What is it about?
Jesus’ parable of the sower portrays four common Galilean habitats that form an interdependent ecological system. Soil rich enough to produce the abundant yield of the final scenario is easily degraded, and the processes at work in the first three habitats are needed to keep the land fertile. Agrarian people who knew Galilean land would quickly have understood that the parable graphically portrays restoration of the land and its inhabitants.
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Why is it important?
By comparing the four habitats with the responses of different people to the Gospel, Jesus invites us to see these responses as stages in a process of progressive spiritual formation. None are failures. Each lays the groundwork for deeper personal growth, which nurtures communal development.
Perspectives
Parallels between the dynamics of ecosystems and human communities suggest that God creates and heals in similar ways in both, ways that depend upon partnership and can be properly evaluated only from a holistic or communal perspective.
Professor Emeritus George W Fisher
Johns Hopkins University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Symbiosis, partnership, and restoration in Mark’s parable of the sower, Theology Today, January 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0040573616669560.
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