Sermon Aug 14 2011

Isaiah 55:10-13
10For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. 12For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 13Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the LORD for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
1That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. 2Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. 3And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. 5Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. 6But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. 7Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9Let anyone with ears listen!”

18“Hear then the parable of the sower. 19When 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. 20As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; 21yet 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. 22As 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. 23But 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.”


The Parable of the Sower

Parables are a mystery: they have a twist, a surprise in them. They are like a joke with an unexpected punch-line, which is what makes it funny. And parables use ordinary things, out of everyday lives, to talk about the surprises of God’s kingdom.

Listen: a sower went out to sow. And he sows the seed all over the place willy-nilly, apparently. That’s our first surprise. There doesn’t seem to be much planning, much plotting. In first century Palestine, farmers would scatter the seed first, and then plow the thin soil over it later. So it makes sense that some of the seed would land on rocks, perhaps, or in thorns.

But this doesn’t seem to be a very smart or, at least fortunate, farmer. Most of the seed lands on inhospitable places: some on a well worn path, some on rocky soil, some among the thorns. And that seed fails to thrive – pretty much a total loss. Only a portion falls on good soil. So, in the story, only one out of the four places where the sees lands is any good. Not a very good average. Not a very smart business plan.

In fact, to our ears, the farmer seems wasteful. Seed is expensive, it takes a great deal of effort to plant, and till, and harvest, and even in the best of years farming is risky. So wouldn’t the wise farmer, the prudent farmer, do a better job of sowing seed where there would be a better chance of a good harvest? Even in first century Palestine, surely, the farmer could have been a little more careful with the seed.

Ah- but this is not the Parable of the Wise Farmer. It is not the Parable of the Farmer who planned well. Sometimes this is called the Parable of the Soils.

And that is where we usually enter into this story. Because, in all stories, whether from our childhood, or the books we read, or the stories we see on television, we want to feel connected to the story. Especially in parables, we ask ourselves, “Where am I in this story?”

And this parable is usually told, and preached, and understood, this way: “Which kind of soil are we?” Are we rocky soil where faith never even has a chance to take root? Are success and wealth choking out the word of God in our lives? Are the troubles of life burning, scorching our shallow faith?

This parable is preached this way because that is Jesus’ answer when the disciples ask Jesus what the parable means. And all of those are might be true for us, at different times in our lives. We all, I think, have had times when we felt choked by life, or scorched by life, or alone and vulnerable. Times when we have felt God’s mercy and love was absent, that we were dry and parched, so burdened that nothing could grow in us.

Or perhaps this story about soil is a way of understanding our families. Perhaps that’s another surprise, or at least a puzzle: why is it that so many of us have grown up in families, with brothers and sisters, going to church—and some of us stay, and some of us never darken the door again? Why is it that the same lessons were heard, the same Sunday School classes attended, the same hymns sung, and some hear and bloom, and some do not?

Every year, we have Vacation Bible School. And every year, after the songs have been sung, after the ice cream wrappers have been picked up, after the decorations have come down and the floor has been swept, we say, “Oh, if only we could get those children to come back!” And some of us wonder if it is worth it. If it is working: why do so many come for a week in the summer, and we never see them again, until next summer? Why do their parents show up on Friday in the middle of the day, but they do not come the rest of the year? Why do we put so much time and energy and money into something that is only 20 hours a year out of a child’s life? And many, not just in our churches here, but in many churches are asking if now isn’t the time for VBS to be done. Over with. Certainly, in this technology savvy age, in which even the 7 year olds have cell phones to call their mom at the end of the day, in which nearly every child has access to computers, or at least an X-box or Wii, singing songs, making crafts, doing home science experiments, and racing around on the grass outside just aren’t cutting it. This doesn’t seem to be a very good use of resources and time.

Ultimately, though, parables are not about us. They are about God. They are about the mysteries of God, and about God’s mysterious grace.

And that is the third surprise. This story is about God’s Profligate, overflowing, abounding grace. Not grace that is carefully meted out, nor even grace that is carefully planned in strategic ways. It is about grace that is seemingly wasted. It is about grace that overflows like water, overflowing the edges of the bowl, grace that flows down like might waters, grace that goes everywhere- rocky soils, well worn paths, thorny areas—grace that just goes!

“This parable is not about what good soils we are, and how well we understand the divine mysteries. This is about what God is doing in staggering numbers. …If the return is really a hundredfold, then those bumper crops will flood the market. Everyone will have some, including those with hardened hearts.” It will be like zucchini season- when we’ve got so much, we don’t know what to do with it anymore—so much zucchini that we’ve run out of ways to cook it, so much that we are reduced, as Garrison Keillor says, to sneaking over to our neighbors in the middle of the night and leaving them bags of zucchini on their porch- when they already have all that they could ever need as well.

For look- listen! God’s grace is so overflowing that even the bad soil gets the seed. The logical place to sow seed would certainly be on good soil, or at least soil as good as we could make it. And the logical thing to do would be to sow seed more carefully, on soil that would be guaranteed to gives us a good yield- but that’s not what happens in this story.

“This parable is like a joke, like a riddle—hiding as much as it reveals about God. It leaves us scratching our heads about what this really means, and about the world as we know it, and about what God is up to.

And what God is up to, Always, Always, is about grace. This sower is “a high-risk sower, relentless in indiscriminately sowing seed on all soil—as if it were potentially all good soil….Which leaves us to scratch our heads, and wonder if there is any place or circumstance in which God’s seed cannot sprout and take root.”

The surprise is this: God’s grace goes in places that seem guaranteed not to work. Gods grace gets thrown in places and on people that we might think of as hopeless, lost causes. Because for God there are no lost causes. The rain falls on the just and the unjust. Grace is for people who think they don’t deserve it, cannot be good enough, are so broken God couldn’t-ever-love and forgive them. Isaiah reminds us of this: the word of the Lord, the grace of God, shall not return to me empty, God says. But deserts shall rejoice, and bloom. Grace shall fall on dry places, and barren places, and rocky places, and thorn infested places—and people.

Let us who have ears hear. Amen.