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First Presbyterian Church, Bridgeton, NJ
Richard E. Sindall, Pastor
Sermon for July 13, 2008
Jeremiah 30:18-22 and Matthew 13:1-9
The Sower: Hope and Encouragement, Not Resignation to Fate
As this morning I complete thirty-six years of pastoral ministry, I think I may also be setting a personal record for longest sermon title or, at least, coming close. I have put my argument into the title itself, contending that Jesus’ Parable of the Sower offers us hope and encouragement, not a fatalistic view of life and salvation to which we can only resign ourselves.
Jesus and his gospel contradict fatalism. His teaching and his actions alike declare the inevitable no longer inevitable. Whether we hear the dispassionate, “What will be will be,” the dismissive, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” or the vindictive, “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it,” Jesus interrupts with a new possibility. In life and in death, he has opened locked doors and made pathways not available before. His grace from God says that what fate has determined need not be our destiny, after all. The judgment that has been passed need not stand. Grace and fate are opposites, and we need to recognize God as the Lord of grace, not the Master of fate.
In Greek tragedy, Fate rules even the gods on Mount Olympus. Resignation to fate is seen, therefore, as wisdom. Not so in the Bible, either testament, and definitely not so with Jesus. Our God is not governed by fate, and so neither are we. God’s love trumps all other considerations, overruling all contrary demands for the outcome of life and human history. What love demands, that is what will be.
The sower goes out and scatters the seed. Jesus is talking here about a human farmer. In his parables, he uses ordinary situations in life, familiar to his listeners, to open their minds (and now ours) to the hope he is offering. I read many years ago that farmers in that time and region scattered the seed first and then plowed it into the soil. That procedure, which seems backwards to us, explains how so much seed lands in the wrong places.
Watching how the seed fares could discourage anyone desiring a harvest. First the birds come and eat some of the seed, then the midday sun scorches the young plants with shallow roots, and then thorny weeds choke out some of the new plants. Will there be no harvest? Has the farmer been defeated? No, of course not. Much of the seed is sown in fertile soil, and the harvest will be abundant.
That’s the message. Just as a farmer attains an abundant harvest despite many setbacks and problems that cause some seed to be lost, so God will surely attain the harvest despite all experiences of frustration and failure. God is working with people, and so there will be problems, frustrations, outrages, and tragedies, but God will not be defeated.
So far, so good, but there is another problem that comes with trying to understand this Parable of the Sower. Jesus does not write people off. It is not okay with him that some get lost. No, leave the ninety-nine sheep who are safe, and go after the one that strayed and is vulnerable to the wolves. Welcome the prodigal son or daughter home. Lead the unforgivable to forgiveness. Challenge the false security of the proud and powerful so they can be brought to a new kind of security that is humble and compassionate.
As Christ’s church, we are not to write people off. God does not play percentages, because God loves all the daughters and sons of humanity. God does not make people expendable, not intended for salvation, not meant to be loved but meant, rather, to be lost. No! The seed does not represent people it’s okay for the birds to eat up, the sun to scorch, or the weeds to choke. That’s the worst misinterpretation of Jesus’ teaching.
God takes no satisfaction in giving people what they deserve. Are we listening? That declaration is crucial to the gospel of Jesus Christ, but it seems to be the hardest lesson of all for us to learn and retain. It is the lesson that seems to fall on shallow soil within us. We may get it for the moment, but it fails to take root, and so the morning sun restores us to our same old ways of thinking and judging people, and we lose the gospel of our hope and salvation. Just one day after our insight into the nature of God’s grace and the outcomes God desires, we forget everything Jesus has taught us and go right back to wanting God to come and give everybody what each deserves. How discouraging! If the seed will not take deep root even in believers, how will there ever be a harvest?
No wonder Jesus told this parable. We need to keep hearing there is hope for us, despite all our burning desires to see “some people” or “those people” punished or even destroyed. We don’t get it because we have deep emotional need not to get it. We have inside us a craving for the satisfaction of seeing the bad people punished. And I have become convinced that the punishment does not even have to accomplish anything to satisfy the need, because the need is emotional, not reasonable. “Punishment, I want punishment,” says a character in one of the Harry Potter movies who is afraid the children caught breaking the rules will be “let off” by what he sees as permissive authority. He despises children and wants to see them hurt.
Again, God takes no satisfaction in giving people what they deserve. We are not bad seed, and we are not bad soil, either. Actually, we are bad soil but also good soil. It is not hard for me, looking back over my life, to find places where God’s word has been frustrated in me. I can be as stubborn as the hardest ground, shallow as the rockiest soil, and vulnerable to the harm of outside influences as the most bird-ravaged patches of field. I always wonder when I hear people say they have no regrets. After thirty-six years in the ministry, I have a truckload of them. And another truckload from my personal life. I have plenty of “don’t remind me” moments, but I’m the one who dredges them up to trouble my own mind.
There will be a harvest. God has hopes for you and me that are greater and more persistent than our failures, our frustrations, our setbacks, and our personal histories of pride and shame that make us resistant to grace.
God wants healing for the wounded and broken, restoration for the rebellious and lost. God wants to hear sounds of thanksgiving and joy, not cries of distress from the condemned and agony from the punished. God turns despair into hope and gives fresh dignity to people who have become disgusting even in their own eyes. None of this grace is a matter of rewarding the undeserving, as the judgmental imagine, but rather of restoring the beloved. Only as we begin to realize how personally God takes each of us can we begin to understand why Jesus behaved and taught as he did, why he gave himself for the undeserving and ungrateful, and why we are not to write people off as unproductive and worthless or take satisfaction in the idea of their getting what we think they deserve. What brings us satisfaction? Jesus and the prophets make it clear that what brings God satisfaction is for the lost to be found, the broken healed, and the shamed given new dignity and worth.
The world is a field in which the seeds of God’s grace are sown. But each church and community is also a field with its varied qualities of soil, its birds and weeds, and its events and situations that hurt and sometimes destroy people and can destroy also the spirit and life of the community itself. You are a field in which seeds of God’s grace are sown, and so am I. You are not good soil or bad, but both, and so am I. Things happen that pluck the seed before it has a chance to take root. Old habits of thinking, long-held prejudices and resentments rise up and choke the young plants, and grace dies inside us. “Sure, God loves everybody, but not those people!” Not her, surely, not him. Not me? Yes, it can be hard to trust God’s love for us. Will my life produce a harvest, or will it be just a barren field with a few good spots but not enough?
Jesus’ parable tells us to take heart. God’s love for us will not be thwarted by birds, heat, or weeds of any kind. What seems lost will be found, and what seems wasted will be made fertile, not because we deserve better than we have gotten, whether that is true or false (or both), but because God loves us more than we have yet realized. So, think of the Sower, and take heart. Amen.