July 12, 2020
Hope Lutheran Church
Pastor Mary Erickson
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23; Isaiah 55:10-13
The Sower’s Hope
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Huge crowds came to see Jesus. People from all over came to see the famous rabbi and hear him teach. There was a human swarm around him, on the scale of when the Beatles came to the US.
One day the crush was so intense that Jesus ended up climbing in a boat and rowing offshore a short ways. His boat gently bobbed up and down across the waves. He looked ashore and saw the crowd gathered along the beach. Why had they all come? Certainly, for various reasons!
• Some were curiosity seekers. They were energized by seeing the unusual and the exotic. And Jesus was definitely the best show around. They weren’t going to miss it!
• Some were skeptics. They came to scoff and make fun of the gathering. Who does that guy think he is? And look at all these dumb suckers who are lapping up this performance!
• Some were seekers for the secret of life. They flitted from one sensation to the next like a honey bee grazing on flowers. They absorbed a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
• But other people came to Jesus with an open heart. They genuinely wanted to hear his message. They recognized the truth of his word.
Jesus had heard all the chatter. He knows about the negative talkers and the thrill seekers. What bearing does it have on him and his mission? How does he continue his purpose through the side dramas and negative energy?
Here’s how: He knows that none of it matters! What does matter is his mission. Jesus only needs to be faithful to his purpose. And his purpose is to announce that the Kingdom of God has come into their midst.
So Jesus tells this parable to the variegated assemblage of people along the shore. He tells them about a farmer. It’s planting time and he’s in his field. He dips into the grain sack and takes out a handful of seed. Then he begins to sow. He releases the seed in a broad arc and watches as it falls to the ground.
The seed falls in random spots. Some of it lands on the nearby pathway. Other lands in a rocky patch. Some falls in a weedy area. But other seed finds its destination on the good soil of the field.
That’s the thing about planting seeds. The farmer’s life involves a tremendous amount of risk. Farmers are at the mercy of so many unknowns. Crops can fail for any number of reasons: Frost, flooding, hail, and drought. Swarms of locusts, loose cattle, beetle infestations. Nothing is certain until the harvest is in the barn.
Top to bottom, a farmer’s existence is hemmed in by risk. But none of that deters the farmer. If you’re going to be dominated by fear and everything that could possibly go wrong, then farming is not the profession for you!
But fear of disaster is the last thing a farmer is thinking about when he plants his crops. If you’ve ever planted anything, you know for yourself that that just isn’t so!
Planting is all about hope. Even as you put that seed in the soil you can already envision the harvest! In your mind, that harvest is already gathered! You can see those shiny purple eggplants as you lay their seeds in the soil. You can taste those juicy, homegrown tomatoes, smell the heady fragrance of basil, hear the crisp snap of the green bean even before you cover the seeds in their blanket of dark earth.
Planting is future-oriented. It’s an act of hope. Even when your yard is nothing but bare soil, you can already feel that cool carpet of lush, green grass as you broadcast the seed. You turn the sprinklers on and dream about the scent of freshly cut grass. You envision lively games of croquet.
No, nothing is more optimistic, more full of hope, than planting seeds! Hope: that’s what keeps us going in late January when the Gurney’s Seed Catalogue arrives in the mail. We sing for joy on the day it comes! As we pour over each page we realize that no decision on earth is more vital than: pole bean or bush bean? We ponder whether this will finally be the year we break down and buy that plum tree root for our front yard. We’re basking in its shade and eating fruit even while we’re shoveling snow.
Farmers may talk a pessimistic streak, but don’t let ’em fool you. In their heart of hearts, they’re optimists!
As Jesus preaches from the fishing boat, he gazes at the diverse crowd before him. And he has a farmer’s heart. He sees the future harvest. In the back of his mind, he remembers the words from the prophet Isaiah:
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.
Jesus knows there will be a harvest! God’s word will not fail in its purpose. His mission will bear fruit in due season.
So as present-day disciples of Christ, what does this story and this situation mean for us? What does it mean for our lives of mission and service in the name of Christ?
Remember: the sower doesn’t fret over the seed thrown in unlikely places. He continues on his mission with his fervent belief in the harvest to come.
Friends, as we go about our daily activities, we have opportunity to be sowers of the seed of God’s kingdom. In all we say and do, we are the bearers of the divine influence in this world. Our words and actions are that seed. And that seed will bear fruit.
There are times we can look at a situation and we sum it up with despair. We think, “My words and actions won’t add up to a hill of beans here. What’s the use?” We’ve made a judgement on the soil around us. It’s not good soil. The conditions aren’t conducive to harvest. And very carefully we replace the handful of seeds we were about to fling back into the safety of the grain sack.
We’ve made a decision: it’s not beneficial to waste this good grain. Better to hold off and use those seeds where a favorable outcome is more likely.
But here’s the question we must answer: Are we called to sow the Kingdom Seeds in despair? Or do we sow them in hope?
Jesus sowed his words and actions in the fervent belief of his harvest. His final days on this earth seemed to appear that he’d dumped his entire bag of grain directly onto the pathway. The angry birds of his hostile enemies swooped in and consumed him. His whole ministry was laid bare on the cross. His life gobbled up by death.
But the seed cannot grow unless it dies. Until the seed is buried, it cannot be born again. Jesus could not germinate the new Kingdom Life until he had been buried in the grave. On the cross, it looked like he’d just wasted his entire ministry. He’d cast all his seeds to the wind.
But that Word-of-God-made-flesh was going to accomplish that which it purposed! Instead of the thorn of death, the cypress tree of new life was going to arise! In the place of the brier of sin, up sprang the myrtle of grace! No, Jesus’ word was not sown in vain. And it was not sown in despair. It was sown in hope, the hope and knowledge that God’s good grace has come to redeem the world unto God’s self.
That is the power of God’s love. That love is the seed Christ came to sow. May that seed be planted in our hearts. May it sprout and take root within us. And may our lives bear the fruits of divine love – thirty-fold, sixty-fold, one hundred-fold!
