8th Pentecost
Matthew 13:1-9; 18-23, Isaiah 55:10-13, Romans 8:1-11
This has been a rough summer so far for yards and flowers around the northern suburbs. Our drought condition has now entered the serious category and is bordering on extreme. I have continued to water my flowerbeds according to the prescribed watering guidelines. My grass is struggling but I know from past experience that the brown yard is a sign of the grass going dormant until there is enough moister to allow it to return. I have been hand watering selected flowering plants and they are doing okay. But there is this one spot right at the end of my driveway where no grass grows. One spot that I keep working on. It is an area about one foot square area where the grass simply does not grow. It is a bit crazy to be obsessed about a 144 square inch area. But it is the spot that I see every time I go to the mailbox or pick up the morning papers. So I seed it with grass seed and water it. But nothing seems to ever grow there. I loosened the ground. Spread fresh topsoil on the spot. I have seeded it again and again. It is right next to the street where everyone walking by can see it. Right where the drive way is tapered toward the street. I suspected at one time that maybe the problem was certain drivers in the family cutting the edge as they turned in. So I watched everyone come home time after time. I even did the CSI thing. Checking for tire tracks and imprints. But no one drove on my grass-seeded spot. So I keep seeding it. Watering it. And hoping something will grow. Seeding. Watering. Hoping and wondering if the problem is with the seed or the soil or the water or me.
Our gospel lesson is a famously familiar parable told by Jesus as he sat in a boat floating just off the shore where a great crowd had gathered to hear him preach. Jesus tells the parable of the sower who goes out sowing seeds. The image is of a prepared field in Palestine. The fresh earth turned by maybe oxen pulled plows. The ground turned 3-4 inches deep (not plowed like fields are today. But deep enough to loosen the soil to prepare it to receive the seed). And the sower goes forth broadcasting the seed, scooping handfuls and flinging the seed as he walked (like the picture on the cover of our bulletin for today). Cast in such a way the seed falls on a variety of soil types with varying degrees of success in growing. Like most of the parables the story invites us to find meaning or some faith understanding. To come to some new or deeper insight about God's kingdom. To consider the question, "Why did Jesus tell this story?" Many parables challenge us to find meanings but the interesting thing about the parable of the sower and the seed is that Matthew has Jesus provide an explanation. Our lesson for today tells us that the seed is the word of the kingdom. The word of God. And the soil types are the various ways those who hear the word respond to it. Some seed fell on the path and birds snatch it away. Jesus explains that this is like when the evil one snatches away what is sown in the heart because it is not understood. Other seed falls on rocky ground and takes quick but shallow root. This Jesus says is like those who hear the good news and respond with energy, excitement and good intentions but fall away when trying times come because they lack a faith foundation. Still other seed falls among the thorns where it begins to grow only to be choked. As Jesus says. "By the cares of the world and the lure of wealth." Finally some seeds fall in the good soil where the seeds grow and bring forth their yield 30, 60 even 100 times over. Obviously the simple point of all this is to be good soil. To leave the bad behind. To hear God's word. Understand God's word and live out God's word faithfully.
The problem, of course, is that try as I might to be the perfect soil for God's word I keep messing up. I get busy with myself or other worldly concerns. I fail to listen. I fail to hear or see what God would have me to know. See. Feel. Be. It is this reality of life that our second lesson from Paul's letter to the Romans has been talking about for a couple weeks. What Pastor Chris preached about last Sunday. That tongue twister lesson where Paul declares that "the good that I would do I do not do and that which I would not do I do." Try as we might to be good Christians or even just good people, we fail. It is called sin. It hardens the heart. Carries us away from God. Chokes out the energy we have for God's word. Burns up our love for others. Oh sure, there are moments when every thing seems to be growing just fine and then. Something turns out to be wrong with the soil. Plants die. Or at least don't produce. All would seem to be lost. Except for the fact that we live in the 21 st century. Crop production is no longer about rocky soil, weeds or thistles. Soil productivity has become a precise science. We have laser-based devices for enhanced efficiency in such matters as land leveling and subsurface drainage. There are sophisticated herbicides designed to control the weeds and genetically engineered strains of seeds that resist the shifting weather conditions and the threat of insects and disease. The ground is analyzed through detailed yield records linked to Global Positioning Satellite systems that manage the fertility of the soil down to square foot sections year after year. Sitting in the air-conditioned cab of a $150,000 four-wheel drive John Deere tractor the modern farmer does not even consider the questions of our gospel lesson except as the quaint tale from a long forgotten period of farming history. Footpaths, weeds and thorns, even birds and rocks are removed from the farming equation. Yields of 30, 60 or even 100 fold barely catch the attention of the 2% of our population producing more food then we need each year. The modern farmer doesn't broadcast the seed but selects the soil. Modifies the soil. Plants only in the best soil. We now rarely worry about sin. There are far greater things to fear in our world. Exploding bombs in the London underground reminded us of that this week. Every time we look at our checkbooks we have other anxieties. And the continuously increasing cost of living in a modern world is not just financial. We feel the burden growing psychologically, emotionally, physically and even spiritually. What we thought was planted in good soil fails to grow as expected. We fear we have nurtured the wrong things. We go looking for better seeds forgetting that it is the soil that matters most. In the parable the quality of the seed is never questioned. It is the soil. That's what the farmer needs to be most concerned about. It is tempting to think of God in those same terms. God looking for the best soil for his seed. The best lived lives. The best-intentioned person. The quality faith. If God had any farming sense at all God would know that the seed grows best in the best soil. But the funny thing about God is the generous spreading of the seed. There is no worry about the soil. The seed is spread. God's eternal word. A word that never seems to be exhausted but is spread again and again and again regardless of the soil. God doesn't wait to bring seed until we are ready for the word. If anything God seems to come to us in some of the rockiest thorn infested moments of our lives. We don't always understand it. We are so busy with the rocks and thorns. Occupied with the terrors of our day. Struggling with the health issues. Career challenges. Family doubts. But God's word is there for us. Seeking a place to take root. And sometimes in spite of ourselves we let the word begin to grow. But most of the time we tend to focus on the soil. We become identified with soil types. We think of ourselves as hard packed or thorny or at times even good. And we think of others the same way. We tend to forget that the sower sowed seed broadcast. God doesn't seem to worry about soil or any other type, category or classification. The world is the world. All created by God. All filled with the promise and the possibility that the seed will find a place. But I think in types and categories. I judge and define. It gives a certain order and meaning to my life to be able to type myself and others. It also explains so much about me. And even provides excuses for why I am the way I am. I know my type. Or maybe I should say types. Sometimes I hear God speaking but like the hard packed path I do not understand that the word being spoken is for me or I refuse to understand what I know full well is the voice of God. Other times I'm more like the rocky ground. I get excited about my relationship with God. I get big ideas about saving the world or at least some small part of it. Seeking justice. Working with compassion for those in need. But as time passes I find my energy fading. My enthusiasm waning. Seeds don't mature over night like I would like them to do. I become inactive or complacent. And God knows how many times I have been among the thorns. When the stress of life takes me away from my God. When other priorities overwhelm what I know to be my true calling. But then there are the good soil times. I would like to believe that I choose such times or create such moments. But the truth is that the seed more often succeeds in spite of me rather than because of me. In the end I have to remember the simple truths of my Sunday school theology. Remember? "Oh, who can make a tree grow? I'm sure I can't can you? Oh, who can make a tree to grow, no one but God, 'tis true."
Life is a gift from God. It is easy to believe we are the ones who create life because we know the soil types. But try as we might we cannot create the life God creates. Sooner or later we are lost to all that keeps us from knowing true life. Eternal life. I find myself thinking about Jesus telling this parable to the crowd while he sat in the boat just off shore. "Listen!" he said. And he told them all a parable about a sower who went out broadcasting his seed. Letting it fall where it would. Jesus cast the word into the crowd. A crowd of people from a variety. A wide variety of economic, social, educational, ethnic, religious, political, sexual, intellectual, philosophical, physical, vocational and even soil backgrounds. He had to wonder. "Where will the word take root this time?" I don't think things have changed much. God's word is read again this morning. Cast forth with the simple command, "Let anyone with ears listen!"
I have this spot at the end of my driveway where I have spread at least an entire bag of grass seed and still nothing grows there. It's probably a waste of seed. But I keep hoping that maybe some day one of the seeds will begin to grow and others will follow. I have faith in the seed. I believe in the seed. So I keep spreading it. God only knows when it will come to life. God only knows. Jesus said, "Listen! A sower went out to sow..."
Amen