The Messiness of Spiritual Awakening (The Gospel of Thomas)

This is the ninth saying in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus said, "Look, the sower went out, took a handful of seeds, and scattered them. Some fell on the road, and the birds came and gathered them. Others fell on rock, and they didn't take root in the soil and didn't produce heads of grain. Others fell on thorns, and they choked the seeds and worms ate them. And others fell on good soil, and it produced a good crop: it yielded sixty per measure and one hundred twenty per measure."

This doesn't mean what you think it means! Or what the church says it means!

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Transcript

This is the ninth saying in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus said, "Look, the sower went out, took a handful of seeds, and scattered them. Some fell on the road, and the birds came and gathered them. Others fell on rock, and they didn't take root in the soil and didn't produce heads of grain. Others fell on thorns, and they choked the seeds and worms ate them. And others fell on good soil, and it produced a good crop: it yielded sixty per measure and one hundred twenty per measure."

If you have a church background, you will recognize this as the Parable of the Sower. At first glance, it does not seem much different from the one that is familiar from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Therefore we could just right off Thomas’ version as a minor variation of the same story found in the New Testament. 

Even if that were all we learn from this, it is still significant. It means that the Gospel of Thomas is drawing upon the same oral or written sources as the canonical gospels. That says something about the gospel’s antiquity and authenticity. Yet there is more to be said about Thomas’ version than that. Actually Thomas’ version appears older. It has not accumulated all the extra tradition and interpretation that we find in the other Gospels. 

The New Testament version has a lot of additions. In those gospels right after the story is told, the disciples ask him what it means. Jesus gives a twofold answer. First he explains why he speaks in parables. Jesus says, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that,

‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
     and ever hearing but never understanding;
 otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’” (That is a quote from Isaiah.)

Then Jesus goes on to give an allegorical interpretation of the parable. The seed represents the Word of God. The different types of ground represent different types of people. If you have ever warmed a pew, then you can remember the preacher encouraging you to be good soil, and receive the Word that is being preached and let it produce a harvest in your life. Cue the invitation hymn and the altar call. Preachers use this as an evangelistic text. 

All three of the New Testament synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke - have those additions to the story. But the Gospel of Thomas does not. Those additions are usually understood by biblical scholars to be later additions put into the mouth of Jesus by the early church. The very same church that later banned the Gospel of Thomas from inclusion in the New Testament! 

If that is true, then that means that this parable may mean something very different than what traditional Christianity says it means. Perhaps it originally had a meaning that the church did not like. But they liked the story, so they reinterpreted the story and put the church meaning into the mouth of Jesus.

What could the original meaning possibly be? I don’t think it has anything to do with the hearing and receiving of the evangelistic message of the church. I don’t think it is an encouragement to preach the gospel like a sower sowing seed or an exhortation to be better soil. Think about it for a moment. It doesn’t make sense when interpreted that way. Soil can’t choose to be hard or rocky of thorny! Soil does not have a choice. It just is what it is. 

A farmer can improve the soil by adding mulch or manure or clearing it of rocks. But the ground can’t do that for itself. Soil cannot help whether or not the seed germinates and grows and produces a harvest. I don’t think that is what the story was originally about. And I don’t think it is about a proprietary message of salvation that only the church knows. I do not think it has to do with preaching and evangelism at all.

I think it has to do with spiritual awakening that is available to all. We have seen elsewhere how a seed germinating and breaking through the ground is a metaphor for spiritual awakening. It is new life. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” A seed sown and sprouting is an analogy for death and resurrection, which is itself a metaphor for spiritual awakening, as I said in the last episode. I think that is what the parable is about. 

This parable is about the grace of spiritual awakening. Extravagant grace. The sower in this story does not carefully plant his precious seeds one by one in only good soil, careful not to waste any. Jesus is saying that life is like an extravagantly wasteful farmer. Seeds are thrown everywhere and anywhere. On the road, on rocks, among thorn bushes. Picture this scene in your mind for a moment. It is a mess with seeds going everywhere! Sometimes the seeds even fall onto cultivated soil where they have a chance to grow. 

It reminds me a lot of evolution. Evolution is an extravagantly messy and wasteful process. Think how many species there have been on earth and how many were dead ends. Think of all the extinctions on earth. Think of all the death. That is why fundamentalists hate the scientific theory of evolution. It does not fit their idea of God. But it fits the Parable of the Sower in Thomas perfectly. This is exactly the way the Eternal Logos – the Tao - works in evolving life. And it is exactly the way the Eternal Logos works to bring about spiritual awakening.

Spiritual awakening is a messy process. There is no program you can enter or handbook that you can buy to tell you how to wake up. If someone tries to sell you one, I recommend that you do not waste your money. Enlightenment cannot be learned from a book.

I love the scene in the movie The Razor’s Edge, where Bill Murray plays a man who went to the Himalayas in search of enlightenment. He enters a monastery. After a while his teacher sends him off into the snowy mountains on a solitary retreat. He brings some spiritual books with him to study. While sitting in meditation and study he becomes cold. Finally it dawn on him to burn the books to keep him alive. I love that moment of realization. He saw the real value of spiritual books.

The parable is saying that there are opportunities for spiritual awakening all around us. The universe throws them generously at us throughout our lives. Most of the time we are not ready for them. We are like the road or rock or the thorns. It is not the time or place for enlightenment. But eventually there comes a time and place where grace takes root in our lives. And it grows in us and blossoms into nondual awareness, Christ consciousness, spiritual awakening. That in turn produces more seeds that are likewise sown extravagantly every which way, without any regard for the type of soil where it lands. 

There is no way to predict the type of person who will awaken into Eternal Life. It might be a Zen monk who has devoted his life to meditation. But it could also be someone not even looking for enlightenment. It happens to a wide variety of people.

That is the way spiritual awakening happens. It is not like a Christian revival or a Billy Graham evangelistic campaign, which is carefully orchestrated to produce an emotional response. It is not about megachurches gaining members by carefully designing everything in their worship services to be seeker-friendly. Spiritual awakening is pure grace.

It is extravagantly generous. Jesus says it is like the blessing of rain in the Holy Land that falls on the righteous and the unrighteous. It is like the dandelion that releases its seeds to the wind, not knowing where they will land.

Divine Grace sows seeds of awakening throughout our lives, no matter who we are and what we do. In some peoples’ lives it takes root, sprouts, grows and blossoms.  In others it does not. It is just the way it is. No need to get anxious about it. That would be like dirt getting anxious about whether or not seed will land in their area. The ground has no control at all. The sower seems to be out of control as well, throwing seeds everywhere. That messy grace is the lesson of the original parable of the Sower.