Sow Your Seeds: A Friendly Reminder Reflection from the Quaker Leadership Center

By Andy Stanton-Henry

My meeting has been doing a series on the parables of Jesus. I didn’t have to preach last Sunday, but I spent some time meditating on the parable for the week: The Parable of the Sower. I didn’t get far. I got stuck on the first sentence of story:

“A farmer went out to sow his seed” (Matt. 13:3).

It’s kind of an introductory sentence, not exactly the heart of the story. But I read this particular story in light of other stories. Mainly stories of social and political division, boiling over into acts of violence. In light of so much division and destruction, it’s hard to know what to do.

Sometimes, we feel angry and afraid so we hit back (verbally, at least). Sometimes, we feel angry and afraid so we hide away. We retreat to safety. These are understandable responses to the constant barrage of bad news and heightened rhetoric.

But whether we “hit back” or “hide away,” we fail to provide a redemptive response. And isn’t that an important part of our work as leaders?

In a reactive world, we call our people to redemptive responses

to the energies and events happening in the world.

From this context, I approach the text. In this contentious contemporary moment, I listen to an ancient story. “The farmer went out to sow his seed.”

As people of faith – as people of a small religious body, made up of mostly small spiritual communities – what do we have to give?

We have seeds.

Our contributions often seem small.

Our growth often seems slow.

Our impact often seems scattered.

But if we dare to trust the message of Jesus, then we begin to see that the kingdom of heaven comes by seeds. Lasting change happens at the size, speed, and surprising possibilities of the seed.

I love Vincent Van Gogh’s painting “The Sower” (shown above). We witness the farmer out in the fields, doing the work, sowing his seed courageously, humbly, generously. An act of faithfulness and hope.

In the background of the painting, I notice two things.

One: his home. He doesn’t stay inside where it’s safe. No matter what else is going on the world, he goes out and does the work he’s called to do. When others tear apart one another and the Earth itself, “the farmer goes out to sow his seed.” In a world of violence, he does something local and creative. This is leadership.

The poet-farmer Wendell Berry wrote, three days into the disastrous Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War:

In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter,

war spreading, families dying, the world in danger,

I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.

Berry sows clover, a member of Fabaceae, the legume family, with which we have co-evolved. Legumes are incredibly resilient (fossils going back about 56 million years), surviving in rocky conditions around the world and renewing the land on which they grow.

Like the Acorn Community in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, we sow our seeds amidst the graves of our ancestors and the breakdown of our communities, acting from a faith in new beginnings and possibilities.

I also notice the sun. It shines broadly and brightly on the horizon. Our work is done under the Gaze and Light of God. Our labor is not in vain. The Divine sends Light and Rain “on the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). We trust that the nourishing Light will do something creative and redemptive with our sowing.

“Sow your seed in the morning,” advises the teacher of Ecclesiastes, “for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well” (Ecc. 11:6). Indeed, when we go out and sow our seeds, we open ourselves to the Spirit of Surprise and the Lord of the Harvest.

There’s a time for big and bold action. But most of the time, change comes about when we commit to consistent, creative, communal work “in season and out.” We leave our safe spaces, sow our seeds, offer it all to God, and see what springs up.

You may be asking, “Sow what?” (sorry, couldn’t help it!)

That’s a good question.

What seeds are in your hand, in your heart?

What are you holding that needs to be shared and spread around?

Who needs encouraged to stop hiding and start sowing?

A few suggestions:

Heart-felt prayers
Generous gifts
Acts of kindness
Words of wisdom
Provocative proposals
Civility toward strangers
Conversations of consequence
Practical neighborly actions
Works of art
Self-care and self-cultivation
A listening ear
Celebrating someone else’s success
Confess your own complicity
Deep work
Non-anxious presence
Visiting the sick
Volunteering for a nonprofit
Supporting a local business
Starting a new spiritual practice
Blessing children
Literally planting seeds

“A farmer went out to sow his seed.”