Eight out of ten cats prefer Whiskas, according to the advertising tagline. When we had a cat it always refused to eat Whiskas, so was in the other twenty percent, or so we thought. That suited us, because the other brands were usually cheaper. Later we discovered that our cat also visited someone down the road, and when there he would only eat Whiskas. All of which suggests to me that any survey of the eating preferences of animals, and certainly of cats, is probably a waste of time.
But scientists at Cornell University have been working on a project to classify pet cats according to personality (I’m amazed at what people in America will study). Some cats are active go-ahead mousers, while others are idle, sofa-loving loungers. Knowing the personality types of a cat will apparently allow it to be matched with an owner of appropriate personality type, so there’ll be fewer cats ending up in shelters or out on the street because things haven’t worked out at home.
That’s the idea, anyway. Dream on, I say. I’m sure cats do have personalities, but to devise tests that categorise then into personality types seems to me pretty pointless. Then again, at one time I’d have been equally sceptical about classifying people by personality type. But when I was Vicar of Minsterley, all the clergy of this deanery went to do a Myers-Briggs personality type indicator test. Myers and Briggs were American psychologists, mother and daughter I think, in the tradition of Carl Jung. To my surprise I found it quite useful, something of a revelation even. It helped me understand why I get on with some people, but find it hard to relate to others. It helped me understand why some things wear me out, and other things energise me. And I think it helped us work together better as a deanery team, or at least, when we weren’t working together all that well, it helped us to understand why!
Jesus knew about the way people differ, and the story we heard this morning, the Parable of the Sower, makes that clear. It’s a very well-known parable, and our Gospel reading also included the interpretation Jesus gave for his disciples, in which we find different kinds of people responding to the Gospel in different ways. Some don’t understand at all, and the word can’t begin to grow in them and is snatched away; some are full of initial enthusiasm, but then quickly lose it; in some life’s troubles and cares, and other stuff that gets in the way, like power, possessions, ambition, status: this chokes the word and it dies; but also: some seed grows well and is fruitful.
So what kind of soil am I, what kind of soil are you? How do we respond to the seed sown into our life? That’s a good and challenging question: we can all do things that make us more receptive, better and more fertile ground, for that seed which is the word of God. Last year I put some runner beans in for a friend; cleared the ground, put up the canes, planted the young beans, then left it for him. A month or so later I called by to find that they’d not been watered or weeded, and though some beans were still there, they were weak and getting crowded out by all sorts of rank weeds. In our own lives, for the word of God to grow and be fruitful, constant attention is needed.
But I don’t think that’s the only reason, or even the main reason, why Jesus told this story. It isn’t called the parable of the seed, or even the parable of the soil; we call it the parable of the sower, and with good reason. It’s addressed to us as sowers, as people with a job to do. We who believe have been equipped with seed which we’re supposed to be sowing. The Gospel is ours not to keep to ourselves but to share, seed to spread around; but how do we feel if the seed doesn’t take, if our efforts are all in vain?
I know how I felt when I looked at those beans I’d planted for my friend. I was annoyed and disillusioned. I shan’t do that again, I thought. But, as any farmer or gardener knows, some seed’s bound to fall in places where it simply won’t thrive. Not every seed grows well, even in the best of seasons. The people Jesus was speaking to will have known the scene well: thin soil and rocky ground, and seed either sown by hand or let sprinkle from a hole in a sack as it was carried. This seed wasn’t placed carefully into tilled and prepared ground, it was left to take its chance in the ground as it was.
Our job (our apostolic job) is to share the faith we have, to sow the seed God gives. Some of it will land on the hard paths and the rocky ground and in the thickets of folk’s lives; maybe its growth won’t be as much impeded by weeds and thorns as we fear, and maybe the soil here and there will be a bit better and deeper than we first think. But not all the seed will grow.
The care we take in sowing helps, of course. The witness we offer in our own daily lives to the love of Christ. The outreach we make, not by clever preaching or ostentatious piety, but in offering help, a shoulder to cry on, a hand to support, a word to cheer or soothe or encourage. That, more than anything else, is how we sow the Gospel seed. And, yes, the better we sow it, the more will grow.
But not everyone will hear and receive the message we bear; not all the seed we sow will grow. Jesus gives us this message: “Don’t let that discourage you. Don’t give up on the job when it doesn’t always work, when not every seed grows.” Elsewhere, Paul writes about one person sowing, and another person harvesting. As sowers of seed, we may not always see what happens to the seed we sow: some of it takes a long time to germinate. A vicar I knew went back to his old parish and was surprised to find as churchwarden a lady who’d been quite scathing about church when he’d been vicar; and more surprised when she told him it’d been something he’d said that had begun her journey to faith.
So should we concentrate our efforts on the good soil, the best prospects, and ignore the rest? I took part in a mission campaign many years ago now, in which the team that came in only visited the best prospects, the homes where we thought there would be a response. But which were those best prospects? Before they came we visited every home in the parish to start a conversation and test the ground. We felt it was vital to start everywhere, and some of the “good prospects” we offered the mission team to visit were by no means where we’d have expected if we’d just selected by, say, postcode. God doesn’t discriminate between the good and the bad ground when he goes out to sow. He accepts that some seed will be snatched away, that some of it grows up fast and then withers, and that some gets choked by weeds; and he sows anyway. So should we.
God wants us to sow the word of his love as generously as he does, and to hope and pray for harvest even when we might not think there’s much chance for it, when maybe the ground around all looks barren. For in God there’s always hope of harvest, and we should never discriminate as we sow his word. People are different; not all will hear, not all will respond, and those who do may not all respond in the same way or at the same speed, which is what Jesus is saying when he talks about the fruitful bearing some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. But if we don’t sow the seed, however unpromising the ground might look then none of it will grow. While if we do sow, who can tell what God will help to happen?
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