“Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”” (Matthew 13:3-9)
A sower went out to sow, and he threw his seed … everywhere! He threw it all over the place! Some went where they were supposed to go. Some fell into the bushes, and some went on the road. It’s not obvious that this sower had any idea where most of his seeds were going. He just wanted to get the stuff out there!
It reminds me of my time as a paperboy. We were paid around $20 for putting around 5,000 copies of the community newspaper into letterboxes. The trick, of course, was to go to the massive housing commission blocks near where I lived—hundreds of letterboxes in a row. After half a dozen of these blocks, my entire inventory was gone.
Does that sound shifty? Some of the boys just dumped their papers in a bin. I delivered mine. I just didn’t care whether anyone read them. If the letterbox already had piles of unopened mail sticking out of it, that wasn’t my concern. My job was to deliver the paper. I didn’t care if anyone read it!
Yes, I was young and stupid, and we would expect a little more of a decent farmer, wouldn’t we? Surely the goal of the farmer isn’t just to scatter seed, is it? The farmer wants to make things grow.
Even though I do (technically) run a farm, I am not a farmer, and the only seeds I can ever remember planting were for some school science project, where it was a meticulous process—turning the soil, everything in neat rows, careful watering. The sower in Jesus’ story clearly did not attend my school. He just reached into his bag and threw stuff all over the place
I often thought of this parable during my years running the youth drop-in center in Dulwich Hill. We sowed a lot of seed over those twenty‑five years, especially in the early days when working mainly with young people with substance abuse problems. And a lot of those seeds bounced along the path.
There was a young Vietnamese guy named Long. I had a real affection for him, though he was a rogue. He was both using drugs and selling drugs and involved in lots of petty crime, including shaking down the local high school kids for their lunch money as they arrived at school each day. Even so, we worked hard on Long because he was something of a gang leader, and we figured that if we could win him over, he’d bring the others with him.
I tried for ages to get Long into the boxing club. One night he finally came, and it was unforgettable as his mates kept barging into the church hall trying to drag him out. Eventually I locked all the doors and got about half an hour with him. Then one of his gang found a way in through a window, said something to him in Vietnamese, and Long looked at me and said, “I’ve got to go.”
The police later told me I should feel proud—that this was the longest time Long had ever been separated from his gang. I didn’t feel proud. And a couple of months later Long died in a stolen car. Not an overdose, as I’d feared, but a crash—though, of course, he may have been high at the time.
Sometimes you throw out your best seed and it just bounces off the road. The birds eat it. It goes nowhere.
Speaking at rallies feels like that sometimes. I’ve been speaking out for Palestine since 1986—forty years—and have things improved? They’ve never been worse. Countless rallies, countless articles, papers, videos. Seeds scattered everywhere, and most of them seem to have landed on the path.
“Some seeds fell on rocky ground… Others fell among thorns…” (Matthew 13:5, 7)
There are so many reasons people avoid the truth.
One of my most vivid memories from the youth center was in March 2013, wagging my finger at a young guy named Michael: “If you don’t change the way you’re going, you’ll be dead or in prison within a couple of years.”
I’d banned him from our youth center for selling drugs and for beating up on smaller kids. He kept trying to sneak back in because all his mates were still there. Whenever he did, I’d call the police and they’d remove him.
I can’t remember exactly what had me out on the street with him that day, trying to talk sense into him, but he wouldn’t have a bar of it. And that night—around 3 a.m.—he and two mates broke into our youth center, poured petrol over the floors of the old wooden church building, and set fire to it.
Yes, that was the great Dulwich Hill fire of March 2013, and it was a miracle of God that nobody died that night.
Sometimes you throw out the seed, and it lands on the path. Sometimes, someone picks up that seed and throws it back in your face, but the point is that it doesn’t matter. Our job is not to get results. Our job is to keep sowing!
Someone once said to me, “You priests are no different from prostitutes. You give yourself, body and soul, but you charge a price—and the price is change. No change, no love.”
That has stayed with me. Spiritual prostitution is not our calling, is it? Jesus calls us to spread the word, to do the work, and to live in love and to leave the results to God. Sometimes the soil is good. Sometimes it’s shallow. Sometimes the seed sprouts and looks promising. Sometimes it withers. This is not something we control. We just have to keep sowing.
And we do see results.
One of the most encouraging things for me in recent years has been adult men approaching me saying, “You won’t remember me, but I used to be part of your youth center. If it hadn’t been for that, I’d probably be in prison now.”
That’s not an exact quote but a compilation of many conversations. Either way, it’s deeply encouraging, but one thing I’ve learned is that it’s very hard to tell where the path ends and the good soil begins, and it’s a constant, glorious surprise to discover that the people who blossom are often the last people you’d expect.
“A sower went out to sow.” He threw seed far and wide. He didn’t wait for perfect conditions. He didn’t test the soil first. He just kept sowing.
“Those who have ears, let them hear.”
First published in Father Dave’s weekly newsletter – July 11, 2026
