The Parable of the Sower, a sermon based on Matthew 13: 1-23, preached on June 16, 2024

I once heard about a woman whose husband died. Like many, she was surrounded by family and friends. When people got word, they rushed to be by her side. At the funeral, many grieved beside her. Her church supported her, her family was there, yet life goes on. After a while, her family flew home, and her church family moved on, yet she hadn’t moved on. The healing wasn’t complete. There was still a hole in her heart that hadn’t yet healed, and at some point, she stopped trying to get back to life as normal. She stopped doing all kinds of things. If she didn’t feel like getting out of bed, she didn’t. If she didn’t feel like cooking, she didn’t eat. If she didn’t feel like leaving the house, she stayed home. After not attending worship for several Sundays in a row, this woman’s pastor went to visit her. By that point, the funeral had been months before, yet her home was still covered by the shadow of grief. The blinds were closed. The rooms were dark and dusty. There was little to nothing in the refrigerator. She only had water to offer her pastor, and so they sat on her sunporch on the back of the house drinking a glass of water. The sunporch was unlike the rest of the place. The sunporch was open and bright, and there were African violets everywhere. They bloomed from shelves and on tables. They were pink and purple. The pastor was amazed by them, and after complimenting her for her green thumb, he asked the woman if he might take one to a man in the church who had just lost his wife the week before. The woman agreed. The pastor delivered the African violet to the newly-widowed man, and just a few days later, the woman who grew the violet received a thank-you note from the newly-widowed man, thanking her for the gift. This man who received her violet in the wake of his wife’s death wrote to say that in his time of grief, it meant so much to have a plant blooming in his house. In a time of hardship, it meant so much to have something so beautiful to admire. Well, that sentiment touched the woman’s heart. A note like that would touch anyone’s heart, and so she picked up the newspaper on her coffee table, turned to the obituaries, and mailed African violets to those who were mourning. Continuing the practice for weeks, then months, slowly but surely, her own broken heart began to heal. She left the house. She started to cook and eat again. She went back to church. She pulled up the blinds, for when we give of ourselves, something happens within us, and it doesn’t even matter if we don’t receive a thank-you note every time. It doesn’t matter if some of the violets never get watered or go unappreciated, for it is good simply to give. This morning, as we continue our summer sermon series on the parables of Jesus, I want you to know that in the Parable of the Sower, this passage from the Gospel of Matthew that describes a person sowing seed so indiscriminately, so carelessly, so generously, that he didn’t even pay attention to whether the seed went on rocky soil or on the path where birds would eat it, Jesus is telling us, His disciples, about what God is like and how God designed us to be. That’s so much of what our Bible is. Years ago, I was reading the Bible in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, and the man next to me struck up a conversation. He said, “I love to read the Bible, too. It tells us what God is like and how we ought to be.” The man was right about that, so based on today’s parable, what is God like? God is like a sower who throws seed out onto the ground and doesn’t worry too much about where it goes because there is something good that happens just from the sowing. Jesus is like a sower who walks around spreading the Good News like a sower throwing seed indiscriminately, as though it brings him joy simply to spread the Good News, regardless of whether it takes root. That’s not how I sow seed. When I sow seeds, I do all kinds of stuff first because seeds are expensive. This year, I bought my vegetable seeds from the Burpee catalogue, where one packet of seeds costs between $4.00 and $7.00. These are vegetable seeds I’m talking about, not gold nuggets, yet that’s how much they cost. It seems like a packet of them used to cost 50 cents, but not anymore, so when I get my tomato seeds in the mail, I take them down to the basement where I have grow-lights and special soil. I carefully put one or two seeds per hole in this special soil tray that I buy. I have the grow lights on a timer, and I place my trays carefully under the lights so that as many seeds as possible have a chance to take root. Then I go down to the basement every day to check on them as though they were my babies. I once showed my mom the whole operation, and I think it worried her a little bit, either because it scared her how obsessed I’d become or because she wasn’t sure those were just vegetables I was growing down in the basement. I’m not sure which it was, but when the little plants are big enough and the weather is warm enough, I take the baby plants and carefully put them into the soil I’ve turned and fertilized. I’m careful about how I do all this because seeds are expensive. I can’t imagine just throwing them out all around the backyard. If I did that, some would get into the weeds where they’d be choked out. Others would fall onto the driveway where they’d be eaten up by the birds. Some might sprout in the rocky soil, but their roots would not go deep, and they’d dry up. Never would I just throw out seeds so indiscriminately the way the sower in our parable did, but Jesus isn’t really talking about sowing seeds, is He? No. He’s talking about how God is, and how we ought to be, and haven’t some of us forgotten how to be? Last Wednesday, columnist Dick Yarbrough of the Marietta Daily Journal looked back on his childhood to reflect on how far we’ve come. When he was a child, there were only three channels on his family’s black and white TV, and to change the channel, someone had to get up and turn the dial. They had one rotary phone, and if someone called while they weren’t home, no one was there to answer it. The caller would just have to call back. When they wrote letters to relatives in Scotland, it would take three weeks to receive their response. Today, things have changed. They email weekly with relatives throughout the world and receive a response immediately; he’s never away from his phone because it fits in his pocket, and all the channels are on his TV, which he can control without getting up from his La-Z-boy. I’m not as old as Dick Yarbrough, and still a lot has changed since I was a kid. If you would have told 10-year-old Joe Evans about a world where I’d have access on my phone to all the music that’s ever been recorded, and that all the TV shows and movies that have ever been made would be at my fingertips, I would have thought you were describing Heaven. But here’s the question for us in this modern age with so much entertainment right at our fingertips: Now that we have so much to entertain us, are we happier? Last week, our daughters went away to camp in middle Tennessee. It’s a Presbyterian camp in a remote valley. There’s no cell phone signal. There are no TVs. They swim in the cold water of a dammed-up creek. They eat in a mess hall. One night, the mess hall serves Chinese food, and I want you to know that rural Tennessee is not known for Chinese food, and yet they love camp. They love being there. In fact, it’s their favorite week of the year. In a world where we are being constantly entertained, why would they want to go to camp? Or why would they sign up for Road Rules? This morning, our daughters, along with other members of our youth group, left for a weeklong mission trip that we call Road Rules. They don’t know where they’re going. The itinerary is unknown to them. All week, they’ll be sleeping on the floor of church basements as they go from unknown destination to unknown destination, doing mission projects all along the way. Our daughters went last year, and they wanted to go again this year. They didn’t have to be persuaded. We don’t make them do stuff at this church just because their dad is one of the pastors. They wanted to go. Why? Because there is something about doing. There is something about giving. There is something about sharing what we have that nourishes our souls in a way that the glow of our phones or the headlines of our TV screens never could and never will. The Parable of the Sower tells us what God is like, and God is like a sower who casts out so much seed that he doesn’t really worry about who gets it or if his bag will be empty by the time he gets back home. He’s like the peach tree in our front yard that will work all year to produces peaches that it will never eat. God is like that, and in this parable, Jesus is telling us how we ought to be, for we were not created to be entertained. Our purpose in this life is not to eat, drink, and be merry, for we are like the Sower: It makes us happy to give and to share regardless of the outcome. On this Father’s Day, I think about how being a father has taught me some of these lessons. When I think about my own father, I realize that so much of what he did for me, I never thanked him for. I never thanked him for paying the mortgage on time. I never thanked him for keeping the lights on, and yet, now that I’m a father, I realize that in doing these things, while it’s nice to be thanked, it is also a blessing simply to give. It is a blessing to give and to help. It is a blessing to share. It is better to give than it is to receive, and that’s why so many people retire and lose touch with joy and happiness. We weren’t created to watch the news all day. That’s not what we’re here for. We were created to spread the blessings that we have received from the Lamb of God who spread the Gospel on this earth. We received it, and now it is our joy to spread it ourselves. We weren’t built to sit around, but to serve, to give, to sow, to share. Trusting that our God shares abundant mercy with us and this world, share what you have been given. Give. Sow. And be healed. Amen.