Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

Grain, as it germinates, first produces only a single shoot. But at a very early stage the lowermost nodes, far beneath the earth’s surface (the so-called stock nodes), push out side shoots that cause the main stem to branch out beneath the earth. Thus in normal cases a single grain produces an entire “stock” of two to five stems or even more. As far as the number of stems in a “stock” is concerned, Jesus remains in a realistic average realm. Because he has to schematize within the narrative he works with a top figure of three stems, reckoning a yield of thirty grains per stem. That too is normal and close to reality. Before the intensively hybridized types of wheat grown today came into general use the average number of grains per ear even in Europe was not much more than thirty to thirty-five.

In this similitude Jesus describes the situation of a farmer who had sown a field, a part of the stony ground of the Galilean hill country. Many of the grains thus sown yielded nothing. Flocks of birds following the sower, ground interspersed with rocks, and tenacious weeds were at fault. But part of the seed sown fell on good soil. Of that, part produced thirty grains per seed sown—that is, there was no stocking. Another part produced sixty grains per seed sown—a stocking of two stems. Still another part produced around a hundred grains per seed sown—here there was a stocking of three stems.

In this way the unusual sequence thirty, sixty, a hundred (one hundred for ninety) is immediately obvious. There is no question of a rupturing of reality. Quite the contrary! Jesus was a very sober observer who allowed himself no flights of imagination, but told stories with a love for detail and a positively biological exactness. The same could be demonstrated in many other parables.

And what did Jesus mean by the parable of the sower? What did he want to tell his listeners? As in many of his parables, here again he speaks of the reign of God, which is coming. It has already been sown. In fact, the wheat is already growing. The reign of God has many enemies, however, and they seem overwhelming. And yet, despite all these enemies and opponents, the reign of God will come to pass. The work of God will succeed. It will bear fruit. In the end a rich harvest will be produced.

Why So Many Parables about Growing?

At this point it is time for a reflection. Why did Jesus tell so many parables about seeds and growing? The gospels contain not only the parable of the sower but also the ones about the weeds among the wheat (Matt 13:24-30), the mustard seed (Mark 4:30-32), the leaven (Matt 13:33), and the seed growing secretly (Mark 4:26-29). Apparently with the aid of this material Jesus was able to clarify some aspects of the reign of God now becoming reality that seemed crucial to him. This narrative material gave him the opportunity to depict not only the unstoppable growth of the reign of God but also the shockingly minute and hidden character of its beginning, and even more: the superior power of the opponents who threaten the work of God from beginning to end.

Thus Jesus deftly avoided the path opened by Jewish apocalyptic. The latter was also deeply touched by Israel’s miserable situation and the power of God’s opponents in history. Most apocalypticists, however, drew a different conclusion. For them it was no longer imaginable that God could still succeed in a world so depraved. Therefore they said that God’s promises could no longer be fulfilled “in this world,” “in this age.” God would have to intervene with visible power in history, destroy the old world, and create a new one, the “new age.” Only there could God’s promises finally become reality.⁴

Jesus is no apocalypticist. He can, of course, make use of apocalyptic images, but he does not teach an apocalyptic system. Above all, he never succumbs to the dualism of many apocalypticists, the system of two worlds succeeding one another and sharply distinct one from the other. One can see that especially in the material of his parables of growth. This is everyday material. For example, in Mark 4:30-32, Jesus speaks not simply of the world tree (as in Matt 13:32 // Luke 13:18-19) but instead about a common mustard bush. He takes his imagery from the vegetable garden. And he talks about what a housewife in Israel did every day: grinding meal, kneading in leaven, and baking bread. He tells also about the paltry fields of ordinary people in the hill country of Israel where the soil is thin, there are almost no fenced-off paths, and thorns and thistles are nearly ineradicable.