Why does Jesus tell so many stories about plants? Here’s one reason.

Homily for the Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2024

Photo credit: Imso Gabriel, Unsplash

I’m not sure we think enough about the fact that so much of Jesus’ teaching, so much of what our Lord has to say in the Gospels, takes the form of telling stories. There’s nothing in Jesus’ teaching like a theology lecture or a catechism lesson—nothing organized or systematic. He doesn’t speak only in parables, but the parables are “the heart of his teaching,” according to Pope Benedict XVI in Jesus of Nazareth. As a teacher, our Lord is fundamentally a storyteller.

We lose sight of this when we reduce the parables to mere allegories or coded messages, each with a clear meaning—so that, once you know the meaning, what do you still need the story for? Again, Pope Benedict described the meaning of the parables as “hidden and multilayered,” and says that we need to ask Jesus  

again and again what he wants to say to us in each of the parables (cf. Mk 4:10). The struggle to understand the parables correctly is ever present throughout the history of the Church.

Think about it: If each parable had a single, clear meaning that was known, you could look it up in a book, and we wouldn’t need to continue to “struggle to understand the parables correctly” today! If we have to struggle, it’s because we’re meant to struggle—perhaps because struggling with a story is a way of coming to know the storyteller. Writers sometimes say, “If you want to know me, read what I write.” Jesus’ heart and mind and will are in the stories he told.

What kinds of stories does Jesus tell? Stories about fathers and sons, lords and servants, money and responsibility, but perhaps most of all he tells stories about growing things—specifically, growing crops, plants for food. At least four of Jesus’ parables are about sowing seed on the ground to grow crops and produce a harvest. Above all, there’s the parable of the sower with the four soils—which is not just one parable among many, but the “parable of parables,” the key to all the parables. There’s the one with the field of wheat and the weeds that are sown by an enemy. And then there are the two parables in today’s Gospel, the growing seed and the mustard seed. Besides these four, Jesus also has two parables about fig trees that do or don’t produce figs, two parables about workers in a vineyard, and two parables with sons working in their father’s field. And more besides.

Why does Jesus talk so much about this topic? We might think it’s just because he lives in a society that is—unlike our own society!—significantly based on crops and farming, significantly agrarian, so it’s what people understand and care about. And that’s not wrong! But in today’s Gospel, in the parable of the growing seed, I think we see something deeper.

A person scatters seed on the soil; the sun sets and rises, the person sleeps and wakes up, and through it all the seed sprouts and grows—how, the person doesn’t know. In the parable with the four soils Jesus says that the sower is the Son of Man, Jesus himself—but not here. This sower is an ordinary person like you or me. This sower doesn’t make growth happen, or even understand it! Growth is mysterious. It happens on its own—sometimes even when you’re sleeping. Seeds sprout and plants grow because they are alive. Life is growth, growth is life, and both life and growth come from God. Those who grow plants, who grow crops, partner with God, collaborate with God, to bring to harvest food which then supports our life, our growth—also through God’s mysterious gift.

I think this is at least part of the reason Jesus focuses so much on growing crops! Spiritual life is spiritual growth, and life and growth come from God. God calls us to collaborate with him, to cooperate with his grace—through prayer, worship, receiving the sacraments, evangelizing, doing works of charity and good works in general—but life and growth are God’s mysterious gift.

So, by contrast, when Jesus tells stories about money, and how, say, the servants should invest their talents of silver to make more silver, that’s well and good, but there’s nothing mysterious about money! Silver doesn’t actually make more silver. Which is maybe partly why Jesus tells fewer stories about money. Of course we can always collaborate with God in whatever we do, including using money, but that partnering isn’t necessarily as obvious with money as it is with plants.

You can see this a few minutes from now during the offertory, when the gifts are brought up: gifts of bread and wine and money. The money is important! We’re partnering with God in giving that money. It’s one of the five precepts of the Church: providing for the Church’s needs. But listen for the words of the prayer that are prayed over the gifts of bread and wine: “work of human hands,” yes, but also “fruit of the earth,” “fruit of the vine.” Wheat bread and grape wine represent collaboration between God and human beings.  

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’re reborn as Jesus’ brothers and sisters through the waters of Baptism—water being a straight-up gift of God to which we contribute nothing—but after rebirth our spiritual growth, nourished by the Eucharist, involves tokens for which we must collaborate with God. We partner with God, we cooperated with grace, but life and growth—vegetable, animal, and spiritual—come from God. Thanks be to God for his mysterious gifts!