Sermon for July 16, 2023
Readings:
Isaiah 55:10-13
Psalm 65: (1-8), 9-14
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9,18-23
In the year 1701, Jethro Tull, the eighteenth-century British farmer and agriculturalist, NOT the 1970s rock band, invented a thing called a seed drill. It was a device that allowed farmers to plant seeds precisely: in rows at the proper depth, exactly where the farmer wanted them to go. It was really a revolutionary thing, because before that time the most common way of planting seeds, especially for field crops like grains, was called broadcasting. You took a handful of seed and you scattered it across the newly tilled soil. There are even manuals from the Tudor period in England explaining to farmers exactly how to do this. You take a step, and scatter. Another step, scatter. Step, scatter, step, scatter, on and on until you have covered your field. This was the way that planting was done pretty much as far back as anyone could remember. It was effective, but it wasn’t efficient, because you couldn’t control exactly where the seeds went. Inevitably some seeds would wind up on your footpath, in untilled soil, and of course you always had to worry about things like weeds and birds. Before Tull’s invention of the seed drill this was simply the life of the farmer. It was the way that things were. You knew that some seed would be wasted and you accepted that because you also knew that a lot of it would grow. Broadcasting wasn’t efficient, but it did work.
If you look at this method of farming through modern, enlightened eyes, you are liable to think, as Jethro Tull did, that this is a problem that must be fixed. This is wasteful. This is inefficient, which in our modern world is just about the most horrible thing ever. God forbid something should be inefficient! We must find a way to stop scattering seeds in places where it is unlikely to grow. We must fix this problem. That is what Jethro Tull saw when he saw seeds being scattered in the field. A problem that needed to be fixed. But Jesus saw something different.
Jesus and all of his disciples would most certainly have been aware of how fields were planted. They would have understood how broadcasting worked. But what Jesus saw in the practice of scattering seed across the field was not just a farmer planting his crops; Jesus saw an image of how God works. Jesus saw in the sower a symbol or an image of God and God’s kingdom. And that is what he wants his disciples to see. This is what Jesus does all the time; he takes an everyday symbol, often from farms and fields, and he uses it to help his followers see God at work, in their everyday lives.
How is God at work in the world? God is like a sower scattering his seeds across his field. God’s word, God’s grace is being cast all over. Is it landing in soil that is rough and rocky? Yes. Do enemies encroach? Yes. Is that seed, that word, that grace always going to produce the fruit that it could? No. Is every poor sod that gets a seed or a kernel deserving of such? No. But God goes on sowing. He keeps scattering seed relentlessly, even on pieces of ground that don’t deserve it and where it isn’t likely to produce much fruit. Why? Is God a fool? Does God need a seed drill to make sure his grace and his word is neatly and efficiently planted? What does Jesus want us to do with this image of God that he is sharing with us?
What does Jesus want us to do? Well my suggestion to you is this: nothing. Jesus isn’t asking us to do anything in this lesson today. I know that is hard for some people to hear. Especially if you are the sort of person that is a fixer, or if you have spent so much time in corporate performance improvement that you can’t look at any process without trying to make it more efficient, but it may just be possible that Jesus is simply revealing a truth to us. That this is, quite simply, the way things are. God scatters his grace broadly, but it doesn’t always bear fruit every place it lands. That is a reality that we are probably not going to change. Jesus isn’t telling us to do anything about it. Now Jesus has never been shy about telling his disciples to do something when he wants them to do something. The gospels are filled with Jesus giving specific instructions and commandments. But he doesn’t do that here. The only instruction that Jesus gives here is “Listen!” Listen. In part of the passage that gets cut out, Jesus tells his disciples that they need to know some of the mysteries of the kingdom and that is why he is speaking to them in parables and helping them to understand and see and interpret the symbols of God’s kingdom. Jesus isn’t looking for action here; he is looking for understanding. But he also tells the disciples quite plainly: some people won’t get it. Some people won’t understand, but Jesus wants his disciples to understand. So he uses symbols to reveal to them God’s kingdom.
God is like that man in the field casting his grain seeds. The seed is good. The seed has life within it and can bear fruit. It always has the potential to grow, but sometimes it doesn’t. Whether the seed lands on hard soil, or whether it is consumed by weeds and birds, sometimes it just doesn’t grow. But sometimes it does. Much of the time it does and bears fruit abundantly, and that is enough to keep the sower sowing. The sower doesn’t seem too concerned about the seed that lands on the path. God sows his word, his grace in this world, knowing, knowing that some of it is going to land on hard soil and won’t grow, or won’t grow for long. But he keeps on sowing. Some of God’s grace lands in place where it simply can’t bear fruit, but he keeps scattering it anyways. Why? Well, perhaps because some of it does bear fruit, and that is enough. It is enough for the sower to know that some of the seed will bear fruit. Some of it will grow. To the modern mind this is foolishness and inefficiency and waste. But to our Lord this is the mystery of the kingdom.
It is a human tendency to want to try and fix this system of wastefulness, to make all of the seeds grow, but Jesus isn’t asking us to do that at all. Not here. The thing is, I don’t think we are always very good at knowing how to prepare the soil or what helps things grow or not grow. That was actually one of Jethro Tull’s problems. He couldn’t fathom how manure could be good for growing anything, but it is. Manure actually helps crops grow. So you see, even if we are clever enough to devise a tool to control where seeds go, we don’t always know what is good soil and what is bad. Jesus doesn’t ask us to make God’s kingdom more efficient. Jesus will eventually send his disciples out with instructions to preach, baptize, heal and forgive, they would be sent out to sow God’s word in the world and to show people his grace, but Jesus also repeatedly makes clear to them that much of their work will not produce the fruit they desire. Some people will outright reject them, some people will convert and backslide, some will just wander away. Jesus tells them and makes it very clear, that this is the way that it is. It is not a sign of failure; it is not a sign of not working hard enough; it just is. We go on sowing seeds knowing that some people won’t get God. Some people won’t respond to grace. When you accept that, when you accept that some seed just isn’t going to land where it can grow and when you stop worrying about it and making it some personal failure, then you can get on with the scattering and that’s more important because much of the seed that you scatter does grow.
We work very hard to try and sow the seeds of the gospel here. But some people have no interest in the story we tell. Some people seem enthusiastic and want to sign up for everything and then disappear two weeks later. Some people just drift away, finding one excuse after another to come less and less until they forget why they ever came at all. Frustrating, yes. But on the other hand, some people come here and find this place to be part of the bedrock of their lives and the people here become family and Jesus’s story becomes their story and their lives do indeed bear much fruit. You can never be too sure how people are going to respond. This is how God’s kingdom grows. Not in neat and efficient little rows and not always in the places that we expect.
God’s method of spreading his kingdom isn’t always efficient, but it is effective.
Inwardly Digest 