On another occasion, Jesus began to speak before a crowd of students. He spoke to them in parables, and one of them was the following:
“Hear this! One day, a graduate sent out job applications online. Some of her applications were destroyed by a computer virus before her potential employers could react to them. And some applications were received by excited employers, but they quickly deleted the application when people criticized them. Other applications were received by interested employers, but after a while they got preoccupied with their own affairs in the office. And some applications went to benevolent employers who saw her potential and offered her a job. Before long, she had three, six, and then ten responses in her inbox.”
Jesus said to his disciples, “Do you not understand this parable?
The graduate sends out the word.
The employers with the computer virus are those that hear the word, but Satan immediately comes and takes it away from them.
The employers who are initially excited by the application are those people who receive the word with joy at once, but give up when persecuted.
The employers who were interested until they became absorbed in their work are those who hear the word but get distracted by worldly matters instead.
But those benevolent employers who saw her potential are the people who hear the word, follow it, and do good things with it.
I structured my parable, “The Graduate” based on Jesus’s parable “The Sower” as found in Mark 4:1-20. According to The Parables of Jesus by Luise Schottroff, this parable occurs after Jesus has begun his Galilean ministry, chosen his apostles, performed several healings, and has debated proper Jewish living with the Pharisees and scribes (Schottroff 193). In total, Jesus has faced both acceptance and rejection in his early mission. This context is important to “The Sower,” an allegory in which Jesus shows how different people react to God’s message. In the parable, he exhorts the apostles to continue preaching so they can eventually reap the rewards (Schottroff 188). After this parable, Jesus proceeds to teach three more parables to the people, and then calms a violent storm to protect his apostles.
Some key images which Jesus uses in “The Sower” include the sower, the seeds, the birds, the rocky soil, the thorns, the rich soil, and the resulting harvest. The parable itself is followed by an explanation in which Jesus unravels the story to his apostles. According to Schottroff, this explanation was probably added by early Christians in the oral tradition, rather than said by Jesus himself (Schottroff 190). The image of the sower represents Jesus and the apostles as they spread the seed, the word of God. Meanwhile, the birds which swallow up the seeds on the path represent Satan. According to Hear Then the Parable by Bernard Brandon Scott, the rocky soil and thorns are biblical symbols for barrenness and wickedness respectively (Scott 354). The rich soil, which accepts seeds well, is representative of those who respond to God’s call. The harvest that yielded “thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold” is representative of the vast kingdom of God which will result from continual outreach and spreading of God’s word (Schottroff 188).
When writing my parable for today’s audience, I purposely followed some devices used in the original parable. For example, in “The Sower,” each instance of the seed reaching the soil leads to slightly better growth, which eventually builds up into a successful harvest in the rich soil (Scott 355). Likewise, in “The Graduate,” the first application was destroyed by a virus (a representation of Satan), the second was quickly deleted when the employer faced persecution, and the third was considered but eventually forgotten when the employer got distracted. Yet in the fourth instance, the many employers responded positively and gave job offers. On the whole, we can understand this pattern as a moral that although many people would deny the apostles, eventually God’s message would come to the right people and the results would be tremendous. In our world, continually spreading God’s message and living in accordance with it will bring success.
Another key device which I incorporated into “The Graduate” is the notion that the soil is at fault, not the seed (Scott 361). In other words, it is not the fault of the job applicant in my parable for not getting the job in the first three instances. She is not to blame for a computer virus, naysaying coworkers, and distracted employers. As a message to modern readers, this means that God is never wrong. His message is always righteous, but our means of receiving that message will dictate our personal outcome. If we make ourselves like rocky soil which cannot absorb the message, our faith will have no foundation and go nowhere. If we are like the thorns and get tangled up in cosmopolitan things, we will also fail.
In my opinion, a major takeaway for today’s believers from “The Sower” is to be receptive to God’s word like the rich soil or the benevolent employers so that we can become closer to God. Another key point is that we must continue to spread God’s word even when we are initially met with resistance and our message falls upon unreceptive people.
Works Cited:
“Parable.” The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Sakenfield, vol.2, 2006, pp. 368 – 376
Schottroff, Luise. The Parables of Jesus. Fortress Press, 2006, pp. 180-193
Scott, Bernard Brandon. Hear Then the Parable. Fortress Press, 1989, pp. 344-361
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