July 13, 2008
Pentecost 9, Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
A good story is a powerful thing.
My first attempts at giving sermons came in the context of my seminary homiletics class. For a few hours twice a week we’d sit in a semi-circle and listen while fellow would-be priests got up and gave the sermon that they planned to soon deliver in their field ed site. And then we’d critique each other’s work. Just like the average congregation, there would be a few folks in the group who’d been up too late the night before and had trouble staying awake. And a few people whose minds were clearly on something else – their kid who’d started giving them more trouble than usual, or the love interest who had stopped calling them, or the assignment they had hanging over their heads. And a few stealthily surfing the net or texting each other. The difference between the group gathered for class and the average congregation was that their criticism was not always as gentle and tactful as y’alls is. There was one person in my class, who at the end of every sermon would say something like, “It just didn’t capture my attention. I tuned out for most of it.” But almost without exception, even she managed to break out of her assorted reveries to tune in and listen when a good story was told.
The challenge, of course, is not just to tell a story, but to find a story that is actually relevant, something that can draw people into thinking about how it might apply to their own lives.
Jesus would have done well in homiletics class. He knew intuitively that a story would be more likely to capture his audience than just spouting scripture or leading an academic bible study or thumping the table with moral exhortations. And he created stories that have so much depth and life-changing potential that we are still telling them over and over and debating their meanings 2000 years later. All this without any kind of formal seminary education!
In his preaching, Jesus often used parables, a form of story intended to tease the mind into insight. Jesus would start from some earthy, experiential thing that his listeners would be familiar with and use it to reveal something like God, or God’s Kingdom -- mysterious, infinite subjects that are beyond easy understanding.
Jesus tells just such a parable in our gospel for this morning. Our lectionary takes some liberties with Matthew’s Gospel and makes it look like Jesus went out and told this parable about the Sower spreading seeds and then quickly provided the key to understanding it. But in reality, the crowd that Jesus spoke to only got the first part of what we heard this morning. Jesus goes out in the boat to talk to the crowds and tells them this story. And only later in Matthew’s Gospel does he provide the explanation to his small group of disciples when they come to him asking what it’s all about.
I think it’s human nature that we’re rarely content to be left with something open-ended. I absolutely loved my calculus class in college because after I did my homework I could turn to the back of the book and see the answer. It wasn’t that I minded working hard, I just wanted the satisfaction of being sure at the end that it was right. There really are not too many things in life like that, if you think about it.
So I don’t blame the disciples in this story for seeking some clarification. They’ve got Jesus’ ear afterall, and maybe they deserve a little extra access to Truth for all the hard work they were putting in for Him.
And so in the second part of this morning’s reading we hear Jesus spoon-feeding them, providing what is, in effect, an answer key for this parable: Seed = God’s Word, Seed on path and eaten by birds = Person that hears and doesn’t understand, and so on.
It’s all very organized and thought out and creates all kinds of interesting questions that are still relevant for us two millennia later. Questions like: What are things we hear but don’t understand? What are our roots that can keep us thriving? What are the preoccupations that might choke us? How can we make our soil rich and inviting? What is the grain that we bring forth? There’s lots of potential for bearing fruit there.
But it turns out that almost all the scholarly types agree that this latter part, this explanation given by Jesus to the disciples, is actually a later add-on. Something appended by the early church and most likely not said by Jesus himself. The early church was struggling against persecution and losing believers to worldly temptations and so it created an ending for this parable that, in effect, made Jesus’ words a warning for those who believed to stand fast in difficult times.
It’s certainly a worthy message, and one deserving of application in our lives. But what if we’d been with those crowds on the shore that day watching Jesus tell this parable and heard only the first part? What if our work weren’t made so easy, if we were left without this answer key that the early church provided?
Although I missed it the first 30 times I read it, there’s a huge hint for us in the setting for this story. My mom the reading teacher would have called it a “context clue.” Jesus was sitting beside the sea and “such great crowds gathered around him” that he had to get into a boat and get into the water a little ways to even talk to them. Whenever we see Jesus in action or hear his stories about God, the theme of abundance is generally not far away. Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes to feed thousands, with baskets left over. Jesus called on his disciples to forgive not once, not seven times, but 70 times 7. Jesus was always going far beyond what was expected. Beyond what was comfortable much of the time. And he reveals his Father God as someone who is outrageously abundant also: “For God so loved the world….”
And so even though the Church throughout the ages has made this story into a parable about the conditions of the soil, focusing on how we receive the word from God, I think it’s high time we look at this story as being about the Sower. To think about this parable as being about the wild and reckless abundance of God.
This Sower that Jesus tells about scatters his seed liberally. He doesn’t plant only in the best, richest soil; he doesn’t even strive to make sure his seeds land only in the garden plot. He just throws out the seed. In a way, it seems wasteful, doesn’t it? Although context helps here, too. In ancient Palestine, there was no plowing ahead of time, so farmers didn’t know what kind of ground they were dealing with until later, when the seeds flourished. Or not. And so they would throw out their seed, knowing full well that some large portion of them would never reach maturity. This is a portrait of a God who loves all, whether or not we are worthy, ready, or listening. A God who gives good gifts with abandon, without regard for eventual outcome.
Maybe a modern day parallel could be one of those movies about some naïve but energetic young teacher who goes into an inner city school and against all odds reaches out to a classroom full of the most unlikely kids. The movies are a little formulaic, but it does seem like most teachers can point to some experience like that. Some student they refused to give up on, despite the resistance they encountered, and finally saw the fruits of their labor.
The Sower showed that kind of refusal to give up. To our eyes, much of the Sower’s labor seemed futile – throwing seeds in these unlikely, inhospitable places. And sure enough, the Sower was met with repeated failure – the birds that snatched away the seed, the sun that scorched the baby shoots, the choking thorns. But he maintained an unshakeable faith in a rich harvest despite the setbacks. That’s solace for us too. It may not look like much, but God can bring triumph out of anything.
Even a dry, hard, shriveled up seed. Nowdays we can look at a seed and think about what we learned in biology class, and understand at least a little how grain might spring from that seed. But the people during Jesus’ time would have seen growth from a withered little seed as something of a miracle – a little piece of resurrection.
And I can relate to that. My family has our own little garden plot out back. We took my daughter’s preschool class out in May and planted all kinds of things. Green beans and peas, sunflowers, peppers, strawberries and tomatoes. The strawberries and tomatoes we bought as little plants, but everything else started as seeds. I’ve got to say, I never thought anything would grow except the plants. I looked forward to picking juicy berries and taking home tubs full of ripe tomatoes, and the rest of it I figured would be piddly little sprouts, at best. Boy was I wrong. The tomatoes have been nothing but disappointment (we’re on our third round of plants at this point), and we’ve yet to get to a strawberry before the bugs do. But our sunflowers are the tallest thing out there. And we’ve eaten our very own homegrown peas and beans several nights for dinner. For a modern person who only knows eating from the grocery store, it truly feels like a minor miracle. I can imagine how those Palestinians might have felt! Out of the most insignificant beginnings, working in ways invisible to the human eye, God creates! And creates abundantly!
When the Sower’s seeds brought forth grain, it was better than anything expected or imagined. Jesus tells us that some of the seeds brought forth 30 bushels, some 60, some 100. Apparently even in a good year in Jesus’ time the yield would only have been about 7 bushels, so these quantities surpassed all human possibility. The value and richness of the fruits of God’s love and gifts for us are beyond all measure.
We’ll witness that ourselves in just a minute. Coming up next we have the great pleasure of welcoming into the Body of Christ little Sofia Meller. Sofia will be baptized and sealed with the Holy Spirit as “Christ’s own forever.” And if that’s not abundance, I don’t know what is
Amen.
Elizabeth Rees