Sermon 7/10/11
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
This year, finally, after saying I was going to for the
last many years, I finally actually planted a vegetable garden. I have been meaning
to pretty much every year that I have been in my own home, and one thing or other
always comes up. One year I actually made it as far as planting marigolds in the
front yard, only to have the lawn crew mow over them just before they started
to bloom.
When I was growing up, my grandfather had a sizable garden,
and he always let me have part of it to try growing things on my own – well,
under his supervision. But I chose what to plant, a mix of flowers and vegetables.
I was the kid whose bean in a Dixie cup in school never grew – the one kid with
the dud seed that left the teacher trying to come up with something nice to say
about how I could share in caring for someone else's plant or something. But
somehow, under my grandfather's care, my garden always bloomed. He taught me
tricks of the trade – how to hang empty pie tins up to scare away birds, how to
plant corn: "One for the blackbird, one for the crow, one for the soil and
one to grow," as the rhyme goes. How to space my seeds and pull weeds, and
use chicken wire fences for tendrils of pea plants to curl around.
This year, I finally decided I would try to remember what
I could, read up on what I couldn’t, and plant my own garden. It hasn’t been
100% smooth – Todd and I had a hard time getting the proper soil mixture in our
beds – so one box has a perfect soil mix, and the other has never seemed to be
quite right. I started seedlings inside which did really well right up until I
transplanted them, where the only things that survived were one spinach and one
pepper plant. Some animal has been eating my tomato plants, carrots, and bean
plants, although the tomatoes and beans have proved hardy and bounced back. So
far, I have harvested a tiny bit of spinach. But I think I might actually end
up with a decent harvest of corn, peas, beans, and onions by the end of the
season. Not bad, I suppose, for my first attempt in many years.
Anyway, my experiences this summer with soil and seed and
birds and how things grow or don’t have helped me think about this week's gospel
lesson. After all, if we, who are mostly part-time hobby gardeners can spend so
much time thinking about our small plots, imagine what time went into cultivating
the land in Jesus' day, where survival was determined in large part by how
successfully one could produce crops. Today we have to pay close attention to Jesus'
parables that use images of farm life, to make sure we truly understand what we
are hearing, but Jesus' first hearers would have felt right at home with his
stories.
So, we have this parable – known as the parable of the
sower. And it seems clear – the story and the explanation right there for us,
and we are supposed to be the good seed that hears and understands the word. Right?
But a couple of things catch my attention when l look at this parable more
closely.
For
example: A two-fold harvest for a farmer like this would have been a pretty
good return. A five-fold harvest would have been remarkable, a miraculous
blessing. But Jesus says the farmer reaps 30, 60, even 100 fold from these
seeds that the farmer sowed so haphazardly. What kind of seeds would produce
such a harvest, especially if so few of them seem to make it into good soil?
Jesus is clearly exaggerating to make a point. Jesus is making an over-the-top
statement about this seed and how it grows. These parables from Jesus usually
tell us something about what the kingdom of God is like. So what’s Jesus trying
to tell us through this super high yield seed?
Or how about
this – what kind of sower would throw seeds around on a path, and on rocks, and
among thorns? Most gardeners plants seeds carefully in rows, certainly paying
attention to get all the seed into good soil. I know I didn’t plant my garden by
just throwing seed out into the backyard and hoping for the best. I keep trying
to make sure my seed and plants are protected and cared for. Seed isn’t perhaps
the most expensive thing in the world, but it is a commodity, and certainly
would have been in Jesus’ day, and in any day, it doesn’t make a lot of sense
to waste resources needlessly. So why this haphazard sewing of seed? If God is
meant to be the Sower in this parable, why isn’t God a little more
discriminating in throwing the seed? Wouldn’t that solve the whole problem? Why
would God sow seed where it’s bound not to grow? If all the seed was put in the
good soil, not on rocks or among thorns, wouldn’t that make so much more sense?
We
usually think of ourselves as the seed in this story – that isn’t quite right. But
really, the seed the sower is sowing in each place is the word. The word must
mean the good news – which for Jesus, was the news that the kingdom of God was
at hand. We might also think of it as the good news that God loves us
unconditionally, the grace is a gift offered to us without price. Jesus' point
is that because God's kingdom is here, God's love is here, ready for us to
receive and give. That’s the good news we talk about, for example, in our
communion liturgy. The good news is love.
So, if
the seed that the sower sows is meant to be God sowing the good news, then in
the parable, Jesus tells us that God sows the good news everywhere. On everyone.
Even if we are not sure where we fit in this parable, we can know one thing: we
are definitely not the sower. We don’t
choose where the seed is sown – God does. How does God sow? Not carefully, but
extravagantly, not holding back, but being a little wild and carefree about it.
That’s how God sows good news, how God sows blessings, and grace, and love:
freely. God isn’t concerned about whether or not the people on whom the
blessings of grace fall are worthy enough or good enough to receive it. God
will sow God’s love on everyone. That’s the kind of sower God is. If we were sowing,
no doubt we would be obsessed with not sowing seed where we didn’t think it was
deserved, and worrying that our seed would run out. God sows as if the seed
isn’t a scarce commodity that’s about to run out – because it isn’t! And God sows
with irrepressible hope – if you have ever seem plants pushing up through concrete,
you know that things, including God's love, can grow in the most unlikely of
places. God’s love, God’s grace, God’s good news comes in a limitless, endless
supply. That in itself is good news for us. Our
job is to work on being good soil, making our lives the good environment where
God's love can flourish and take root.
Then we can turn back to Jesus’
saying that the seed sown by the sower would bear 100 fold harvest. We don’t
have to be in the midst of a struggling economy to know that any investment you
make that brings you back 100 times what you put in is a very good investment
indeed. It’s astonishing – a deal not to be passed up for any reason. If the
sower is God, and the seed is good news, and God’s love, and it can be sown
everywhere, on anyone, Jesus is also telling us that we can expect awesome,
outrageous, unexpected results: when you share unconditional love, extravagant
love, limitless love, crazy, outrageous things will happen as a result.
Not-to-be-missed things, shouldn’t-pass-up-the-chance things will happen as a
result of the way God sows good news in our world.
So, God the sower has limitless seed to
spread, seed which brings a shockingly outrageous harvest. God has limitless
love to share, which affects the world in shocking ways. But where do we come
in? Do we have a bigger role to play than learning to be good soil, receptive
to God's word, God's love? Here’s the thing – I know we talked about the sower being
God. But actually, the parable doesn’t explicitly say the sower is God. I think
that is our best place to start – what would God do as the sower? But to push
ourselves, to really get this parable, I think we also have to see ourselves as the sowers. If we are
Christ’s disciples, meant to be like him, then we, too, are called to sow and
seek good fruit, a good harvest. We can help in God’s work of planting and
harvesting.
The
trouble, as I mentioned before, is that it seems harder for us to be
extravagant with our seed as God is. We’re meant to share the good news too,
share God’s love, tell of God’s grace. But perhaps, unlike God shaking seed out
everywhere, we’re more discriminate. We look around us at others and decide
that their soil is too rocky, or that their lives have too many thorns to
bother sowing seed there. One pastor writes, “There's sometimes a sense that
the good things God has for us are in such limited supply that the only kind of
good and responsible stewardship is to guard it very carefully, give it only to
those we're sure are worthy, protect it like the last egg of the rarest
endangered bird.” (1) God wants us to be sowers too – but if we take up this
task, we have to sow as God does – with reckless abandon, confident that the
grace we’re sharing never runs out. And if we are sowers too, we have to be
ready for the harvest God will return to us – 100 times more than we’re
expecting.
We are called to be good soil – to cultivate
the lives that God gives us and try to be open to receiving the blessings that
God wants to sow in our lives. In some ways, this parable is that simple, even
though being good soil can be quite hard! But this parable asks us for even
more – to understand God and how free God’s love is. When it comes to God’s
grace, it’s ok to be a little wild and crazy. It’s ok to share God’s love even
where you think it might not thrive. Because God’s love is a gift without end.
And the harvest is 100 times better than you were thinking. Thanks be to God.
Amen.
(1) This quote and basis
for sermon are by Sarah Dylan Breuer,
http://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/2005/07/proper_10_year_.html
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