE. It is no longer a question of listening to the word
or of keeping it, but of maintaining it – at least its memory, of gardening it, of
cherishing it, so that it bears the agreed fruit. The fruit, both in quality and
quantity as Jesus says in John 15, will measure the depth of our love for God,
the degree of our attachment to his person, the degree of our acceptance of
His desire, the degree of our integrity, the desire to see his Kingdom extend
exclusively. “ (…) who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and
greater works than these he will do”, says Jesus (Jn 14.12). It is by its fruit that
the tree will be judged (Lk 13.7). “God will render to each one according to his
deeds”, says the apostle Paul (Ro 2.6).

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 Taking stock

What should we discover in this parable which opens to us the spiritual world
of the other parables and of the preaching of the Kingdom of God? What is so
important and precious to discern about this story? These were our inaugural
questions. Now is the time to reflect further and broaden the horizon of the
narrative, and to listen to our story not from the viewpoint of the questions to
which it would have answered, upstream, but from the viewpoint of the
questions it raises, downstream, for us readers.

A first trilogy
Jesus gives us here a scan of the human person. He diagnoses three great
difficulties, three obstacles, three unnatural tendencies, sickly, egocentric, that
make us lose the benefit - and makes God lose it too! - of what God intends to
achieve: the establishment of his Kingdom. These three obstacles are not new.
They had been explicitly recognized by Jewish biblical tradition. The remedy:
The greatest commandment of Judaism and the summary of its law: “YOU WILL
LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD, WITH ALL YOUR HEART, WITH ALL YOUR SOUL,
WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH”2. This is what Judaism calls the Schema Israel
(Listen Israel). In the parable, only the order differs somewhat, without bringing
confusion. The aim is the same.

Jesus repeated this confession of faith, which is an evidence that it was

important to him (Mk 12.29-30 // Lk 10.27 // Mt 22.37). But he did much more
than that. His victorious temptation in the desert, during which the devil tried
to test his heart, his zeal and his soul without seeing him fail, is the evidence
that he knew how to honour each of these three principles (cf. Mt 4.1-11; in Lk
4.1-13, the order is different: heart, soul, zeal).

2
the summary adds: and you will love your neighbor as yourself, which is also a concern of Jesus

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Many of his teachings take up the spiritual theme circumscribed by the Shema
Israel. Basically, Jesus encourages his people to follow in his wake and put this
confession of faith into practice this commandment. He came to help us love
God with new truth, vigour and rigor so that God may reign on earth. He
manifested the part of God: his paternity and the power of the Holy Spirit
capable of fighting the Evil One; he asks for our part so that this fight turns into
victory: our sympathy and our obedience. In other words, listen to God, keep
his word and give it the weight and the unique consideration that it deserves.
The momentum is that of the Covenant. It is a matter of approving of the
presence of God and of accepting the “easy yoke” (Mt 11.30) that he offers us
in order to experience existence and overcome its dangers in a victorious
manner. God gives the Kingdom; human beings honour the threefold
commandment of God’s love. This comes down to making God first of all the
King of our life, so that this Kingship may spread. A preaching of the coming
Kingdom of God could not ignore the Shema Israel.

This places Jesus in the most perfect possible continuity with his Jewish
tradition. And if the parable of the sower contains, from the viewpoint of
understanding, all the other parables, (almost) all the other words of Jesus,
then it must be admitted that many other words of Jesus pursued and pursue
the same goal. In this regard, the preaching of the Kingdom of God is yet
another attempt to offer humans the opportunity to glorify their God so that
the reality of his Kingdom can transform their existence forever.

A second trilogy
Another trilogy than that of Shema Israel appeared. That of FAITH-HOPE-LOVE.
It does not appear as such in Jesus’ preaching, but we see it in the background
of all his teaching.

Faith is encouraged everywhere. Faith enables miracles and healing. Faith

enables the Kingdom of God to reach us. Faith is movement towards God,
openness and response of the heart. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock”,
says the Risen One in the Apocalypse (Rev 3.20). This faith is first a faith in

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Jesus and secondly the faith of Jesus whom he transmits, like a sap, to those
who follow him (Jn 15).
Conversely, the lack of faith is accused there. This is what Jesus stigmatizes
when he is asked to manifest a divine sign. “(…) no sign will be given to it
except the sign of Jonah the prophet.” He said to his critics. That is to say, you
will have no other sign than the one that the Ninevites received from Jonah
before converting: his preaching, his only word. It is the lack of faith that he
accuses the inhabitants of Chorazin or Betsaïda of, as they disdain the offer
made to them (Mt 11.21 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if
the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon,
they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”). Unbelief does not
recognize God, does not open to his presence, does not admit his majesty,
despises the value of his proposal. The matter is serious, because unbelief turns
into ingratitude and ingratitude gradually transforms the person who is deaf to
God’s call into a homicidal person (Mk 12.1-11).

Likewise, hope is valued, most often associated with trust and perseverance.
“Do not worry… about your life… what you will put on… the next day ” (Mt 6.25-
28). “Do not fear… trials… slander… persecution… I send you as sheep in the
midst of wolves” (Mt 10.16. 19). Hope allows faith to rollout over time. It knows
that the Kingdom is a power which works by itself like leaven in a dough (Mt
13.33) or a mustard seed which will eventually end up harbouring the birds of
the sky, i.e. God himself (Mt 13.31-32). It trusts in divine providence. It believes
that forgiveness is a weapon that effectively serves the divine purpose of
weakening evil.
Conversely, the lack of hope is anxious and vengeful. It buries the talent that
his master gives him and becomes the victim of his own prejudging of the facts
(Mt 25.14-30). He is jealous toward the audacity of the one who lets himself be
ignited by the zeal of the Kingdom. He gives his vigilance to the date of the
feast rather than to the presence that inhabits it (Mt 12). He gets tense on
questions relating to the pure and the impure (Mk 7). Its purity is that of water,
always fearful of filth, always on guard, defensive, while the purity of Jesus is
that of fire, daring, offensive: it contaminates the impure. When zeal is lacking,

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religiosity often serves as a screen. A commitment that conceals its lack of
enthusiasm is a strange paradox.
The lack of hope fears for his life, his security, his religion. He cries out
blasphemy. Its theology is centripetal; the Kingdom’s centrifugal force frightens
him. Basically, he does not understand this madness and this impatience of
Jesus to see the earth set ablaze: “I came to send fire on the earth, and how I
wish it were already kindled!” (Lk 12.49)! The promise which made him live
withers; it no longer exalts him, neither does it carry him. He is one of those
foolish virgins who, forgetting the coming of the bridegroom, end up falling
asleep on their lamp (Mt 25.1-13). Hope is the supply of faith.

As for love, it is also highly esteemed by Jesus. How could it be otherwise? The
love of God to begin with. As with the widow who gives of her need to honour
her God (Mk 12.41-44). Or as with the child who does not seek the first place
(Mt 18.4). Or as with someone who left everything to serve God (Mt 19.28).
“Blessed are the pure in heart… Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness…Blessed are the peacemakers.”
The love of God cannot but come into tension with the love of others. The
exclusive attachment it claims and sparks can take the appearance of an affront
and provoke bitterness and controversy. “Do not think that I came to bring
peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to
set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-
in-law against her mother-in-law” (Mt 10.34-35). The disciple is invited to
declare his love for his mission rather than for the demands of his culture (Mt
8.21-22). “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” The dead in
question are those who do not participate in the fight against Satan. The
urgency of the Kingdom does not press them. Love is attached to its Master. He
also understood, like faith and hope, that we are at war with the Evil One. And
in times of war, we don't have the time to bury the dead. In time of war, the
brother or the mother are our neighbours in the trenches, our brothers in
combat, our companions in persecution more than the people of our natural
family (Mk 3.33-35: Who is My mother, or My brothers? And he looked around
in a circle at those who sat about him, and said, “Here are My mother and my

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Brothers!” We do not understand the “senseless words” of Jesus if we forget
the radical conflict in which he is engaged and the personal, family and social
upheaval that this conflict induces. And being related to one’s parents doesn’t
always help: “But when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay
hold of Him, for they said, ‘He is out of His mind.’” (Mk 3.21). The fire of love for
God may seem unreasonable to overly sane people.

However, love for others, provided it does not oppose either the divine order
to which it is ordained or the growth of the Kingdom, retains its highest value.
How could Jesus have forgotten the second part of the summary of the Law of
Israel: You shall love your neighbor as yourself ? I From the perspective that is
ours here it is most often associated with grace. As with the Samaritan who
treats the injured person by the side of the road as himself (Lk 10). As in
contrary with the merciless debtor sanctioned for not having known how to
return the favour which he received (Mt 18.21-35). As with the disciple invited
to love his enemies. The commandment of love takes the form of a subtle
crescendo (Mt 5.44): “(…) love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do
good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and
persecute you.” When we no longer manage to bless, there is still the possibility
of doing good; when we no longer manage to do good, there is still the
possibility of praying. The aim of such a command? Circulate grace. To become
son of the Father who is in heaven. “He makes His sun rise on the evil and on
the good” (Mt 5.45). In other words, be careful not to grant any success to Evil
that would conceal the blessing and victory bestowed and promised by God.

The ethical aim of Jesus

All Jewish ethical law is governed by the concern that the reign of Evil does not
extend, and for the reign of God to extend (life, peace, good…). Each
commandment is steeped in it; it is actually their only criterion of validity (and
should be their only criterion of invalidity where applicable).
Jesus retains the same aim and extends it. The “categorical imperative” of his
ethics is the following: act as much as possible in a view to make God/the Good
victorious. Evil is attacked at the root, tracked down even in its intentions,
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uncovered from behind its religious or moral screens, pinned on the board of
our laziness or our personal justifications and finally crucified on the cross of
Golgotha. The success of God on all occasions is the absolute criterion of Jesus’
behaviour. It is about triumphing over Evil and disarming it. But if by any
chance the struggle against evil were to compromise the victory of God by
impairing him in any way, then this battle should be suspended and
surrendered to God himself. This is the teaching of the parable of the chaff in
which, for the sake of not damaging the wheat, the master of the house
recommends his servants to wait for the time of harvest where the reapers will
separate and will destroy the chaff themselves (Mt 13.24-30 explained in 36-
43). Beware of the perverse effects of our fight against evil. We cannot make
God win by damaging his inheritance. The latter takes precedence. The zeal
demanded is not bitter zeal. The fight against evil is not blind, frenetic or
obsessive. It is not a matter of discord (the Greek word for chaff), but it is a
matter of discernment, of trust and therefore also of hope. The time of service
is not the time of harvest. In the parable, the work of the servants is
distinguished from the work of the reapers.

What gesture of love could better represent the disarming of evil than the
gesture of washing the feet about which Jesus said: “You also ought to wash
one another’s feet.” (Jn 13.14). It is after this gesture that, in the Gospel of
John, the commandment is renewed on the basis of the example of Jesus: “A
new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have love you,
that you also love one another.” (Jn 13.34). This radical attitude where pathos
takes precedence over ethos (to love as Jesus loved us!) is no longer a matter
of fair compensation (recurrent in Jewish ethical law), but of gift and
forgiveness, of dispossession and service. The defeat of Evil is not enough, it
would amount to a possible draw; as much as possible it is necessary to give
victory to God. To love like Jesus is to love at a loss. The requirement is
extreme, impossible without divine help, commensurate with the total victory
that God claims. But the reward is great. In order not to miss it, love gives all it
has in order to put its hands on the Kingdom’s treasure or the pearl of great
price (Mt 13.45-46). It accepts the sacrifice (Mt 5.29) provided the Kingdom is

25
rolling out. It knows how to make itself small in order to make his God bigger
(Mt 7.13). It endorses the words of John the Baptist: “He must increase, but I
must decrease.” (Jn 3.30)

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 Conclusion

The trilogy of the Jewish Confession: love God with all your heart, with all your
soul, with all your strength, underpins the ministry of Jesus. The trilogy shaped
by Christian theology: faith, hope, love, revisits it and completes it. The latter
was shaped by Paul. It summarises the legacy he bequeathed to his first
communities (1 Thess 1.2). We find it in his letter to the Corinthians at a
cardinal point (1 Cor 13.13). It structures its fundamental letter to the Romans
(Faith: Rom 1-4; Hope: Rom 5-11; Love: Rom 12-15) 3. It is disseminated
throughout the New Testament.

There is no competition between the “Jewish” and “Christian” confession

because the two trilogies enrich each other. The study of the parable of the
sower has given us the most beautiful illustration.

If we are told that, if we do not understand this parable, we cannot understand

the other parables, the other words, the Word, then this means, by logical
deduction, that our two trilogies together form the rule of reading, the
hermeneutical key of the (almost) whole Scriptures. Their raison d’être is
spiritual. They were written to help us love God with all our heart, with all our
soul, with all our strength; or the following: to help us believe, hope and
love… so that God may reign. It is the major input of the Gospel of Mark to the
understanding of the ministry of Jesus and of our response to his call. The other
two Gospels, Matthew and Luke, which mention the parable of the sower, are
not left out. In Matthew, Jesus insists on the novelty of the teaching that this
parable introduces: for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and
righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what
you hear, and did not hear it. (Matt 13.17). He finally adds a warning:
“Therefore hear the parable of the sower:” (Matt 13.18). In Luke he gives his
listeners an even more solemn warning: “Therefore take heed how you hear.

3
I would like to refer the reader to a first work which demonstrates this: Yann Morvant, The life of faith
according to the Epistle to the Romans, Editions Oasis, 2016 (in French).

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For whoever has, to him more will be given; and whoever does not have, even
what he seems to have will be taken from him.” (Luke 8.18). Faith, hope and
love mark the path of spiritual growth. Loving God with all your heart, with all
your strength, with all your soul enables us to receive the Kingdom of God.

The number of biblical texts, whole sagas, sometimes whole books that could
be associated with each one or with a combination of the 4 fields of the
parable of the sower is impressive. Are there any that would differ from this
typology? For sure and that’s even better. The idea is not to limit the universe
these texts present to us. The idea is to stay true to them, to read in a way that
allows the Spirit to question us and lead us where he wishes.

The journey delineated by the parable of the sower, among other words, is
indeed a spiritual journey. Heal the pathologies of the fallen human being to
receive Freedom and Authority conferred by the belonging to the Kingdom.
Attaining the communion eagerly longed for by God and Jesus Christ.
Reclaiming the lost territories of our humanity, extending the Kingdom of God
over the world, giving back to God what IS God’s, such is the motivation, the
mandate, and the aim of Jesus. He is not a Master of wisdom as many
theologians have asserted but a spiritual Master. And the fever that ignites him
is not so much that of the end of time as many exegetes have said that the
fever as that of the beginning. Because Jesus comes to awaken the image of
God inscribed on every human being as the image of Caesar was inscribed on
the Roman coins: Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription does it
have? They answered and said, “Caesar's.” 25 And He said to them, Render
therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are
God's. (Luke 20.24-25)

This requires a fight against evil and the use of the weapons of the Spirit. If
victory is not always visible, it is promised. And rightly so. Did the devil create
the world? No. Did he create humanity? No. He doesn’t create anything, he
distorts. He is second and he will remain so, before disappearing. With this
belief in mind, Jesus is the liberator who comes to set the captives free (Luke
4.16-19). He is the son of the Owner who comes to claim what belongs to him

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(Mk 12). He is the finger of God, stronger than the strong man (Mk 3.27), who
dislodges usurpers and other squatters of the human soul : “But if I cast out
demons with the finger of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.”
(Luke 11.20). He is the doctor who comes to restore us to health by delivering
us from our illnesses (Mk 2.17). In all of this, He is the Saviour who delivers us
from the Evil One according to the Father's will which he incarnates. Not an
isolated savior but a savior who shares with his disciples his authority and his
power (Luke 9: 1) and encourages them to walk in his wake and to pray: Father,
deliver us from the Evil One (Matt 6:13).

Jesus only asks us to dissociate ourselves from what alienates us. For this
reason, he says: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mk 1.15). When the person seems totally
alienated, Jesus frees him by an act of power. When the person is only
undecided or unbelieving, he asks him/her to return to God and receive His
grace and His authority. The conversion that he expects, hopes for and brings
about is a remission, a repentance, an availability for the newness God
introduces into the world. This is another way to dispossess the Evil One of his
ill-gotten possessions and divides his spoils (Luke 11.22). For unbelief is also
malignant.

Sending
To facilitate our conversion, Jesus offers, in addition to authority over evil, the
remission of debts, grace, forgiveness. He does it in the name of the
fatherhood of God. He will be doing it until death on the cross: Father, forgive
them, they do not know what they are doing (Lk 23:34). In doing so, he fits fully
in his Jewish faith and even in his timeline. The preaching of John the Baptist
actually reminds of “The Judgment Day” which opens the Jewish year. With
regard to the preaching of Jesus, it reminds of The Day of Atonement which
succeeds it ten days later. Jesus’ journey will go until Easter. By resuscitating
him, God dispelled the eclipse of Calvary and confirmed his Kingdom. The Holy
Spirit took over at Pentecost. His race will make us complete what remains in
the timeline in its entirety. Until the day of final judgment, until the
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resurrection, until complete unity. We will come full circle. And the victory will
be total!

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 Table of contents
WHY DOES JESUS SAY:.................................................................................................................................. 1

“Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?”.............................1

Introduction: The Kingdom of God............................................................................................................... 3

The Kingdom of God............................................................................................................................. 3

Hostility to the Kingdom: a new definition............................................................................................ 5

The two anchors of Jesus’ battle........................................................................................................... 5

The center of gravity of Jesus’ ministry................................................................................................. 6

Jesus’ adversary.................................................................................................................................... 6

The parable of the sower.............................................................................................................................. 7

The text.................................................................................................................................................... 8

Interpretation......................................................................................................................................... 10

The first field....................................................................................................................................... 11

The second field.................................................................................................................................. 12

The third field..................................................................................................................................... 15

Taking stock................................................................................................................................................ 18

A first trilogy....................................................................................................................................... 18

A second trilogy.................................................................................................................................. 19

The aim of Jesus.................................................................................................................................. 22

Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................. 24

Sending............................................................................................................................................... 26

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