Isaiah 55:1-5, 10-13; Romans 8:9-17; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23; Psalm 65

Collect:

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

 Brothers and sisters in Christ, pray with me, that the words I speak may be those God wants us to hear.

In today’s lesson, Jesus sits in a boat just off the shore, and begins to teach those gathered on the beach using parables. He starts out with the parable of the sower, which we have in today’s lesson; but if we read on from the end of our lesson, we find that he continues his discourse with the parable of the wheat and the weeds, the parable of the mustard seed, and the parable of the yeast. Jesus uses these parables to teach about the Kingdom of Heaven.

Many of us have heard these parables over and over, some of us since childhood. Although they are funny little stories, they seem familiar to us, so sometimes we don’t look very closely at them.

 But a parable isn’t just a happy little story. My study bible makes this remark about parables:

“Parables use conventional images to disturb complacent existence; in shaking up one’s worldview, they force reconsideration of what is normally considered safe, desirable, and honorable.” ¹

So when Jesus tells us a parable, he is asking us to stretch a bit, and think differently. And in this case, after the parable, he’s going to give us some insights about what he has said. Let’s try stepping into the story and see what we see.

A sower goes out to sow. Maybe he has his bag of seeds slung across his shoulder, throwing out seeds by the handful…or, if you like modern images, maybe he has one of those little broadcast spreaders, and he’s walking along turning the crank. We are told he is planting grain. He must have plenty of seed, and a lot of area to cover, because he is just throwing it all over the place.

This wouldn’t have been surprising to the folks he was talking to. That was the way grain was planted back then. It went everywhere. Some landed on the path. Some landed on the shallow, rocky soil. Some landed in the thistle patch. And some landed on the good soil.

Jesus tells us what happened when the seed landed on the path…the birds ate it. The seed on the rocky soil sprouted nicely, but there wasn’t enough dirt for suitable root development, and in the heat of summer it withered and died. The seed that fell in the thistles couldn’t compete, it was shaded out above and nutrients and water couldn’t get to the roots below.

So far, all this makes sense to you and me…and it surely made sense to the listeners in Jesus’ day. No surprises yet.

But then we are told about the seed that landed on good soil yielded 30, 60, 100-fold. Okay, we think, it bore grain, that’s what it was supposed to do, right? But this yield, 30, 60, 100-fold, is amazing for the time. It would have been an unheard of, undreamed of quantity, far beyond the yield expected by anyone in Jesus’ audience. Bushels and bushels and bushels of grain. It speaks of extravagant abundance.

Then we get an explanation of this parable from Jesus.

First he equates the seed with the word of the kingdom. If you hear the word but don’t take time and effort understand it, it gets lost. Evil snatches it away. It doesn’t even sprout.

On the rocky ground, the word is cause for joy; but a casual faith that doesn’t put down strong roots won’t last when the going gets tough.

If you hear the word, but are too worried about other stuff to take time and effort to understand it, you make no room for God in your life, and so don’t bear the fruit of the kingdom.

But if you pay attention and make an effort to understand the word, absolutely astounding things happen. You bear more fruit than you ever dreamed possible.

So, why is Jesus telling us this?

It seems to me that Jesus is talking about action here, in a couple of ways.

His explanation of the parable is certainly telling us that understanding is crucial to bearing fruit. Understanding has everything to do with being a whole, healthy, mature person of faith. It causes growth, it furnishes the roots we need to last through the hard times, it defends us from the things that attempt to snatch us away from God, or that keep us so busy we make no place for God in our lives.

Let’s face it. Understanding takes time and effort. Jesus is calling us to be good soil here, and that is an active, rather than a passive role. For we have some control over what kind of soil we will be…and from time to time, we all need to be gardeners, to be sure the word lands in good soil.

The other figure in action here is the sower. In his time on earth, the sower was Jesus. He went everywhere, sowing the word of the kingdom. We, as Christians, get to be sowers of the word also. Remember, Jesus gave us the great commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”

We are to spread the word of the kingdom…and being sowers for the kingdom means that we are supposed to throw that seed all over the place! Up here! Over there! We don’t just plant it in neat little rows. We take chances and put it all sorts of places. That’s our job. Who knows what may happen? We believe in this kingdom, so we get that word out there.

Well, sometimes that word gets tucked away and doesn’t sprout. Sometimes it sprouts, looks promising, but fades away. Sometimes it gets ignored because other things in the world seem more attractive at the moment. Sometimes, our efforts seem wasted. But are they really wasted?

Recall these words from today’s lesson from Isaiah:

Thus says the Lord:…

“For 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,

so 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.”

So, we are to be sowers of the Good News of the kingdom. We will not always see the fruit of the word we sow…but Jesus tells us that when the word hits good soil, we will see amazing things happen, far beyond our wildest expectations.

 

¹The Access Bible; an ecumenical learning resource for people of faith. New Revised Standard Version with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, edited by Gail R. O’Day and David Peterson. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. N.T. p.22.