There’s a story about an American Indian who came to New York City to visit his friend. As they walked together downtown, the man stopped suddenly, turned to his friend and said: “I hear a cricket!”
His friend was incredulous. “What?” he replied, “you’re out of your mind!”
“No, I hear a cricket. I’m sure of it.”
The friend objected strenuously, “It’s the noon hour. There are people bustling around, cars honking their horns, taxis squealing, and a multitude of noises coming from the city. I’m sure you can’t hear it.”
“No, I’m sure I do.” He then strained to locate the source of the sound, walked to the corner, crossed the street, and looked around. Finally, his eyes fixed on a shrub in a large cement planter. He then dug beneath the leaves and found a cricket.
His friend was dumbfounded. But the Indian said: “No. My ears are no different than yours. It simply depends on what you are listening for. Here let me show you.”
He then proceeded to reach into his pocket and withdrew a handful of change, several quarters, as well as a few dimes, nickels and pennies. He opened his hand and dropped the coins on the concrete. Several people around them stopped and turned abruptly towards the fallen coins. “You see what I mean?” he said as he began to join the others in picking up his coins. “It all depends on what you are listening for.”
The Gospel lesson features a teaching of Jesus, which comes to us in the form of a parable. He introduces it with the word “listen!” This simple word has a double significance here. First and most basically, it serves as a signal to pay close attention to what the speaker is about to say. “Listen!” But second, it forms the subject matter of the parable itself.
For Jesus is talking about his word—God’s word, to which we are to listen. Put otherwise, he’s talking about our receptivity to God’s word. Now God’s word is available. We can go to a church if we want to hear it read and proclaimed. We can turn on a Christian radio station if we want to hear our favorite radio preacher. And today there are Bible apps that we can download onto our phones, which we always carry with us. The sower sows the seed indiscriminately. He does not locate the very best ground and concentrate his activity there, but rather scatters it everywhere, even in places where the yield potential is very low. We can be grateful that we always have access to God’s word, especially here in the West.
But the availability of God’s word is not the issue. Rather, the issue is our receptivity to it, the attention that we give to it.
No one will deny that this is a most pressing issue today. In a world saturated with information that is instantaneously accessible through the internet, we are always distracted. For example, we may intend to open our Bible or our devotional, but turn to our Facebook feed instead. Our devices always compete for our attention, which becomes increasingly fragmented as a result.
But the fact that the issue is addressed in a document that is almost 2000 years old tells us that this is nothing new. Just as there are obstacles now that prevent us from receiving the word, so were there obstacles then, and no doubt there will continue to be in the future.
Jesus first tells us about the seed that is scattered on the path. Now what stands out above all about a path is that it is designed to support the weight of bodies of people and animals and carts. For this reason, it is beaten down, compacted and made hard. Its function is to facilitate the flow of traffic, not to provide a habitat for seeds.
The fate of the seed on the path is predictable. The birds come and eat it up.
The lesson is clear. Just as ground can be hard, so too can our hearts. And just as hard soil cannot receive seeds, so hard hearts cannot receive God’s word.
This is a theme that runs through the Bible like a scarlet thread. We know that the prophets of Israel were sent to a stubborn and obstinate people. Isaiah complained: “Lord, who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (Isaiah 53:1).
Resistance to God’s word leads to hardness of heart. In this connection Isaiah observes the results of his preaching: “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so that they cannot see with their eyes and understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them…” (Isaiah 6:10; cf. John 12:40).
Reflecting on this, one Bible student warns: “if we do not break up the hard ground, preparing our hearts for the word, and humbling them for it, and engaging our attention, and if we do not cover the seed afterwards, by meditation and prayer, we are easy prey for the devil, who is our mortal enemy, and does not want us to profit from God’s word” (Matthew Henry).
And another Bible student warns us in even stronger language: “A person who can no longer be receptive soil for at least fifteen minutes each day, who never allows himself to be plowed and opened up, and never waits for what God wants to drop into the furrow is [in grave spiritual danger] (Helmut Thielicke).
Sadly, the next habitat is no more suitable than the path for the reception of the seed. We refer here to the rocky ground. Still, at least at the beginning, there seems to be more hope here. For there are not only rocks, but a thin layer of soil in which the seed can implant itself and germinate. And it does in fact spring up quickly. But then the sun scorches it, and it withers away.
Again, the lesson is clear. We have to see that we are in this thing for the long haul. The warning here is for those who, for example, attend worship for a while, who hear a sermon that strikes a chord in them, who attend a Bible study that sparks enthusiasm, but then lose interest. They don’t have the same excitement they had when they first heard God’s word. Some trouble or difficulty comes, or, as they say, “life happens” and they just don’t hang in there.
But we need to be patient to let the word do its work in us, which is slow and sometimes painful. The word is not always a melody to the ears. It is also a hammer that breaks rocks into pieces. “Is not my word like a fire,” declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks rock into pieces?” (Jeremiah 23:29).
Anyone who comes away from the word spiritually unchanged should not assume that it has taken root in him. The reception of the word proves itself genuine through faith, repentance, the dying of the old self, and coming to life of the new. All this we can expect to happen when we have deep roots, which give us the power to persevere.
The next soil is perhaps the one that poses the greatest threat to those of us in the affluent West. This one has thorns that choke the word, so that it yields nothing.
Jesus tells us that the thorns stand for the “cares of the world” and the “lure of wealth.” Our daily cares and worldly pursuits distract us. And in distracting us they also weigh us down. Those who are weighed down by the cares of the world show that they have their minds set on the things of the flesh, which lead to spiritual stagnation and death, to borrow the language of the Apostle Paul (Romans 8:5). Elsewhere Paul writes “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:1-3).
These earthly things choke out the word, preventing it from taking root and growing.
“Lord, who has believed our message?” According to the parable, this account of the classification of recipients of God’s word into different kinds of soil really ought to startle us as a sinister reality. God’s word is life and joy and peace. The failure of the word to take effect in human hearts ought to have no place in human history. It is the very thing that should not happen.
There is, however, a sole exception. There is a class of people who hear and understand and accept the word. They are compared to the good ground, in which the seed grows unhindered to maturity and brings forth fruit, some hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.
We ought to be like this ground, which drinks in the word like the rain that falls on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed, receiving the blessing of God (Hebrews 6:7).
We are always impressed with bright, precocious children who have an aptitude for learning. Of them we say, “Look at him, he soaks up what his teacher is giving him like a sponge.”
This is how we ought to be with God’s word. We ought to sit long enough to listen to and learn from what it is telling us, soaking it up like a sponge.
Marginalized people today protest that they have been deprived of a voice. That may be true, but no one can deprive another of his ability to listen. And when we listen, especially to God’s word, we will have something of real value to say, whenever we are given our turn to speak.
On this note, I want to close by relating an experience that Efrem Goldberg, Rabbi of Boca Raton Synagogue, in Boca Raton, Florida, shared in a recent article for the Jewish publication Aish.
Goldberg tells of meeting an autistic, 15-year-old boy named Zev at the Hebrew Academy for Special Children (HASC), which serves the Jewish community by offering summer programs for children and adults with special needs, including cognitive and physical disabilities.
Zev is nonspeaking. Until recently, little was known about his thoughts, his hopes and dreams. After extensive diagnostic testing, the medical “experts” had determined that Zev had the intelligence of an 18-month-old child.
But in the last few years, Zev and his friend and fellow camper Srulik have worked with an exceptional communication therapist who has perfected the latest techniques to teach people how to type and communicate non-verbally.
It turns out that while on the outside Zev and Srulik seem developmentally stunted, often unable to understand, they take it all in and are filled with the words and wisdom of Torah.
Last month, in honor of his sister’s wedding, Zev’s parents published a booklet of his reflections on Torah that he typed letter by letter.
Zev’s first entry said the following:
Moses could not talk perfectly. In spite of this disadvantage, he was our greatest teacher. It seems to me the lesson is clear. It is not the talking that makes a man great, it is the listening [to] and understanding of the [word of God]. I think I never had the ability to know my listening was my strength because I looked only at a lonely, quiet life. Now I have hope for my future, the chance to learn Torah, to become a mensch [person of integrity and honor], may you be inscribed in the book of life!
The booklet has entries on several Torah portions, Jewish holidays and concludes with a message Zev typed to be shared with students of a class he joined to study Torah three times a week:
My name is Zev, I am happy to learn here. I have autism and I cannot talk very well, but I think normally. Please do not be concerned If I make noise or. I may not be able to control my impulses. Please talk to me normally and not simplified. I look forward to being in the class on Prophets.
Let us draw inspiration from young Zev. For we too can know the transforming power of God’s word that wants to work in our hearts and minds, if we commit ourselves to hearing and understanding it.
So let us continue in that word. Let us set aside time each day to read in our Bibles and in a good devotional that helps us to understand what we are reading there. For in due time we will reap a spiritual harvest if we do not give up.