The Sower's Lesson

Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23, page 13
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thrones grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!
Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.
Sermon
It is convenient that I already had two sermons written for this month – one that corresponds with this week’s assigned readings, another that corresponds with next—because months ago I recorded sermons on Day 1, a nationally syndicated radio show that broadcasts sermons according to the lectionary.
So the two Sundays following my second daughter’s birth, theoretically, I wouldn’t need to scramble to piece together sermons for Sunday--I wrote them already.
But the problem is, I wrote these two sermons to address a church that struggles to remain relevant in a changing world. And this morning I preach to you, a church that is powerfully relevant. Months ago, I wrote two sermons to address a church that has seen diminishing membership and today I preach to you, a church that is growing. And I wrote two sermons to address a church that is less and less able to meet the needs of young people, but today I preach to you, a church who is blessed with young families and more children than we know what to do with.
In other words, I wrote a sermon months ago that corresponds with today’s assigned scripture lessons, but I can’t preach that exact sermon because the church I addressed then isn’t the church I address now.
If you listened to my sermon this morning on the radio or read or listened to it on the Day 1 website then you know I began my sermon with this introduction, “In this passage Jesus is having a problem that I would love to have – that when I preach on Sunday morning the crowds would be so great that I would have to sit out on a boat to avoid being consumed by the growing congregation on the shore.”
I can’t say that we have this problem exactly, but unlike so many in our denomination, we are growing, and we do struggle with space – where to put all our Sunday School classes, where we should put our youth group so that they’ll have room to grow, what can we change in our building to meet the needs of our growing congregation. What changes should we make so that we can continue to grow?
We want to do things, to make changes to ensure that we will nurture the families that we have while attracting new ones. We want to build things that will attract more people, offer programs that people of all ages will be interested in; we want things that we can do to assure that we’ll continue to be a relevant and vital part of this community.
But Jesus doesn’t really help us in that regard, because his advice doesn’t have all that much to do with those things that we can control.
In this parable we hear about a sower who has gone out to sow seed. The sower seems careless, sowing seed along the path where birds would eat it up, on rocky places where the plants would sprout quickly, but with shallow roots that the sun would scorch, other seed scattered among thorns that would out grow the plants and choke them out – seed going all these places besides its intended destination, among the good soil.
This parable describes a farmer, but surely not a farmer who knows what he’s doing. There is no mention of plowing the field, irrigating or fertilizing it. The farmer carelessly sows seed without thinking much about the maximum yield of his field, depending on a miracle for any kind of harvest at all.
Now I thought that this farmer was a whole lot different from modern farmers, but then I talked to Campbell Ridley.
I thought that modern farmers didn’t depend on miracles. And while they do plan ahead, plowing, irrigating, fertilizing, and sowing seed with expensive equipment rather than throwing it out haphazardly, according to Campbell Ridley, a good crop costs just as much as a bad one, and your crop at the end of the year, whether it makes you look like a good farmer or a great farmer fully depends not on what you can do, but on the weather which is out of your control.
Jesus admires the farmer who makes this truth so easy to see. The farmer in the parable doesn’t try to control much of anything, and he interprets his parable far away from the crowds so that only the disciples hear; the disciples, who, in a way, are like sowers, sowing the Good News of the Kingdom of God.
To them, those who would soon be entrusted with spreading the Gospel to all the earth, Jesus offers a parable about a farmer who sows seed and so obviously leaves the rest up to God.
This is the thing about churches: when you get right down to it, a whole lot depends not on who has the best building, the best programs, and which has the best preacher. Churches grow because of a whole bunch of factors that are out of our control.
The church I grew up in grew dramatically, and a bunch of people, myself included, contributed all that growth to our dynamic preacher. He took me out to lunch not long after I graduated seminary and he told a different story – one where the church that he served grew because the city the church served grew, and though he and the church did their job of casting out seed, the harvest was plentiful because of many factors that were completely out of their control saying something like: “Marietta was growing Joe. All I had to do was to keep the doors open and not screw up.”
We Christians today do our best to control everything that we can. We want to maximize the soil’s fertility, adding in Miracle Grow, watering on a schedule, doing our best not to leave too much of the process up to chance or up to God.
When we seem to be successful, the temptation is to take the credit for a job well done; and when we seem to struggle, we assume we have done something wrong, we haven’t planned enough. We want to maximize our yields, minimize our waste, and with the opportunity to control more and more, to know more and more, we run the risk of forgetting that ours is a vital, but ultimately small part of the great miracle God has been doing in our world since the dawn of creation.
We are the sowers of the seed, but we are not the Lord of the Harvest. Our seed must be sown or there will never be a crop, but by no means is the harvest all up to us. We must sow the seeds, but we must also trust that what will grow will grow, and what doesn’t is out of our control.
And here is the message to you - our world is changing, and I, like many of you, would like some plan for what to do about it.
I worry about the world we are living in – what according to too many Christians is a culture of drugs and greed, filling young men and women with apathy, cynicism – eating up seeds of hope and truth like birds to seeds sown along the path.
I worry about the soil – that too many in our communities are unresponsive to the Gospel, as hardened to church as the rocky places that have no use for seeds of faith.
I worry about the shallow faith of others who have not left the Church but have left the churches they grew up in to attend churches with less structure and more casual preaching offering moral lessons at best and a gospel of prosperity at worst. I worry about what will come of, what seems to me, a shallow faith or the lonely faith of those who are spiritual but not religious who assume they don’t need the church at all. When the sun comes up will their belief be scorched and wither into nothing?
I worry about the thorns of our world – knowing what forces will take over to strangle humanity should the faithful fade away. A world left to ambition, the reckless pursuit of wealth with no regard for the common good – surely without the Church too many would be left to the thorns that grow up and choke, first the poor, the oppressed, then us all.
But Jesus doesn’t call our attention to the seed that is lost.
“As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”
Jesus entrusted 12 people with the future of the church, 12 people who launched a campaign that changed the whole world and while we are the exception to the typical mainline church, growing, flourishing, witnessing to the truth in what we say and what we do – there will be no crop without casting seed, and no one will experience the gift that this church is if you don’t invite them here.
More and more, either having experienced rejection or just fearing it, we are reluctant to reach out to people in love though we so desperately want to – as though our hands are cold despite our warm hearts. We are reluctant to reach out in love, to cast seeds of hope, to invite friends to take part in the gift that we all receive because of this community of faith.
We are reluctant, as though we already knew how our offer would be received – though the only thing that guarantees the rejection of what we have to offer is keeping the seed in our hand, never casting it out into the world.
The parable of the sower demands that you sow seed.
Don’t complicate matters any more than that – just sow seeds of love – and leave the rest up to God.
Amen.